Stillborn Franchise / Live-Action TV

• Kitchen Nightmares had an in-universe example in "Sebastian's". A pizzeria run by a delusional owner so concerned with trying to establish a chain of restaurants that it leaves him blind to the myriad problems with his initial restaurant... which prevents him from getting the finances for keeping it afloat, nevermind expanding out. Gordon is bewildered by his misguided ambition and calls him out on it:
  Gordon: You haven't got fucking one right so far! How the fuck can you think about two?
• Kamen Rider Dragon Knight suffered from this. Poor toy sales and ratings (partly due to Screwed by the Network) plus financial troubles with Adness Entertainment meant that any possible follow-up adaptation was dead. It didn't help that the final two episodes didn't even air on TV, only online.
• Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue was so named for a reason, but we didn't get past the prologue. He was intended to eventually 'evolve' into a more Rider-like form in future installments.
• After having a semi-successful series in the seventies, there have been multiple attempts to adapt the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series onto the screen, often as a TV series. Success is variable.
  • Both had a limited 13-episode Canadian adaptation in 1995, but both were quickly cancelled (many feel the biggest factor working against them was the half-hour format, which just doesn't give enough space to set up a good mystery).
  • Previously, the Hardy Boys had two Disney serials in the 1950s as part of The Mickey Mouse Club, a failed 1967 TV pilot, and a single-season 1969 Saturday-Morning Cartoon. After the 1995 series, there was no more adaptation until 2020, when Hulu aired a Darker and Edgier adaptation.
  • As for Nancy, there was a failed TV pilot in the 1950s, as well as a made-for-TV movie in 2002 that would function as a backdoor pilot if ratings were good enough (they weren't). After the flop of the 2007 Nancy Drew movie starting Emma Roberts, Hollywood lost interest until 2016 when CBS filmed a pilot for a Nancy Drew TV procedural that would have portrayed Nancy as a grownup private detective, but the pilot was not picked up to series. By 2019, however, Nancy has an ongoing TV series on The CW.
• In 2008, The BBC released a series of drama pilots all at once with the intention of choosing the most popular one to make into a full-length series. This led to several instances of the trope:
  • The Things I Haven't Told You, a mystery drama. It was supposed to, unsurprisingly, contain lots of secrets and stuff that would be released throughout the show's entire prospective run. As an episode in its own right, it made very little sense, but the viewers that found it compelling were very disappointed (not to mention confused/angry/frustrated) when Being Human was made into a series instead.
  • Phoo Action, a futuristic comedy about a mismatched crime-fighting duo trying to stop mutant terrorists from turning Princes William and Harry into mutants. It was commissioned for a series and a franchise planned around it (it was already based on an existing comic strip by Tank Girl creator Jamie Hewlett), but cancelled before shooting began when the BBC decided the show wasn't going to achieve its "creative ambitions."
  • Dis/Connected, about a group of high schoolers discovering that each played a role in a classmate's suicide. Initially touted as a rival to Skins and ambitious talk about its future, but its ratings were too low to justify a full series.
  • In 2010, the BBC aired another pilot called Lizzie and Sarah, about two abused wives who go on a murder spree. It was to have been the last of six stand-alone TV movies in a planned series, with a possible second series to follow, and expected to be a hit Black Comedy following in the footsteps of shows like Nighty Night (whose star, Julia Davis, wrote and performed in Lizzie and Sarah). It aired in a very poor time slot and was ultimately not commissioned, despite complaints from fans and support from other comedians such as Simon Pegg.
• The 2002 made-for-TV version of Carrie was meant to lead into a series on NBC, in which Carrie, having been Spared by the Adaptation, heads to Florida to search for others like her. Low ratings for the film meant that the series was never made.
• Mockingbird Lane was supposed to be the Pilot Movie of a Darker and Edgier reboot of The Munsters. Unusually, the show didn't get picked up, but the film was still shown on NBC as a Halloween special.
• Matthew Blackheart: Monster Smasher is a 2002 TV movie starring Robert Bogue and Christopher Heyerdahl, about a WWII super-soldier frozen in the 1940s and revived in the 1990s, who battles supernatural creatures in New York City. Similar (in concept, at least) to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it failed to garner any plaudits and no series detailing the further adventures of Blackheart ever appeared.
• The 2003 TV film Mermaids^note Not the 1990 Cher vehicle was intended as a Pilot Movie for a series about three mermaid sisters. It wasn't picked up, being feared too similar to Charmed. The mermaid concept would later be used in H₂O: Just Add Water - with the protagonists as teenagers rather than adults.
• The producers of Charmed planned a spin-off called Mermaid inspired by the fifth season premiere, about a mermaid called Nikki who would room with two human boys and help various people, all the while ducking a hunter trying to kill her. Word of God is that the franchise had a wrench thrown into it when The WB and UPN merged into The CW, and the new network decided not to pick up the show.
• Circa 2006, The WB created a Pilot Movie adaptation of Aquaman starring Justin Hartley in the title role. As with the Charmed spin-off above, because of the creative hurdles surrounding The WB/UPN merger, it was never picked up by The CW and the pilot was ultimately not aired on TV, being relegated to digital media. Hartley would instead star as Green Arrow in Smallville.
• Netflix clearly had high hopes for Jupiter's Legacy, as they paid Mark Millar a downright obscene amount of money to obtain the rights to not only it, but also the general "Millarworld" brand, hoping to leverage the series into adaptations of later arcs as well as various other Millar series. Not only did the series end up massively over budget, but it underperformed critically and financially and was thrown into a miserable light by the comparisons to Invincible (2021) and Superman & Lois running at the same time. This led to it being cancelled after one season, though a Supercrooks spinoff did get released to much better acclaim.
• Game show producer John Ricci Jr. first created a format called Combination Lock in 1996 for filming in the UK. The show was piloted again in 2006 and 2007, but every single time it failed to get greenlit for series. More info, and clips from the pilots, can be found here.
• Cowboy Bebop (2021) ends on a Sequel Hook, but high production costs; combined with a sharp decline in viewers after its first week have prompted Netflix to not move forward with a second season.
• Resident Evil (2022) ended with multiple plot threads unresolved, and series creator Andrew Dabb expressed interest in doing up to sixteen seasons. The show sharply declining in viewers, mixed reviews and negative reception from fans of the video games prompted Netflix to end the show after its first; just six weeks after release. The death of cast member Lance Reddick in March 2023 at age 60 also doesn't help.
• Channel 4 had high hopes for The Aliens, with a large Viral Marketing campaign that centered around broadcast signal intrusions from the "Alien League", and network PR ambitiously hyping it up as a potential Spiritual Successor to Misfits while flaunting its allegories to then-ongoing sociopolitical events. The show ended up being cancelled after one season of six episodes due to low ratings and middling reviews from critics.
• Heathers (2018) ended with a Sequel Hook for a season set in the 18th century titled Heathers: Revolution, however the negative reception, poor ratings, and several controversies tainting the show put a stop to that.

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