Post
by Ben » January 18th, 2010, 8:32 am
The <I>original</I> concept was for a trilogy. But then that first film had "bumps" and they kind of said, "well, we'll have the first one be the set up and then we'll do our trilogy", so that became four films, which was announced up front.
When the first one sold so well, the announcement for the second one contained the fact that the Tink story would continue into <I>five</I> films, which would deal with each of the four seasons, and that was it as far as I understood it as well.
It was probably the case that if two did well, then we'd get six, if three did well then we'd get a seventh, and so on. Since all five initial films had been made or were in development, then that's the place to cap them at. Since number two didn't do as well as hoped, the law of diminishing returns suggests that a third will do less business, meaning that they're just about breaking even by the fifth and that future outings wouldn't be financially worthwhile.
So although eight to ten films were never officially announced, if each one sold as well as the first, then of course they would have just continued churning them out, Land Before Time style, announcing a new addition to the list each time a new film was ready for release. In a way, this is good news, since it means they have a finite number of films to wrap up any arcs under, and those boarding the fifth film right now can aim to tie up loose ends and finish off this spin-off franchise neatly.