Vampire Academy: Why Frostbite (and a TV Sequel) Never Happened!
Vampire Academy: A Box Office Bomb That Sucked the Life Out of a Sequel
Vampire Academy (2014), based on Richelle Mead's best-selling young adult novels, had all the makings of a huge YA franchise, right? Mark Waters (Mean Girls) directed. It starred Zoey Deutch and Lucy Fry. It had a built-in fanbase and all that spooky, vampire goodness. So, what happened? Why no sequel?
Well, this thing flopped HARD. This movie failed at the Box Office; this film’s failure wasn’t merely something subtle, easily corrected; instead, this shows just how difficult predicting box office numbers actually are. It made only slightly more than $15 million worldwide – barely half its budget of $30 million (via Box Office Mojo). It was an immediate disaster. They even skipped critic screenings – a pretty sure sign the studio knew this movie wasn't going to impress anybody!
Reviews? Brutal. It got a dismal 17% on Rotten Tomatoes. The critics slammed it for being lazy and derivative; saying it “borrows lazily from its predecessors and offers few laughs or thrills.” This shows just how a critical panning combined with underwhelming audience engagement results in almost a total failure! And in the context of 2014–that was the year many other YA franchises were huge (Twilight, Harry Potter, Hunger Games); demonstrating that this could’ve also had a significantly more positive reception were those issues properly dealt with, highlighting how easily bad production choices negatively impact overall result. That completely underwhelmed response makes a Vampire Academy 2 impossible at this point.
Crowdfunding Fails, Too: The Final Attempt
Preger Entertainment didn't give up. They even tried a crowdfunding campaign through Indiegogo in 2014, to raise the extra $1.5 million for Frostbite (the planned sequel, mentioned on Forbes). That plan was ultimately another epic fail– generating only $254,500. This clearly shows just how dependent any kind of production actually is – upon receiving a fair reception to garner support for that ongoing future.
The 2022 TV Show: Another Bite at the Apple (That Didn't Quite Work)
2020s bring new hopes. Peacock launched a Vampire Academy TV series with Sisi Stringer and Daniela Nieves. But critics and audience weren't very impressed – a bad sign! This isn't necessarily a case where audiences are blind to quality, yet a lot more viewers seem to not care.
Critics actually liked the TV show this time around–it got a surprisingly great 77% on Rotten Tomatoes– yet that enthusiasm ended rather quickly: audiences didn’t share that excitement. Its Rotten Tomatoes score (a measly 44%, versus that film’s 56%) shows exactly that! That relatively strong positive response by the critics did not create positive attention by other viewers; not translating into strong support from actual paying viewers! And both this show and One Of Us Is Lying got canceled in January 2023.
Conclusion: RIP Vampire Academy 2 (And Maybe the Entire Franchise)
Vampire Academy’s movie failure and this resulting TV show's flop make a sequel near impossible. While its fanbase remains committed and interested in new stories surrounding this universe; the low interest coupled with lack of significant support suggests a definite conclusion, and thus those readers who enjoy the books might still get a satisfactory ending.
It shows that a large audience base from successful books doesn’t guarantee success on screen and despite initial hype for that potential movie series from many readers; some failures might not only completely kill a planned movie but end possibilities entirely; making its success in many ways heavily reliant upon external influences such as good management, marketing strategies along with creative direction that needs the input from the intended target audiences to garner sufficient support to keep such efforts going!
