Stillborn Franchise / Western Animation

• David Hand's Animaland series, a lushly animated series of Golden Age shorts, was supposed to be a full-fledged series. But since it was unable to find a distributor in the United States, it died after just nine shorts. David Hand's son attempted to revive the series after gaining the rights to the shorts decades later, but nothing ever came from that.
• The Disney Heroes franchise was created in the mid-2000s to serve as a boy-focused counterpart to the massively successful Disney Princess crossover franchise, with the lineup consisting of Aladdin, King Arthur, Hercules, Peter Pan, Robin Hood and Tarzan. Poor sales ended the franchise pretty quickly, largely because the Princess franchise had cemented Disney as being deep in the Girl-Show Ghetto among its target audience. Disney would ultimately solve the wider dilemma concerning their lack of boy appeal thanks to Pixar's nascent Cars franchise and their acquisition of Marvel Comics and Star Wars.
• The very short-lived Van Beuren Studios Felix the Cat shorts, an attempt to revive the franchise after the original theatrical cartoons. The attempt is thought to have failed due to, among other things, Felix's personality and the overall tone being changed to match that of the Classic Disney Shorts, causing it to be viewed as a pale imitator of such. The revived series only lasted for three shorts (with a fourth one never getting past the story stage) due to Van Beuren Studios abruptly going belly-up when RKO negated their contract in favor of, ironically, distributing the aforementioned Disney cartoons.
• Gargoyles had several spin-offs planned, with Disney wanting to make an entire universe akin to Marvel or DC, but it was never quite successful enough to manage that. Greg Weisman would return to the series on-and-off over the following decades through various comic runs.
• Mega Man: Fully Charged was intended as the start of a larger Mega Man Spin-Off franchise that would have included other tie-in material such as its own video game. The show lasted only one season due to middling critical and commercial reception, with fans of the franchise panning it for heavily deviating from the source material. Though the creators were able to Wrap It Up by way of a six-issue comic miniseries, Capcom would go on to never mention the series afterward.
• Mission Hill was rather liked by fans but was Screwed by the Network, resulting in only its first season ever being made. The creators share a lot of What Could Have Been on the DVD release, such as their intention to have Andy go through two jobs a season and by narrating the storyboards of a couple of Season 2 episodes that were never finished.
• Pet Alien was intended to become a multimedia franchise with various forms of merchandise, but for one reason or another, it never came to fruition and the show ultimately faded into obscurity after two seasons.
• [adult swim] had big plans for Pibby, including the characters' involvement in their 2022 April Fools' Day prank, a billboard and cross-promotion with Max. Despite all the attention the short got, it didn't really amount to anything, and in the end creator Dodge Greenley confirmed that Pibby wasn't greenlit for a full series.
• Rabbit Stew and Rabbits, Too! was meant to be the first in a series of Looney Tunes shorts featuring characters Quick Brown Fox and Rapid Rabbit, but only one cartoon was made. Although it's largely considered one of the better shorts during an otherwise Audience-Alienating Era, the Warner Bros. cartoon studio shuttered its doors for good a few months later, following the release of Injun Trouble (1969).
• The 2014 reboot miniseries of Rainbow Brite was meant to test the waters for a revitalization of the franchise ala My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, but its low outreach led to Hallmark not moving forward with the reboot and not much else of Rainbow Brite has been heard of since.
• Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa was meant to be the first of a series of TV specials featuring the eponymous kids. The special's poor reception, however, put the kibosh on any of those plans, and the only other planned special starring the eponymous kids known to have existed, an Easter special called A Bunny's Tale, was scrapped and was never heard from again.
• In 2017, TBS was planning a programming block of adult animation that would have had the Louis C.K.-produced The Cops as one of its main attractions. Production on C.K.'s show was abruptly halted once reports of his sexual misconduct became public, derailing all plans for the block in the process, which included the other series intended for it. The only show to make it to air on TBS was Tarantula!; Final Space would Channel Hop to [adult swim], while Close Enough was shelved for a few years before eventually debuting on HBO Max (though it would also briefly air as a "Front Row" program ^note (a banner used by TBS and sister network TNT to run several of their shows, as well as those of HBO Max, with limited commercials) in October 2021).
• Underfist: Halloween Bash was intended to be the Pilot Movie for an action-comedy Spin-Off of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, but a change in executives at the studio resulted in those plans being scrapped and the movie being positioned as a standalone special instead. This is cheekily lampshaded by the soundbite played during the end credits Logo Gag.
  Billy: All that work, and nothing to show for it!
• The Amazing Screw-On Head, itself a single issue comic, got an animated pilot adaptation meant to lead into an ongoing series. Despite starring such talents as Paul Giamatti, David Hyde Pierce, Molly Shannon, and Patton Oswalt, and being produced by Bryan Fuller, it never got picked up.

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