Four action-movie franchises have been in the news recently with good news -- all of them will be getting new installments in the near future. Daredevil, Riddick, Superman and Mission: Impossible's Ethan Hunt will all be returning to work, and they all have some big decisions to make. Besides M:I, which already reinvents itself stylistically with every film, they're all coming off of what could have been franchise-killing movies, so they're all going to have to follow M:I's lead. Here's some advice to the producers on what we want to see in each potential re-boot.

Tags: Daredevil, Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible 4, Mission: Impossible IV, Pitch Black, re-boot, Riddick, sequel, Superman, Superman Returns, The Chronicles of Riddick

After 28 years, The Dark Crystal is finally getting a sequel. The Jim Henson-directed original, which frightened children everywhere in 1982 with its creepy, creepy puppets, will be followed up by The Power of the Dark Crystal, to be directed by the Spierig brothers, who also directed the zombie romp Undead and the vampire flick Daybreakers. Horror-movie directors taking on a children's movie classic? That... kinda makes sense, actually. The original movie's fans are all grown up now, so why not push the film's PG creatures farther into the realm of R-rated nightmares? In fact, why not make horror films out of all of these already-horrific kids' films? We'll even assign the directors!

Tags: Drop Dead Fred, Labyrinth, Legend, remake, sequel, Spierig Brothers, The Black Cauldron, The Dark Crystal, The Witches

It seems difficult to mess up a character like Ghost Rider. He's a motorcyclist with a flaming skull for a head, who hunts the guilty and makes them relive their crimes with his Penance Stare. He looks awesome, and his goals are pretty straightforward. And yet, somehow, the movie based on the comic book character was pretty universally awful. A lot of it had to do with the story, but the rest had to do with the cast: Eva Mendes was dull as the true love, Wes Bentley wasn't particularly intimidating as the evil demon, and Nicolas Cage's quirky stuntman actually overshadowed his skull-faced alter ego. So that may be why they're making another Ghost Rider movie without Cage. Wait, they can do that? Isn't Cage, like, a huge comic book fan? We can't imagine he's thrilled to have been booted from his own superhero franchise, but hopefully he'll have more success with The Sorceror's Apprentice. (Although they should probably avoid putting his huge face on the posters, which seems to be a common thread among his bombs.) In the meantime, we say remake more unsuccessful Nic Cage movies using a different actor. Everybody wins! Except for Nic Cage.

Tags: Ghost Rider, Nicolas Cage, remake, sequel, The Wicker Man

Many of the franchise's most passionate fans are fine leaving it as-is, but despite that, we're getting a Die Hard 5 anyway, and this time, we're going global. Which could mean anything, most likely something resembling an old, grizzled Bourne movie, and depending on when it comes out, it could be the Armageddon to the 24 movie's Deep Impact. It's superfluous, but it's not the end of the world. That doesn't mean it's not extremely easy to screw up, however (especially with the guy behind Swordfish, Hitman, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine in talks to write the script). Here's how to avoid that (besides not hiring that guy).

Tags: Bruce Willis, Die Hard, DIe Hard 5, sequel

It's been talked about a lot in the past 20 years, but a third Ghostbusters movie has always seemed like a pipe dream, given Bill Murray's lack of interest, and his co-stars' unwillingness to, well... deal with Bill Murray. But with a major video game release and a new line of toys tantalizing fans, original director Ivan Reitman has signed on to direct the third installment next year, for release in 2012. With a script that features new and old Ghostbusters, as well as Dana Barrett's son Oscar, this could be a fan's dream come true... or another disaster from the director of Evolution and My Super Ex-Girlfriend. We don't know exactly what's in the script, but here's what we need to see in order for the busting to make us feel good.

Tags: Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters 3, Ivan Reitman, sequel

With Tron Legacy poised to eviscerate our eyeballs, it's never seemed like a better time for studios to raid their back catalogs and turn their most iconic movies into franchises. Sure, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps didn't exactly set the box office on fire, but, to be fair, it was a movie about banking. And why make a movie about a street when you can make one about a highway... to the danger zone? That's right, Paramount is supposedly looking to make a sequel to Top Gun, and they may even get original director Tony Scott to direct. Sure, the sequel could end up focusing on computer techs who pilot drone planes by remote-control (which should make for an interesting beach volleyball scene), but Tom Cruise would still be front and center, ready to sing a little karaoke. With that news, we'd like to see Cruise revisit most of his iconic '80s and '90s roles -- here are some sequels that we want to see.

Tags: sequel, sequels, Tom Cruise, Top Gun, Top Gun 2

When we saw the headline "Universal taking another Midnight Run," we were instantly appalled at the idea of a remake of the 1988 road movie starring Robert De Niro as a bounty hunter (apprehending an accountant played by Charles Grodin). Then we saw that it was going to be a sequel, and that De Niro would be reprising his role, and that it was his idea, and our disgust quickly turned to confusion. Does Midnight Run really need a sequel? Especially starring a 67-year old De Niro? We're not saying it'll definitely be terrible -- in fact, we can think of seven other De Niro films where a sequel would be a bigger travesty than whatever Another Midnight Run turns out to be. Little Fockers will be pretty awful, but these are the ones that signal Ragnarok.

Tags: Midnight Run, Robert De Niro, sequel

Spoiler alert! We're about to talk about the very mysterious and open-to-interpretation ending of this weekend's number-one movie, Inception! As everyone who saw it knows (and they likely cannot remove the image from their brain), Dom Cobb's metal top, which remains upright in dream worlds, had yet to fall over. Does that mean he's still in a dream world? Or was it just a really good spin? Sometimes you get a really good one, and they take a while to fall down. Well, whether he's awake or dreaming, we want to see what happens next. And even before! A prequel comic shows what happened on the Cobol Job and the cast is already hemming and hawing about a sequel, so we figured we'd come up with some of our own. Here are some ideas we'd like to plant in Christopher Nolan's head.

Tags: Inception, Inception 2, prequel, sequel