Hollywood loves a sequel because it looks like the safe option – and movie-making is a risky business. Sometimes going for the sequel gives us The Empire Strikes Back or The Godfather Part II. Sometimes it takes everything we loved about the original and manages to make it worse. Much worse.
Hollywood gets it wrong more often than it gets it right and those missteps are what this list is all about: our ranking takes you from the outright cinematic disasters, excruciatingly or amusingly awful, to follow-up fails which misjudged and consequently jeopardised the legacy of a beloved original.
These aren’t simply 20 bad movies. They’re 20 stories of how studios, stars and filmmakers managed to squander a winning formula.
The 20 worst movie sequels of all time
20) Moana 2 (2024)
Moana 2 is a desperately disappointing, clumsily assembled sequel to a near-perfect predecessor. The original animation might only be a decade-old, but this gorgeous celebration of Polynesian culture has its classic status in the bag, cemented by its persistent Disney+ popularity. Moana’s Rotten Tomatoes rating is a swotty 96 per cent, the sequel takes a dramatic drop down to 61 per cent, close to being branded ‘rotten’. The reason? Moana 2 was reworked from a Disney+ miniseries, after executives responded positively to early footage, resulting in something that feels fragmented and underdeveloped.
There’s little jeopardy, less Moana and Maui, an oddly absent villain, and an abbreviated role for promising new character Matangi. The songs, which had been the heart and soul of the original, are underwhelming, with the experienced Lin-Manuel Miranda replaced by newcomers Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, who won fame on TikTok with their Bridgerton-inspired ballads.
Moana 2 has fan loyalty to thank for its financial success, but worse was to come with 2026’s dreadful live action remake, which flopped at the box office. A film so beloved by children deserves better, let’s hope the (in-development) Moana 3 delivers.
19) The Godfather III (1990)
With the first two films regarded as amongst the finest in film history, the concluding chapter of Francis Ford Coppola’s epic gangster trilogy had a lot to live up to. It commenced shooting in late 1989, 15 years after the release of the second film due to Coppola’s reluctance to return, and studio Paramount’s inability to get the project off the ground without him. Robert Duvall dropped out, citing the huge pay difference between him and lead Al Pacino, removing one of the franchise’s most compelling remaining characters.
Even more disastrous, was the casting of Coppola’s inexperienced teenage daughter Sofia, as Michael Corleone’s own daughter Mary, after Winona Ryder withdrew due to nervous exhaustion, with the newbie hesitant and widely criticised in an important role. Things were further complicated by Coppola filing for bankruptcy mid-shoot, and his constant rewriting and reshooting, only finalising the ending two months before the release.
Despite the sense that it had brought one of the great cinematic stories to a chaotic and disappointing close, the film was nominated for seven Oscars. Unlike the first two films which bagged nine between them, it came away with none.
18) Grease 2 (1982)
Thankfully they didn’t go with one of the other potential titles, More Grease, Greasier or Son of Grease, but that was one the few things Grease 2 did get right. With John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John and Stockard Channing uninterested in returning, this sequel to the 1978 musical smash had to make do with appearances from the likes of Didi Conn’s Frenchy. Grease 2 has some decent songs but overall it’s a pale retread of the original, returning us to Rydell High and focusing on awkward British student Michael (Maxwell Caulfield) – cousin of the first film’s Sandy, apparently – and the new leader of the Pink Ladies, Stephanie (Michelle Pfeiffer, in her first major role).
New director Patricia Birch, who had worked as choreographer on the stage and screen versions of the original, was unable to inject it with the requisite energy, or identity, with its financial underperformance and poor critical reception putting paid to further planned projects.
Although Pfeiffer would go on to be one of the biggest stars of the era, Caulfield’s career stalled, with the actor telling Fox News Digital last year, “When the film didn’t take off, I went down with the ship. But [Michelle] rose like a fabulous phoenix.”
17) Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
Possibly the most straightforwardly endearing of all Marvel’s superhero films, Ant-Man (2015) was a knockabout adventure following Paul Rudd’s loveable rogue as he’s shrunk down to insect-size and battles evil accompanied by his amusingly disreputable associates. The third film, 2023’s Quantumania, casts out the scruffy, down-to-earth charm that made the original great.
