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Wide ScreenWhich rebooted movie franchises have lasted the longest?
“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” was No. 1 at the box office, with an estimated $73 million haul -- making it the first sequel to a remake of 2014 to earn both serious critical praise and major financial success. The post-apocalyptic action film, starring Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Jason Clarke, and Andy Serkis, certainly isn’t the first sequel to a remake to ever find audience, nor will it be the last, if the Hollywood trend of rebooting every franchise in sight continues.
Sequels to remakes aren’t a new phenomenon by any means. As long as Hollywood has been remaking movies, they’ve also been following up those remakes with sequels.
One of the first high profile remake sequels was 1989’s “The Fly II” (or, as it should have been titled, "How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Jeff Goldblum Movie by Adding Eric Stoltz"), an inferior and much-maligned follow-up to director David Cronenberg’s critically-acclaimed 1986 remake of the 1958 horror classic.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, sequels to remakes become increasingly common, turning unexpected classics into modern franchises. Notable examples from this period include 2000’s “Nutty Professor II: The Klumps” (Eddie Murphy’s ill-advised follow-up to his remake of the 1963 Jerry Lewis comedy classic) and 2004’s “Ocean’s Twelve” (the star-studded follow-up to Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 reimagining of the 1960 Rat Pack caper “Ocean’s Eleven”).
More recent sequels to remakes include 2012’s “Wrath of the Titans” (a sequel to the mythological remake “Clash of the Titans”), 2014's "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," and, of course, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” itself a sequel to a remake which was actually a reboot of a remake. Got all that?
How far can the revitalized "Apes" series go on? Generally, the number of sequels to remakes caps out at around one, due to a variety of reasons usually having to do with poor box office performance. Very rarely, as was the case with "Ocean's Thirteen," a remake can spawn more than one sequel.
The "Apes" series can presumably continue as long as the quality of the series stays high and the films remain profitable ventures. There’s enough source material to keep Hollywood busy for some years. From the 1963 Pierre Boulle novel that inspired the series to the original 1968 film and its four sequels, there’s a vast amount of material to draw from.
Like its predecessor (which was inspired by 1972’s “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes”), 2014’s “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is actually loosely based on 1973’s “Battle for the Planet of the Apes.” However, the earlier films are still different enough from the modern reboots that they could still provide fodder for yet another contemporary reimagining. Heck, we might even get to a point where someone decides to remake Tim Burton’s 2001 remake of the original film starring Mark Wahlberg. Where franchises are concerned, never put anything past Hollywood.
