Summary Movie franchises are growing more popular than ever, and spinoffs are under scrutiny, but some spinoff movies are good or even better than earlier films. While plenty still falls short of audience expectations, this makes it an even more welcome surprise when these films are better than viewers or critics anticipated. It helps when there are strong characters and well-known IPs to draw from in the development of spinoffs.
10 Machete After The Spy Kids Franchise and Grindhouse Close For a spinoff that's such a divergence in tone and genre, Machete is surprisingly fun and easy to follow. Director Robert Rodriguez , Ethan Maniquis Release Date September 3, 2010 Cast Danny Trejo , Michelle Rodriguez , Jessica Alba , Robert De Niro , Steven Seagal Runtime 105 Minutes 9 Bumblebee After The Transformers Franchise Close Hailee Steinfeld was the perfect choice to lead Bumblebee, the origin story of the iconic Transformer who plays a pivotal role in the later movies.
Of all of Disney's straight-to-video sequels, The Lion King 1 1/2 is one of the best and easily the smartest. Part of this is because the movie is loosely based on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the play by Tom Stoppard that tells the story of Hamlet from the perspective of these characters. Since The Lion King is based on Hamlet, this was a clever way to get additional content out of The Lion King franchise.
Though Diesel and the core characters of the Fast movies will always be iconic, some of the more recently added characters are just as interesting and deserve their own films. This concept was experimented with in Hobbs & Shaw to exciting results. As two heavy-weight action stars, it was a good bet that Johnson and Statham would draw audiences to the box office and make the film a success.
Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd make a charming and compelling couple approaching a mid-life crisis in This is 40, the spinoff/sequel to the 2007 movie Knocked Up. Both were directed by Judd Apatow and Knocked Up features Debbie and Pete as side characters who juxtapose the central couple of the film.
Batman, voiced by Will Arnett, was a small character in The LEGO Movie but was immediately signaled out by fans of the film as one of the funniest parts. This led to the conception of The LEGO Batman Movie, arguably one of the best movies about Batman as a character. Instead of painting him as a lone-wolf vigilante with few emotions, Batman in The LEGO Batman Movie is sensitive and feels things deeply. He's a more relatable character to audiences, elevating his rapport with the Joker.