Studios love a franchise, and a popular book series looks like a ready-made one. Several books, a loyal readership and a built-in release schedule seem to promise years of sequels. Yet the first film often decides everything.
When that opening movie underperforms, the remaining books can sit on the shelf for good. The nine series below all got at least one adaptation, and in each case the story stopped well short of its ending.
Eragon
Christopher Paolini’s fantasy series, The Inheritance Cycle, has four books. The 2006 film was presumably meant to lead into adaptations of Eldest, Brisingr and Inheritance. Those films never arrived.
Fans and most critics found the first film derivative, and after a poor reception and weak domestic box office, the sequels were scrapped. Variety later reported that a Disney+ series reboot was in development.
The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials)
Philip Pullman’s trilogy got its film treatment in 2007. The Golden Compass was intended to be the first part of a young adult fantasy trilogy spanning multiple universes. The cast and effects drew praise, but the plan stalled.
Critics pointed to changes that softened the books’ religious themes and the ending. One view holds that it was perhaps for the best that a sequel never materialized. The full story eventually reached the screen in a separate television version.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Rick Riordan’s series follows a boy who discovers he’s the son of a Greek god. When Fox adapted the first book in 2010, many assumed all five novels would become movies. The film series ended after two entries, in 2010 and 2013.
That left the later books, including the finale, unadapted for the big screen. The franchise got a second chance as a Disney+ series, which premiered in late 2023 and returned the story to the start.
Divergent
Few series came as close to the finish line as this one. After the success of 2014’s Divergent, Insurgent arrived in 2015 and Allegiant in 2016. Veronica Roth’s trilogy was split so that the last book would run across two films.
Diminishing box office returns on the second and third films led to a TV special idea that never happened. In 2021, producer Neil Burger said he had little faith in a fourth film. The story still has no screen ending.
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The Mortal Instruments
Cassandra Clare’s urban fantasy opened on screen with City of Bones in 2013. Its critical failure and mediocre box office led to the scrapping of film plans for the second book, City of Ashes. The movie franchise ended there.
The material did find another home. A TV adaptation was announced in 2014, and Shadowhunters premiered in 2016 and ran three seasons until its cancellation in 2019. So the books were adapted twice, and neither version covered everything.
Mortal Engines
Philip Reeve’s books imagine cities on wheels, and the 2018 film brought that idea to the screen at large scale. Despite huge anticipation, it failed to break even at the box office. The source is a quartet, so most of the story was left untouched.
No sequel had been officially mentioned, but the financial results ended any chance of a franchise. The books remain popular, but a full adaptation was cancelled before it took off.
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Lemony Snicket’s gloomy saga was pitched as a possible rival to Harry Potter. Paramount and Nickelodeon Films reportedly hoped it could be their answer to that franchise. The books run to thirteen volumes.
The 2004 film covered the first three books, and no follow ups ever materialized. The full run of books was later adapted by Netflix as a television series that ran from 2017 to 2019.
The Chronicles of Narnia
This one made it further than most, with three films based on C.S. Lewis’s books. Still, the series stopped at the third entry, and four books remained. In 2011, Walden Media lost the rights, which passed to Sony, whose planned Silver Chair movie got lost in development hell.
The rights later moved again, and Netflix has been developing new Narnia films with director Greta Gerwig attached. That makes this less a dead project than a long pause across different studios.
Ender’s Game
The 2013 adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s novel was star studded. The cast included Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford and Viola Davis, and further movies were planned to adapt later books in the series. The story had clear franchise potential on paper.
No second film followed, and the later books in the Ender saga, including Speaker for the Dead, have not reached theaters. The first movie stands alone, with the rest of the series still on the page.
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