As a general rule, one should never be surprised when Hollywood makes a sequel of anything. If a film makes a large enough profit, Hollywood will find a way to produce a sequel. Even if the main character dies in the first film, or there’s no logical reason to continue the story beyond the first movie’s ending, or the first picture was based on a book with no further material to adapt, or the entire cast and crew want nothing to do with each other anymore and refuse to make another project together. Is there money to be made? If the answer to that question is yes, then there’s a sequel to be made too, narrative or logistical issues be damned.
Nonetheless, there are times when a sequel is genuinely surprising, like when an actor vowed never to reprise a role and then did it anyway (again: money to be made!), or when a film flopped on its initial release and then accrued enough of a fanbase to demand a second movie, or if it’s been years or even decades since a franchise last appeared in theaters. The list below contains 20 such examples; extremely unlikely sequels whose mere existence is genuinely shocking in this day and age.
There are definitely more examples out there (did you expect Harrison Ford making another Indiana Jones without Steven Spielberg and George Lucas at age 80? I did not!), but here are 20 of the least likely sequels in film history, in chronological order…
The Least Likely Sequels That Actually Happened
We cannot believe these sequels exist.
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Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky