Failure to Franchise
A bi-weekly podcast devoted to infamous examples of failed film-franchise starters. In a Hollywood landscape dominated by giant tentpole movies, not all attempted franchises can succeed.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 6
- Latest publication
- Sep 22, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 14, 2026
Latest episodes
Episode 155 - The Fall Guy (2024) (opens the original)
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"FALLure to Franchise" concludes with a very recent movie. One starring two big movie-stars coming off of the biggest hits of their career, directed by one of the filmmakers behind John Wick, and a movie that helped influence a major Academy Award change. So why the heck wasn't 2024's The Fall Guy a hit?? Your guess is as good as ours, but we're here to try to figure it out. Another cinematic adaptation of a classic TV show, The Fall Guy stars Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt in the action-comedy ta
Episode 154 - Fallen (2016) (opens the original)
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As exciting as the start of a new theme month usually is here at F2F, this time it comes with a little bit of foreboding, as well. That's because we're kicking off September's "FALLure to Franchise" with a return to one of our most dreaded genres...the YA Lit Adaptation! This time, we're looking at 2016's Fallen , which poses the compelling(?) question...what if Twilight , but with angels? Also based on a popular series of books, and with a clear "it's worked before" template to follow, Fallen s
Episode 153 - World War Z (2013) (opens the original)
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"Summer Surprise" comes to a close, perhaps appropriately, in the form of a shambling, rotting corpse...or, in this case, thousands of them, spilling over each other as they scale a giant wall. That's right, we're looking at 2013's World War Z , the big budget adaptation of author Max Brooks' bestselling "Oral History of the Zombie War." The film overcame skepticism from book fans wary of its massive changes from the source material, and months of well-reported behind-the-scenes chaos - includin
Episode 152 - The Green Hornet (2011) (opens the original)
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By 2011, the classic pulp character The Green Hornet had already been featured on the radio (where he was first born), movie screens (in a couple serials from the '40s), TV screens (in the 1966 series co-starring Bruce Lee), and the pages of comic books. As varied as these different versions were, they all played the character and his world fairly straight. Which arguably made the decision to turn the 2011 big-screen adaptation of the character into more of a buddy-comedy movie a unique, bold ch
Episode 151 - Car 54, Where Are You? (1994) w/ Special Guest: Bede Jermyn (opens the original)
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A successful music video director and the filmmaker behind a recently well-received cult hit is hired to helm the cinematic adaptation of a beloved '60s sitcom. Clearly aiming for something more hip and edgy than the original show, he largely eschews the tone of the source material, instead populating his film with esoteric cult celebs and performers, upping the raunch factor, and filming it as a musical. And then...nothing. The movie sits on the shelf for almost four years. Until - unbeknownst
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