How to create a mega-successful franchise?

I want to start with pointing out a problem horror franchises (and some anime like Slayers) usually make: over-reliance on established characters. Sure, interested characters is what make or break individual horror flicks, not just the whole franchise. But if you look at iconic characters such as Freddy Krueger, Mike Myers, and Jason Voorhees, you can see that they have been used to death without any new things about them after the first movie. All the while the new characters in the movies are reduced to target practices. Sooner or later people would have been tired of the same old character and not bringing in memorable new blood.

(Jason and Friday the 13th is a particular sour note to me. The idea of a copycat killer in A New Beginning is kind of cool, but no, they had to resurrect Jason.)

You can see plenty of attempts at this kind of thing with anime that fail terribly. This stuff happens by chance.

>>161119458
There are many layers to this and if you examine popular series, you'll see plenty of similarities between them.

>one of the keys of success for the of MCU and Fate is the backlog of recognizable characters. This is usually the starting point, if people recognize a symbol or any kind of visual you as a producer would want to capitalize on that by featuring it to a wider audience
>medium of origin is much more adaptive to risks, so they can try all sorts of ideas and see the reaction, the cost to produce a comic book, LN or VN isn't the same as the cost to produce a TV show or movie. So by testing in a medium with less risk, producers can determine if it's scalable or not from the feedback they get.
>An important part of the survival of a franchise is that it doesn't depend on one author, by having a mix of creators working on it, it attracts different demographics as well.
>Fan involvement, this is the hardest to predict and artificially manufacture but it's essential. Derivative content of any form is an indicator of success.
>MCU, Fate, SW and others are basically modern retelling of myth stories. It remains the most popular type of story today, because every culture has their own myths and how similar they tend to be, it can appeal to a wide demo. Not only that, but myth stories are multi-genre stories, they can have adventure, romance, action,ect. lending to their strong appeal.

The mummy dark universe or whatever it's called failed mainly because of appeal. They failed to make the characters appealing to modern audiences, they failed at creating a simple, consistent narrative that showcases their characters(brands).

The characters are antiquated, modern audiences doesn't care for them, which translates to "How people view character X is not interesting". Meaning, they would need to update the portrayal of those characters so it would surprise audiences, an example is what twilight did to vampires, it changed how people look at them.

File: 1461249357503.jpg (154KB, 780x900px) Image search: [Google]

154KB, 780x900px

The more waifu candidates it has, the more likely it is to succeed.