Anna Daniels
Of course, that doesn’t mean that Mickey’s response will be, “Yessiree, one Alita sequel coming right up!” At the end of the day, Disney is in business to make money — just, so much money — and despite the apparent dedication of Alita‘s fan base, there’s still no reason to think that a sequel would outperform the original.
In fact, we can put a number to the instances in which loud, sustained fan demand resulted in a studio making a sequel to a movie that didn’t make enough money, and that number is zero. On the other hand, we can think of plenty of times that fans clamored for a sequel to one of their favorite flicks for years and years, only to get jack-squat.
The only times that fan campaigns have seen any reasonable amount of success is in the world of television, and even those have produced decidedly mixed results. Take the famous case of the post-apocalyptic CBS drama series Jericho, which was canceled after its debut season in 2006-2007; in response, fans bombarded the CBS offices with packages which collectively contained 20 freaking tons of nuts (a reference to a main character’s dismissive response to a request to surrender in the season’s final episode).
The network acquiesced, ordering seven more episodes — but, in a statement, viewers were warned that Jericho‘s stay of execution may be temporary if it didn’t pick up more viewers. We’ll give you three guesses as to what happened next. You’re right! It didn’t gain any more viewers, and it was canceled again once those seven episodes aired. (You probably only needed one guess.)
Or, consider the more recent case of Netflix’s totally weird-ass, frequently awesome Sense8, which had a fan base as vocal as it was undersized. When Netflix gave it the axe after just two seasons, that fan base positively exploded with indignation; after a month of relentlessly haranguing the streamer, they were finally given a gift in the form of a movie which would wrap up the story. It wasn’t the eight or nine more seasons they wanted, but hey, at least it was something.
When it comes to harassing film studios into producing sequels to expensive, underperforming features, though, there is really no precedent for success of any kind. Sure, Disney has ridiculously deep pockets and its own red-hot streaming service, so we suppose there’s always a chance that Alita‘s story could continue on the small screen. That, however, is probably the absolute best fans can hope for — no matter how loud they get.
Written by: Looper