Gone are the likes of garrulous sidekick Michael Peña, as the film drags its principals into the Quantum Realm where it drowns them in CGI and saddles them with a confusing story. The 31st film in the MCU is symptomatic of Marvel’s recent wobbles; it lost money during its theatrical run but, as Forbes reported in 2024, eventually turned a small profit of $88,236. Playing Kang the Conqueror, Jonathan Majors made a decent villain but his real-life wrongdoing tanked his ongoing involvement in the MCU, tainting this unfortunate entry further.
16) Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999)
1977’s Star Wars redefined movie making, birthing the blockbuster and taking cinema soaring to epically entertaining heights. It was complemented by its follow-ups The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) and enhanced by the charm and chemistry of its lead trio Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. In 1999, creator George Lucas revived the franchise with the first part of a prequel trilogy, The Phantom Menace, which similarly set the box office alight. However, as evidenced by its unimpressive 54 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes, the critical verdict was far from kind.
Impressive effects aside, the film suffers from an uninteresting plot and bizarrely stilted performances from the usually reliable likes of Natalie Portman and Liam Neeson, which may have been the result of a torturous production process. Playing the young Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ewan McGregor told The Express at the time that he found the experience to be, “the epitome of tedium,” adding, “I was frowning a lot. It just became a frowning exercise.”
To compound matters, in amongst the underpowered turns is notorious ‘comic relief’ Jar Jar Binks, an irritating and offensively stereotyped alien, voiced and motion-captured by Ahmed Best, who sadly bore the brunt of the associated backlash.
15) Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
2021’s affable and entertaining Ghostbusters: Afterlife wasn’t universally adored but it was a hit that did a great job of reinvigorating a franchise which had attracted toxic adulation, with the 2016 all-female reboot becoming a magnet for fan frustrations. Afterlife introduced a compelling new set of characters, who would become the Grooberson-Spengler clan, played by Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Mckenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard, whilst keeping the likes of Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd in the mix.
For 2024 follow-up Frozen Empire, the co-writer of Afterlife Gil Kenan took over at the helm from Jason Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman, with critics roundly unimpressed this time round – at 41 per cent it has the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of all five Ghostbusters films. It’s overstuffed with characters and reluctant to simply move forward with its lovable new family, instead obsessively pandering to the original’s sometimes problematic fanbase by continuing to do the reference thing to death. The less than impressive box office (it failed to break even) has seemingly left the franchise in limbo.
In late 2024 Kenan told The Direct, “Stay tuned. There’ll be more.” However, since then, things have gone a little too quiet…
14) X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)
Announced to great fanfare at California’s D23 Expo in 2026, the MCU’s X-Men ensemble has got everyone talking, with Sadie Sink this generation’s Jean Grey (as those who caught Spider-Man: Brand New Day will already know). But, in 2019, it was a Jean Grey-led instalment that brought the previous iteration of the superhero series to an undignified end.
Helmed by first-time director Simon Kinberg (a writer and producer on previous franchise entries), Dark Phoenix tells the story of how Grey (played by Sophie Turner, hot off Game of Thrones) becomes the all-powerful Phoenix in deeply unsatisfying style, despite the best efforts of Turner, who is flanked by an obscenely talented yet often lacklustre and underemployed supporting cast.
Suffering a loss of approximately $133 million, the film is widely considered to be one of the worst superhero movies of all time.
13) Zoolander 2 (2016)
Although only a modest success at the time, 2001’s Zoolander confirmed its creator Ben Stiller as a reliably funny force and the film eventually built up a lot of affection over the years. It’s a riot of satirical silliness, that pricks the pomposity of the fashion business with aplomb and is the kind of comedy that enters the cultural lexicon, with its “Blue Steel” pout and “derelicte” chic. Yet it also felt like a bit of a one-off, as its 2016 flop follow-up proved, with the sequel taking just $56.7 million globally on a budget of $50-55 million, and the critical verdict similarly withering.
