Every Film Franchise, Ranked

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – August 9, 2018

Well, maybe not every franchise. But most. We have taken every film franchise for which we have data, calculated an average Metascore for each one, and then ranked the results in the gallery above from worst to best. To be eligible, a franchise must have a minimum of four films with Metascores. That rules out trilogies, obviously.

What else is excluded? A few things:

* Horror film franchises. There are so many of those that we will gather them in their own separate list, which we'll publish later this year. (A few franchises that span multiple genres, like the Alien films, will appear in both lists.)

* Animated films. We are only including live-action movies in this list (mainly to keep the list a somewhat reasonable size—sorry to all you Pokemon and Shrek fans). Note that if a franchise is mostly live-action but has one animated release, the animated film is not included in the average Metascore for that franchise.

* Made-for-TV movies.

* A few franchises where most of the releases were mainly straight to video

* Some very old franchises for which there aren't many reviews still available.

Don't worry: That still leaves over 60 film franchises to rank. Happy browsing!

20 of 64 photo by MGM

47.9 #43: The Pink Panther

Much is notable (or even unusual) about the comedic mystery franchise created by Blake Edwards in the 1960s and ultimately starring two gifted comedic actors—Peter Sellers and Steve Martin—as bumbling French police detective Jacques Clouseau. (For one thing: It's not often that such a franchise gets its own animated children's cartoon spinoff based on its opening credit sequence.)

Sellers portrayed Clouseau—the character for which he is best known—in five or six Pink Panther films, depending on how you count. That group includes the only films in the series to receive positive reviews, including 1964's excellent A Shot in the Dark, which was based on an unrelated stage play and belatedly re-written to feature Clouseau. (The Sellers films also include a posthumous release in 1982 which is cobbled together from unused footage shot for previous films.)

Martin took over the role for a brief reboot series that spanned two films, neither of which were any good. His Panther films averaged 37compared to Sellers' 59. And there are three more films in the series featuring neither of those actors. In 1968, with Sellers, Edwards, and composer Henry Mancini all busy elsewhere (filming the comedy classic The Party), director Bud Yorkin made Inspector Clouseau with Alan Arkin in the title role. It didn't go well, and Sellers and Edwards returned to the franchise in the 1970s.

Also not going well was 1983's aptly named Curse of the Pink Panther, which centers mostly on an American detective played by Ted Wass (from TV's Soap and, later, Blossom). In that film, Clouseau appears very briefly—played by 007 star Roger Moore. That dud killed the franchise for a decade, until it was revived with Son of the Pink Panther, starring Roberto Benigni (a fourth choice after Kevin Kline, Rowan Atkinson, and Gerard Depardieu all passed on the project) as Clouseau's illegitimate son. The result was so dreadful that Edwards never made another movie.

The films:
55 The Pink Panther (1964)
70 A Shot in the Dark (1964)
35 Inspector Clouseau (1968)
61 The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
60 The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
65 Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)
43 Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)
31 Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)
33 Son of the Pink Panther (1993)
38 The Pink Panther (2006)
36 The Pink Panther 2 (2009)

Where To Buy