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A comic book bomb so bad it beggars belief mercifully forced to scrap crossover plans with a half-billion franchise reassembles on streaming

It was awful, but it could have been so much worse.

i frankenstein
via Lionsgate

You’ve got to hand it to any self-respecting comic book adaptation for dreaming of a franchise long before the movie in question has even been given a chance to prove itself, even if the merest hint of I, Frankenstein existing beyond one installment was completely and utterly terrifying.

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Quite simply one of the worst superhero-adjacent stories to have ever existed, co-writer and director Stuart Beattie’s abomination proved to be so bad that it’s almost been completely forgotten about and lost to the sands of time, no mean feat considering it tanked spectacularly in theaters less than a decade ago.

i, frankenstein

Savaged by critics and burned at the stake by audiences, creator Kevin Grevioux laid out an even more terrifying proposition in the aftermath by revealing plans for Kate Beckinsale’s Selene to drop by for a cameo in an early draft of the screenplay that would have tethered I, Frankenstein to the Underworld universe, an interminable saga on its own that inexplicably managed to earn over $500 million at the box office across its five-film existence.

Mercifully, we were all spared from a fate that sounds nothing short of horrendous on every imaginable level, and yet people are still watching Aaron Eckhart as the iconic monster of their own volition. The reasons why are best kept private, but shame on anyone who helped the abomination stake out a spot on Prime Video’s worldwide charts, per FlixPatrol.

Underworld was tedious enough on its own, but throwing I, Frankenstein into the mix might just have been a fate worse than death itself.