There’s a desperation rather than clear direction to the enterprise this time round, with endless unfunny cameos and location shifts, and Stiller’s simpleton routine feeling overstretched. The film attracted controversy over Benedict Cumberbatch’s cartoonish portrayal of a non-binary model, which the actor himself has expressed regret for. Stiller moved away from comedy in the aftermath; in an interview with David Duchovny for his Fail Better podcast, he described his shock at the film’s failure, saying, “I thought everybody wanted this. And then it’s like: Wow, I must have really f**ked this up.”
12) Alien 3 (1992)
Alien 3 started shooting without a finished screenplay and somehow that wasn’t even its biggest problem. Its 1986 predecessor, Aliens, had proved that sequels can differentiate themselves from outstanding originals (in this case 1979’s Alien) and be regarded as masterpieces in their own right. However 1992’s third instalment, set in a maximum security correctional facility, was plagued by problems before it even entered production.
Debut director David Fincher (known then for his trailblazing music videos, including for Madonna’s ‘Vogue’) was hired after numerous scripts had already been discarded, replacing Vincent Ward. Sigourney Weaver’s protagonist Ripley returned, but the characters of Newt and Hicks were killed off unceremoniously at the outset, while filming started without a finished screenplay, and cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth was replaced by Alex Thomson two weeks into the shoot, due to ill health. Fincher tangled with the studio, 20th Century Fox, constantly; he later disowned the finished product, going on to become one of Hollywood’s most dynamic and dependable directors, the man behind the likes of Seven, Fight Club and The Social Network.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2009 about his Alien 3 experience at London’s BFI Southbank, he described it as, “a baptism by fire”, and confessed, “No one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me.”
11) Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)
The sequel to 1980’s cult favourite The Blues Brothers (originally a Saturday Night Live sketch) should probably have never got off the ground, following the death of co-lead John Belushi in 1982, but that was far from its only issue.
Released in 1998 and directed once again by John Landis, from a script written with Dan Aykroyd, the film adds John Goodman and Joe Morton to the mix, as Aykroyd’s Elwood Blues gets out of prison and attempts to get the band back together. Like its predecessor, it keeps the cameos from music icons coming, even managing to outdo the original in that respect. However, it was a box office bomb that was more interested in going through familiar motions than trying to impress in its own right.
Speaking to AV Club about what went wrong, Landis commented, “We wrote what I thought was a terrific script. Then Universal Studios eviscerated it… the first thing they said was that it had to be a PG, which meant they couldn’t use profanities, which is basically cutting the Blues Brothers’ nuts off.”
10) Hannibal (2001)
Given its goriness, 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs was astonishingly successful, picking up trophies in the ‘Big Five’ Oscar categories. With Anthony Hopkins’s monstrous Hannibal Lecter on the loose at the end of the film and a follow-up book published by Thomas Harris in 1999, a sequel was inevitable. However, the source novel was truly out there, pitting Lecter against the even more vile Mason Verger (brought to screen by an unrecognisable Gary Oldman), amping up the already significant ick factor, and compromising its upstanding FBI agent Clarice Starling.
One of the strengths of the original film was the interplay between Hopkins and co-star Jodie Foster as Clarice, yet Foster, like original director Jonathan Demme, didn’t want anything to do with it, telling Total Film that, “Clarice meant so much to Jonathan and I… there was no way that either of us could really trample on her.” Foster did well to give it a swerve, with Julianne Moore stepping in, but unable to leave her own stamp on the role.
Directed by Ridley Scott, Hannibal is one of the most deranged major releases ever, that rendered one of the scariest characters in movie history laughable. Now that really is a crime.
9) Staying Alive (1983)
If 1977’s Saturday Night Fever combined its disco dancing with an appealing edginess, its sanitised 1983 sequel Staying Alive is pure cringe. John Travolta returns as strutting chauvinist Tony Manero, who is working as a dance instructor and waiter and trying to get his big break as a dancer on Broadway, whilst messing around his loyal girlfriend, played by Cynthia Rhodes.
