With King Arthur, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Operation Fortune, Guy Ritchie has become the king of failed franchises

Mere weeks before the Dark Universe notoriously failed to launch with the 2017 release of Tom Cruise’s The Mummy, another announced franchise arguably face-planted even harder: Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. After all, The Mummy eked out $400 million worldwide based on Cruise’s star power, and though plans to go forward with a series of interconnected Universal Monster movies were scotched, those characters are powerful enough that they can’t really be killed. (In fact, you can visit the Dark Universe right this minute, if you’re so inclined.) King Arthur, on the other hand, made less than half of The Mummy’s box-office take, and was planned with just as much hubris. It was intended as the first in a six-movie cycle of Arthurian legend stories, culminating in a full Knights of the Round Table team-up. Legend of the Sword didn’t just tease a sequel that never got made; it was a full-scale medieval Avengers knockoff that couldn’t even fully assemble its furniture. (Literally. The movie’s last scene features an incomplete Round Table.)