I once asked what media franchises need to just stop, that have run their time. Now I want to know which ones DID stop, and could be restarted with new content.
The Expanse
The show didn’t cover the Laconia story line, and given the time that passes before the final three books, we’re coming up on the perfect time to get the same cast back to do it.
The last few books are, in my view, the most compelling part of an already superb story.
Nice try, Hollywood.
SimCity, probably. Skylines 2 is coming around and is headed in the right direction, but it’s been a slow burn.
Teen Titans original would be my go to.
They attempted a reboot that didn’t hold the the water because it didn’t follow the main storyline, or the main personalities. Honestly the fact they used the original voice actors in it was just a slap to the face to the fanbase.
If they rebooted it properly that could defo take off.
The problem with the reboot wasn’t that it was bad or didn’t follow storylines, was that it was made for a different audience than the original show and/or comics and then forgot to tell that old audience. Watching it from the outside, it was hilarious and well written.
Here’s one out of left field- Bucky O’Hare
The franchise has been dormant for about 30 years, and even back then there wasn’t that much established lore for a modern reboot to tiptoe around- a comic book that frankly not too many people read, a couple pretty good video games, and a Saturday morning cartoon made to sell toys, and there was little to no continuity between those different properties, you pretty much have free reign to go in and do whatever the hell you want with it.
And there’s was some pretty good stuff in there to work with that’s maybe even more relevant today than it was when it came out- plotlines about inept bureaucracy, imperialist/capitalist toads controlled by an AI, pollution, climate disruption, slavery, etc.
And the property was kind of hamstrung by its budget and stuff. I definitely enjoyed it as a kid, and when i went back to rewatch it a few years ago as an adult I thought it held up well enough but the animation and voice acting was definitely pretty janky at times, but even still it managed to have some bigger overarching story arcs. It also had a couple strong female characters without getting preachy about it, though there’s certainly some room for improvement in how they were written.
And if nothing else, today we can probably count on the furry community to watch a show about a green rabbit space ship captain, a cat space witch, a 4 armed pirate duck, a muscly baboon, and their nerdy human audience surrogate.
Max Headroom could work, IFF they went full-bore with the mockery of media, corporatism-as-government and cynical view of advertising. Though the desolation inside and outside the cities and the plight of ‘blanks’ might hit too close to home nowadays as it’s pretty much a literal reality now.
The Rifleman. A good old campy western series about a man and his son. I would love a modern neo-western re-imagining, but with the same father-son lessons on character and human dignity.
Andromeda. Yeah, the Kevin Sorbo show.
The premise is actually great, and the overall plot until Robert Wolfe got pushed out showed a lot of promise. The poisonous factor largely came from Sorbo wanting to intentionally turn the show into campy trash, and TV executives who somehow agreed with him.
Reboot the show, get actors who won’t sabotage production, and hire some half decent writers who want to do a Star Trek-like new franchise.
A lot of the ideas of andromeda ended up in the later seasons of star trek discovery
I would watch that. I loved that show for the first few seasons.
It was originally envisioned by Gene Roddenberry, hence the quality of the concept.
I’ll be honest, I’ve no idea if that’s a codemnation or an endorsement lol.
I like Trek just fine, but it almost entirely stems from catching TNG episodes on daytime TV growing up, as well as the memes. My understanding was that TNG didn’t start to get gud until Roddenberry had largely been sidelined.
There was a Captain Planet parody with Don Cheadle like 15 years ago which was very much like The Boys + Captain Planet. I think that could actually work well now and have a more mature tone of Captain Planet who is like Homelander.