Travolta had considerable influence over the direction of the story, which was rewritten by original screenwriter Norman Wexler and later by the film’s new director – none other than Sylvester Stallone – to accommodate the actor’s suggestions. Travolta was keen for the writers to take Tony’s story in a more positive direction, which would give his character a taste of success, and the film became more family friendly and dance-heavy in the process, ditching the original’s gritty locations and colourful language.
The film was a hit at the box office, making $127 million on a $22 million budget, but it sold its soul to get there, and was berated by critics for doing so.
8) Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)
2019’s alternative origin tale, Joker, was intended as a standalone story. However, following its astonishing commercial success (it made more than $1 billion at the box office) and double Oscar win, director Todd Phillips and star Joaquin Phoenix were persuaded by studio Warner Bros to give it another shot, with the promise of greater creative freedom and a bigger budget.
Bringing the charismatic Lady Gaga onboard as love interest Harleen Quinzel seemed like canny casting and the sequel’s status as a jukebox musical could have taken things in an interesting and more fun direction, after the gripping but grim original which tapped into male anger and frustration for better or worse.
Unfortunately, Joker: Folie à Deux bombed at the box office, but neither a suitably twitchy Phoenix, nor an aptly gaga Gaga were at fault in a film that’s drearily melancholic, uneventful and overlong.
7) Sex and the City 2 (2010)
The original Sex and the City TV series (1998-2004) was a bona fide phenomenon and 2008’s big screen spin-off was a fun and fitting enough popcorn flick, that really cleaned up financially. Sex and the City 2, on the other hand, is like watching a car crash over two-and-a-half agonising hours, featuring the death of everyone’s dignity.
Lambasted for its cultural insensitivity, the sequel involves the quartet, led by Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie, taking a gobsmacking trip to Abu Dhabi. Prone to lazy stereotypes and with previously beloved characters coming across as little more than materialistic morons, the film is horrendously shallow, judgemental and repulsively superior.
Fans still turned up to watch en masse and a third film was planned, before morphing into the so-so series And Just Like That… Disliking the plans for her character Samantha, Kim Cattrall sensibly opted for the exit (a cameo in season two aside). When asked by Variety how she felt following the second movie she replied, “Everything in me went: I’m done.”
6) Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)
“I really wanted to work with Sandra Bullock, I really loved playing Jack Traven, and I loved Speed, but now it’s on an ocean liner?” Keanu Reeves joked during a chat on TV’s The Graham Norton Show when asked why he didn’t sign on to the notoriously idiotic sequel to 1994’s nail-biting runaway bus flick. And he wasn’t wrong that a vessel that typically travels at around 20 miles per hour is a strange setting for a high-speed action movie.
Instead, Bullock was joined on this inexplicably brisk cruise by a majorly meh Jason Patric, with an uninhibited Willem Dafoe as the dastardly villain, and Jan de Bont back at the helm. Winner of the worst remake or sequel at the 1997 Golden Raspberry Awards, Speed 2 flopped at the box office, was lambasted by critics and has been parodied on everything from The Simpsons and The Family Guy to Father Ted.
5) Basic Instinct 2 (2006)
1992’s Basic Instinct isn’t exactly a classic but it was a commercial hit that turned Sharon Stone into a star, and her kinky crime novelist and suspected murderer Catherine Tramell into an anti-heroine for the ages. By contrast, its 2006 follow-up was a flop so spectacularly misjudged that it sits firmly in so-bad-it’s-good territory.
Original director Paul Verhoeven and Michael Douglas didn’t return, with Rob Roy’s Michael Caton-Jones eventually taking up the reins. He later told The Scotsman he was, “completely broke and had to take anything that came in. Basic Instinct 2 was this poisoned chalice that had been passed around and eventually it arrived at my door,” characterising it as, “a painful, painful experience.”
Alongside Stone’s femme fatale – operating on erotic autopilot – this London-set sequel embroils the usually dependable British stars David Morrissey, Charlotte Rampling and David Thewlis in its ignominy, while UK audiences were left even more bewildered by the appearance of controversial footballer Stan Collymore in the film’s godawful opening scene.
