The moviegoing landscape is currently dominated by sequels. Audiences are more likely to turn up to see Avengers 5 or Aquaman 2 or Star Wars 10 than any original story whose characters they aren’t yet familiar with. As with almost any industry, brand recognition is the key to success in blockbuster filmmaking.

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While it seems that any movie that’s a moderate box office hit gets a sequel by default, plenty of sequels have gone into development over the years but ultimately never materialized. From Dredd 2 to Kill Bill: Volume 3, there are a ton of unproduced action movie sequels that could’ve been great.

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4

Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man

Sam Raimi wasn’t done with the Spider-Man franchise after Spider-Man 3. He wanted to start a new trilogy with Spider-Man 4, which would’ve opened with a montage of Spidey putting away B-list villains before Curt Connors finally turned into the Lizard. Raimi also planned to include the Vulture, played by John Malkovich, as well as a female Vulture, played by Anne Hathaway.

RELATED: Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 4: 5 Reasons It Could've Been Great (And 5 Reasons Canceling It Was A Good Idea)

However, after experiencing tensions with Sony on Spider-Man 3, Raimi confessed to the studio that he couldn’t make the movie under the circumstances they’d created and called off the project before wasting any more of their money. Some concepts from Spider-Man 4 were reused in The Amazing Spider-Man.

Mathilda (Léon 2)

Jean Reno standing behind Natalie Portman pointing a gun in Leon The Professional

Luc Besson wrote a sequel to Léon: The Professional entitled Mathilda, in which Léon’s mentor is an older, more mature assassin, but he delayed filming until Natalie Portman was old enough to play the title character at the age she is in the script. However, while Besson was waiting for Portman to age, he left Gaumont Film Company to open his own studio. Scorned by Besson’s departure, Gaumont held onto the rights to Léon.

Unable to make Mathilda, Besson retooled some elements from the script for an original female-led actioner entitled Colombiana, which starred Zoe Saldana.

Crank 3

Jason Statham in Crank High Voltage

Jason Statham has said that he’s open to starring in a third installment in the bonkers Crank franchise. Amy Smart has said that the threequel could possibly be filmed in 3D to ratchet up the insanity even more than the previous two outings.

RELATED: Jason Statham's 10 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes

Directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor are both open to making Crank 3, but have said it could be a while before it gets made — if it ever does get made — due to the difficulty of coming up with a script that will meet fans’ sky-high expectations.

Neill Blomkamp’s RoboCop Returns

RoboCop

After working on an Alien sequel that eventually got scrapped, District 9 director Neill Blomkamp signed on to helm a RoboCop reboot entitled RoboCop Returns. Original writer Ed Neumeier was tapped to pen a script that would directly follow the first movie, ignoring all the previous sequels and the 2014 reboot.

A RoboCop movie harking back to the original’s old-school style of action and satirical sense of humor could’ve been awesome. However, Blomkamp eventually left the project to focus on a horror movie and Abe Forsythe was tapped to direct instead.

True Lies 2

Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies

James Cameron was interested in helming a sequel to True Lies that would have seen Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Tom Arnold all reprising their roles from the original. The director planned to begin work on the True Lies sequel when he finished Titanic.

A script was completed in 2001, but according to Schwarzenegger, its terrorist-based plot needed some tweaking in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. A few months into these rewrites, Cameron called off the project, because it would have been in poor taste to treat terrorism lightly.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Hellboy III

Ron Perlman as Hellboy pointing a gun in Hellboy

Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman have always been eager to complete their Hellboy trilogy with a final chapter in which the title character would take his place as the Earth’s protector against the onslaught of the apocalypse. Mike Mignola and Lawrence Gordon replaced del Toro in the director’s chair and Perlman refused to work with another filmmaker, so he walked.

Del Toro and Perlman are still interested in making a third Hellboy movie, and after the bitter disappointment of Neil Marshall’s reboot, the Hollywood powers that be should consider making it happen.

Con Air 2...In Space!

Nicolas Cage in Con Air

In the proposed sequel to Con Air, John Cusack’s character would’ve overseen an airport specifically designed to traffic planes filled with criminals and, naturally, things would’ve gone horribly wrong. This idea never went further than a 15-page story treatment.

Director Simon West suggested a different premise for a Con Air sequel that would’ve been set in outer space with the convicts either turned into robots or reanimated corpses.

David Fincher’s World War Z 2

Gerry Lane looking out of a helicopter in World War Z

Brad Pitt’s visceral zombie-infested actioner World War Z endured a particularly difficult production as it ballooned into one of the most expensive movies ever made and faced constant rewrites, but it emerged as a big enough box office hit to warrant a sequel.

RELATED: 10 Movies David Fincher Almost Directed

However, the sequel has faced an even more arduous journey to the screen. At one point, David Fincher was set to direct World War Z 2, which could’ve been spectacular.

Dredd 2

Karl Urban in Dredd

After the devastating disappointment that was Sylvester Stallone’s PG-13 effort, 2000 A.D. fans finally got the Judge Dredd movie they’d been hoping for when Pete Travis and Alex Garland teamed up for 2012’s Dredd, a brutal, R-rated, ultraviolent affair.

Karl Urban was just perfect for the role of Dredd, nailing his gruff authoritarianism, and fans were excited to see his story continue on the big screen. Unfortunately, the marketing was poor and the movie bombed, so there probably won’t be a sequel.

Kill Bill: Volume 3

Uma Thurman in Kill Bill

Quentin Tarantino has talked about the possibility of completing the Kill Bill trilogy with Kill Bill: Volume 3 since the release of Volume 2, but said that he wanted to let the Bride and B.B. enjoy a happy, peaceful life for a few years before thrusting them back into action.

The plot would reportedly revolve around Vernita Green’s daughter Nikki coming after the Bride for revenge. Now that Uma Thurman’s real-life daughter Maya Hawke has established herself as a promising young actor, she could play B.B. opposite her mom.

NEXT: Kill Bill: Volume 3: 5 Possible Storylines (& 5 Possible Casting Choices)