SUBSCRIBE & SAVE Less than $3 per week View Profile The Explainer Talking Points The Week Recommends Newsletters From the Magazine The Week Junior Food & Drink Personal Finance All Categories Newsletter sign up Culture & Life the week recommends Some film franchises keep cranking out sequels and reboots. These are the ones that do it best. 'Shrek 5' is upon us. What other movie series have deserved this many follow-ups? Newsletter sign up The first four 'Alien' movies starred Sigourney Weaver as the heroic Ellen Ripley (Image credit: AJ Pics / 20th Century Fox / Alamy) Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, The Week US 30 April 2025 It feels like only yesterday that a grumpy green ogre changed the landscape of animation. But "Shrek" arrived 24 years ago, and DreamWorks recently announced that "Shrek 5" will be released next year, starring Zendaya as the titular ogre's teenage daughter. The news is another reminder of how fervently studios believe that audiences love a franchise. There is sound logic behind releasing a slew of consistent IP: Studios know the movies will put loyal butts in seats. Some franchises are clear money grabs, churning out nothing but uninspiring sequels. In other cases, the story or characters of a series are well-served by additional movies. Here are five film franchises with at least five installments that warranted an extended narrative. There are technically nine movies set in the "Alien" universe, though two are famous for their impact on blockbuster horror. Ridley Scott's original "Alien" (1979) was a "hybrid of merciless monster movie and grungy futuristic sci-fi," while James Cameron's "Aliens" was a "radically different but nearly equally beloved 1986 sequel," said A.A. Dowd at Vulture. The series' first four movies starred Sigourney Weaver as heroic warrant officer Ellen Ripley, best known for battling the Xenomorph. But the franchise did not run out of steam once Ripley said goodbye in the fourth installment, nor did its creator run out of ideas. Scott's later prequels, like 2012's "Prometheus," "trade the primal urgency of his first film for something more inquisitive and densely mythological." Subscribe to The Week Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives. SUBSCRIBE & SAVE Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. 'Indiana Jones' Sure, some fans would love to forget 2008's "The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." But even the lackluster fourth installment in this high-flying adventure series had its moments. (The scene of Jones hiding from a nuclear blast inside of a refrigerator is memorable, if widely reviled.) Beginning with the release of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in 1981, the "Indiana Jones" flicks "helped define the summer blockbuster" and have "represented some of the best work" of world-builders extraordinaire George Lucas and Steven Spielberg — not to mention star Harrison Ford, "who will probably be forever more closely identified" with Indy than any other character, said The Hollywood Reporter. It is rare that a film franchise gets better with time; it's hard to keep breathing fresh life into an old premise. But at the ripe age of 80, Australian filmmaker George Miller released his masterpiece, the fourth film in the apocalyptic "Mad Max" series: 2015's "Mad Max: Fury Road," now considered the best action movie ever made. 5 films as rip-roaringly good as the books they are based on And the Oscar goes to … no one in particular: Movies made with AI can now win awards Every MCU movie since 'Avengers: Endgame,' ranked If the franchise's first three films "were iconic, 'Fury Road' felt like an update that successfully translated Miller's vision to a new era of filmmaking and blew it up into an expressionistic masterpiece," said IndieWire. The 2024 follow-up, "Furiosa: A Mad Max Story," emerged as a "revenge saga so immense and self-possessed that it refuses to be seen as the mere extension of another movie," said David Ehrlich at the same outlet. 'Monty Python' "Monty Python" may not be the first title that springs to mind when you think of a big-budget, ensemble-driven film franchise. But the absurdist stylings of this British comedy troupe — whose members included John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman — were indeed featured in five major motion pictures, qualifying them for this list. The best and most famous of the series is 1975's "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," a "marvelously particular kind of lunatic endeavor," said The New York Times in its original review. The Python troupe's cinematic "version of the legend of King Arthur and the search for the holy grail" manages to "send up the legend, courtly love, fidelity, bravery, costume movies, movie violence and ornithology" in one fell swoop. 'The Muppets' Jim Henson's monsters, known collectively as the Muppets, are multicolored, lovable and zany. While the eight movies featuring this motley crew do not quite concern themselves with continuity, they exist as individual love letters to the art of puppetry and practical effects. The franchise admits some (human) celebrities, too — like Tim Curry as Long John Silver in "Muppet Treasure Island" or Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge in the seminal "Muppet Christmas Carol" — who appear at home in lands full of improbable creatures. Even more improbable is how good some of these movies are. "By pleasurably overloading our uncanniness receptors, the Henson Company skirts our typical modes of processing stories, sneaking up on us and going straight for the heart," said Ethan Warren at Bright Wall/Dark Room. Explore More Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, The Week US Social Links Navigation Anya Jaremko-Greenwold has worked as a story editor at The Week since 2024. She previously worked at FLOOD Magazine, Woman's World, First for Women, DGO Magazine and BOMB Magazine. Anya's culture writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Jezebel, Vice and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. 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