Pop Culture Purgatory: 5 TV and Movie Franchises Stuck in Development Hell

We’ve all been there; sat in front of your computer screen, watching Netflix in your underwear, covered in Wotsit crumbs and shame, mindlessly binging on episode after episode of your new televisual crack.

But then autoplay stops. You realise there are no more episodes. This showed aired five years ago, what do you mean there are no more episodes? How can there not be any more episodes? Have Netflix not bought the next season yet?

A desperate Googling reveals the truth; there is no next season. That show that you cherish so dearly has been relegated to the landfill of cultural history, a glimmer in the toilet bowl of what we’ve once consumed. Bummer.

So, to celebrate the release of Season 2 of Attack on Titan on April 1^st, we’re revisiting this trauma and running down our top 5 franchises stuck in development hell.

5. Attack on Titan Season 2

 

Okay, yes this is a cheat. Either Attack on Titan is scheduled for release on April 1^st or the world has been the victim of the cruellest April Fool’s Gag in history.

Attack on Titan was a culture shock for a lot of viewers. Yes, it’s an anime (based on a Japanese Manga comic series) so a lot of the ‘Cartoons are for kids’ crowd immediately wrote it off. But the shows quality, story and graphic violence soon won over the naysayers, leading to an anime renaissance unseen since Death Note. Attack on Titan is an anime to convert the unbelievers, getting even the most dour of Northerners to talk about how sick a 3-D Manoeuvre Gear would be in real life.

Viva la Survey Corps.

4. Firefly Season 2/Reboot

Being English and born in the 90’s, I wasn’t really aware of Firefly growing up. It wasn’t until I was 19, working in a shitty call centre with some okay people, that a close friend and fellow cubicle monkey gave me the first season.

Boom. Browncoat for life.

The week after, I cornered that self-same friend and asked about the second season. His eyes immediately slid off into a thousand-yard stare, as if contemplating some past trauma. “You mean you don’t know?”

So yes, Fox cancelled Firefly, despite rallying cries for season 2 reaching both ends of the Whedonverse. Rumour has it, however, that a reboot is in progress and, while not many people are super psyched for it, there’s a chance it could live up to the hype. What I really want, though, is a second season set between Season One and the events of Serenity, or (if they do reboot) a multi-verse episode at the end where the original cast get to cameo. Get to work, Wheadon.

3. The Dark Tower

As a die-hard fan of Stephen King and Idris Elba, I am excited to see The Dark Tower series coming to theatres. Or at least, I would be if it ever goes beyond an idea and some really cool set pictures.

Admittedly, serialised Stephen King adaptations have been hit-and-miss, at best; The Shining mini-series didn’t really hold up (despite King’s preference to the movie) and The Dead Zone was so abstracted from the source material that I wanted to have a stroke. But Under the Dome was good and we’re all hopeful for the new IT, so we’ll just have to wait and see how this one pans out.

2. The Incredibles 2

The Incredibles is the only Pixar on this list, and for two very good reasons:

1: It’s the perfect Pixar movie, and beat Iron Man to the superhero post by a solid 4 years.

2: It’s the only passable Pixar production that deserves a sequel, but hasn’t got one.

We’ve been inundated with fake release dates, concept art and plots, but the truth is that we have no goddamned clue when or if it’s coming out. They even teased an amazing-looking sequel, and that was over a decade ago.

Man, f*ck the Incredibles.

1. Rick and Morty Season 3

For anyone who’s been living under a Netflix-free rock for the past three years, Rick and Morty is probably the best contemporary cartoon available online right now. It’s a clever blend of Doc and Marty from BTTF and timely popular culture references, all blended up with a double measure of existential nihilism, brought to you from that guy who wrote Community.

Rick and Morty captures that rare TV magic of being almost unbearably clever while also easy to watch while hungover. Scoring lower on the ‘fun’ scale, however, are the constant barrage of fake release dates, often posted in fan groups and some even endorsed by Justin Roiland, the man himself. None of us need the next season of Rick and Morty immediately, but this inevitable fan-baiting can only go one of two ways; either we all switch off and stop caring, or they create a product that could never live up to its own hype.