In 2024, the top ten highest-grossing releases in the world did not include a single original movie. Sequels, prequels, and reimagining famous stories took all the spots. Many viewers complain about the lack of new ideas in Hollywood. Yet, they make box office exactly to stories with familiar characters. It’s like discussing the ethics of working with a paper writing service and, simultaneously, realizing that only by collaborating with an experienced writer can you get a winning paper. Hollywood does its thing, the viewer does theirs, and practice shows that despite the indignation of film critics and a group of moviegoers, most films in our time remain just a reinterpretation of old stories.
It is worth saying that it is not always bad, and many remakes have earned praise from critics while at the same time introducing many new viewers to movie classics. The movie A Star is Born can be mentioned as one of the most famous examples. This movie has several versions at once, each receiving a new reinterpretation and revealing the characters according to the time. At the same time, many remakes, sequels, and prequels come out lazy and dull and fail miserably at the box office. This does not stop Hollywood studios from spending another 100 million on a new remake. And whether there is a way out of the impasse, we will try to answer further.
The very first sequel in the history of cinema is considered to be The Fall of a Nation, which was released at the very dawn of cinema in 1916. It was this movie, according to many film historians, that opened the door for numerous restarts and the filming of extended versions of film around the original story of the source material. One of the most successful franchises that never seems to disappear and has always been with us is the story of the secret agent of British intelligence, James Bond, the first movie released in 1962. Amidst the success of the films about the seductive agent, many studios tried to replicate the success.
Everything changed dramatically in 1974 when Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather 2 burst onto the big screens. Unlike Bond, where each movie was, in fact, a separate story, The Godfather was tightly connected with the plot of the first part. This sequel was the first ever to win an Oscar for Best Picture and demonstrated that a direct sequel could expand the fan base and keep the story moving forward.
From this period on, it was already hard to find a successful box office movie that didn’t get a sequel, prequel, or expansion of its universe. Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Mad Max, Back to the Future, Terminator, Superman, Star Trek, Rocky, Rambo, and many other movie franchises were born 50 years ago and still get sequels or re-imaginings of their stories.
In 2000, the movie industry went through one of the biggest revenue shocks in its history. The reason for this was technology. The fact is that movie studios used to be able to count on more than just profits from movie distribution. A considerable part of the profit was the sale of videotapes and DVDs. For example, the movie Shrek, in addition to almost a billion dollars in movie collections, earned another 350 million dollars of profit from sales on the media. But this market didn’t just help already successful movies earn more. It helped mid-budget original films break even. In this segment, many directors tried new ideas. They shot risky regarding financial success and pictures, many of which later became movie classics. For example, Fight Club or The Shawshank Redemption essentially failed at the box office, but it gained massive popularity on DVD and eventually became a cult film.
The shrinking market for physical media forced studios to reduce the number of films in production and increasingly bet exclusively on promising pictures. These were the movie universes already familiar to the audience. Since 2010, almost every second major release in theatres was a sequel or prequel. Many directors became hostage to trends, making movies for the soul for small film festivals, often under pseudonyms, and famously made it the continuation of famous pictures. Such a script can be compared to a writer who works in the best essay writing service and daily helps students with their papers, remaining unknown.
The problem also lies in the fact that the viewer sees going to the movies as entertainment, for the most part. Many people are looking for peace and comfort and expect to be entertained. Showing local dramas or experimental productions on big screens is too risky for movie studios because the audience may not attend them. And such examples are ubiquitous. In 2019, there were an unusual number of original films in theatres. Still, many of them, such as Doctor Sleep, The Good Liar, Motherless Brooklyn, The Kitchen, and The Report, performed modestly at the box office due to half-empty theatres.
For most viewers, watching a movie is still a ritual that includes a comfortable chair, popcorn, and friends near and on the screen. The viewer often hopes that familiar stories have a better chance of entertaining than unknown and new stories. That’s why fanservice movies are still a significant profit engine in Hollywood. For example, the complete fanservice Deadpool & Wolverine has already grossed a billion dollars at the box office.
There are not many prospects for something to change dramatically and massively soon. Nevertheless, people’s demand for original stories and non-standard approaches to movies grows every year. For example, studio A24 is gradually gaining cult status among movie buffs and is famous for producing original films.
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