4) Batman & Robin (1997)
With an approach that’s a world away from Tim Burton’s gorgeously gothic take on the comic book staple, director Joel Schumacher returned to the Batman franchise in 1997 following his financially successful and moderately entertaining Batman Forever, catastrophically turning the cartoony antics up to 11 for its successor, Batman & Robin.
The film is embarrassingly bad: a miscast George Clooney seemingly phones his take on the Caped Crusader in from abroad, accompanied by a cringeworthy Chris O’Donnell and an insipid Alicia Silverstone as Robin and Batgirl; Uma Thurman behaves as if she’s had her brain removed as Poison Ivy; while an at least enthusiastic Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks almost entirely in horrible, ice-based puns as Mr Freeze.
In the intervening years, a number of those involved in the film have spoken scathingly about their experience, including Schumacher who told Vice in 2017, “I was scum. It was like I had murdered a baby.”
3) Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
With its bonkers story about battling immortals, the original Highlander (1986) is an enjoyably outlandish sci-fi romp, which flopped on its initial US release. However, it was more successful in Europe and on home video, gaining so much cult traction that it inspired sequels and TV spin-offs, while a reboot is on the way starring Henry Cavill. If Highlander is far from perfect, then 1991’s second instalment makes it look like Citizen Kane.
Beheading is no obstacle to bringing Sean Connery back as improbable Spaniard Ramírez and, despite sharing the same director and one of the writers (Russell Mulcahy and Peter Bellwood), the film embarrassingly contradicts the original, recasting the immortals as aliens in its desperate attempt to continue the story. The budget ballooned due to hyperinflation in the country of production, Argentina, and Mulcahy, who admits he was signed on by his agent without his knowledge, would later state, “It’s like they say in the film: There can only be one.”
2) Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
Just when audiences thought it was safe to go back to the cinema following 1983’s ludicrous Jaws 3-D, in Jaws: The Revenge the toothy threat resurfaced. Ignoring the events of its predecessor, this inexplicably worse fourth entry in the Jaws franchise picks back up with Lorraine Gary’s Ellen Brody following the offscreen death of her police chief husband Martin (previously played by Roy Scheider), with her character having to wrap her head around the news that a vengeful shark has followed her to the Bahamas.]
With Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss sensibly declining to participate, Michael Caine is drafted in to struggle in their stead. In 2021, he told Australian talk show host Andrew Denton: “Someone said to me I saw that Jaws 4 and it stinks. I said I haven’t seen it, but I’ve seen the house it bought my mother and it’s marvellous.” Featuring a slung together script from Michael de Guzman and enduring a problem-fuelled, hasty production, the resulting film is amusingly abysmal and it barely broke even, killing the franchise off.
Awarding it zero stars in his review for Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert put it best, writing, “Jaws the Revenge is not simply a bad movie, but also a stupid and incompetent one.
1) Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
Topping our list in all its ghastly glory is the follow-up to one of the greatest horror films of all time. With John Boorman (Point Blank, Deliverance) at the helm and a cast that pairs Richard Burton and Louise Fletcher with original Exorcist stars Max von Sydow and Linda Blair, playing a now 16-year-old Regan, Exorcist II: The Heretic had plenty of potential. However, due to legal disputes over its 1973 predecessor, neither director William Friedkin nor screenwriter William Peter Blatty returned, with Ellen Burstyn also disinterested.
As Bob McCabe lays out in his book The Exorcist: Out of the Shadows, co-producer Richard Lederer confirmed the intention was to make, “a low-budget rehash of The Exorcist… a rather cynical approach to movie-making, I’ll admit. But that was the start.” The film was a modest financial success in 1977, yet was rightly panned by critics.
Speaking to The Movies That Made Me podcast, Friedkin doesn’t mince his words, describing what little he has watched as, “the worse piece of s**t I’ve ever seen.” Burton certainly looks baffled as he attempts to get to grips with a nonsensical story involving weird consciousness experiments that delve into Regan’s demonic possession. Meanwhile, unintentional humour devastatingly replaces the terror of the trailblazing original.
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