Here are seven sequels that took too long to come out.
Whether because of financial tie-ups, the creatives being busy with other things, or because demand took a while to coalesce, these films let anticipation build. Until it simmered.
Here are some movie sequels that took their sweet time.
Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)
Independence Day was as a galactic hit that earned more than $800 million when it exploded into theaters in 1996. Anticipation was high for a follow-up.
Sadly, this sequel didn’t emerge for 20 years. When Independence Day: Resurgence arrived, stars Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman were back on board, as were Roland Emmerich, director of the original, and his co-writer, Dean Devlin.
But the film was missing a crucial element: Will Smith, who charmed his way through the original and made an alien invasion somehow feel like a fun, inspiring diversion.
The new film earned $389.7 million worldwide, which sounds great until you consider that it cost $165 million. This could be the poster child for sequels that took too long to come out.
Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)
When one of the two lead actors in a famous comedy duo dies, maybe… don’t make a sequel?
John Belushi’s death in 1982 — two years after the original Blues Brothers was a huge hit — scotched plans for a sequel. As John Landis, the director of The Blues Brothers and The Blues Brothers 2000 explained to The Onion’s AV Club in 2004, he abandoned sequel plans for years.
But then Belushi’s brother in blues, Dan Aykroyd, told Landis he’d been performing with John Goodman and Belushi’s actual brother, Jim Belushi, and suggested trying for a new movie.
“We wrote what I thought was a terrific script. Then Universal Studios eviscerated it,” Landis said.
That was a strange experience, because the first thing they said was that it had to be PG, which meant they couldn’t use profanity, which is basically cutting the Blues Brothers’ n— off.”
Blues Brothers 2000 barely earned its budget at the box office.
This is a sequel that either should have come out right away after the success of the original, or not come out at all.
Son of the Mask (2005)
Jim Carrey passed on returning for this one, which should have been the end to plans for a sequel to 1994’s The Mask. Nevertheless, they persisted.
Fans of The Mask — many of whom were kids, new to Carrey’s school of hamming and mugging — could not be enticed to theaters in sufficient numbers to make this film work. We get it, Carrey spent much of the ’90s busy making other massive hits.
And during the time when he could have been rehashing his Mask routine, he instead took a creative risk that paid off beautifully with 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Interestingly, the film features Alan Cumming as Loki and Bob Hoskins as Odin, years before variations on those Nordic figures would prove to be quite enduting the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979)
The events of the classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid left fairly limited options for a sequel, so instead a mostly new creative team came aboard for a prequel, released a whole decade after the original.
Tom Berenger and William Katt are terrific actors, but no one could fill the boots of Paul Newman and Robert Redford, who had further cemented themselves as one of the all-time best cinematic duos with 1973’s The Sting.
Any attempt to duplicate their connection was sure to fall short.
Basic Instinct 2 (2006)
The original 1992 Basic Instinct was built around the simmering chemistry between San Francisco Det. Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) and magnetic author Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone). It also benefitted from Stone not yet being a superstar: the mystery around the actress surrounded the mysteriousness of her character.
Basic Instinct 2 brings back Stone, but not Douglas or the other keys to the first film’s success: Director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, both seasoned provocateurs.
Lacking the thrills of the original, Basic Instinct 2 fizzled. It also did the chair thing again, but this time with the chair facing the other way.
Tron: Ares (2025)
What a strange turn of events for the Tron franchise. The original 1982 Tron did OK at the box office, but was considered a disappointment — so much so that The Simpsons was did a cruel but very funny bit in which almost everyone in the cast professed that they had never seen it.
Twenty-eight years later, Disney realized that nostalgia for Tron’s video-game aesthetics was running high — the original had aged very well, and was widely considered a classic. Thus came 2010’s Tron: Legacy, a huge hit.
But Disney waited a baffling 15 years for the next film, Tron: Ares, which starred Jared Leto and bombed upon its release, despite the welcome return of Jeff Bridges from the previous two films.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
Look, we love Indiana Jones movies. And revere the work of Harrison Ford, especially in the Indiana Jones movies. Which was why this movie was such a letdown.
This was set nearly three decades after the original ’80s trilogy, and arrived 15 years after 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which itself arrived 19 years after the last great Indy movie, 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
There was no escaping the sense that the film was chasing the past, including in a soulless opening sequence in which Indy was de-aged. We also didn’t love how it undid the happy ending Indy seemingly got at the end of Dial of Destiny.
We really wish they’d just left it at three Indy movies, as we explain in this list of All 5 Indiana Jones Movies, Ranked Worst to Best.
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Main image: Basic Instinct 2, one of the sequels that took too long to come out.