Why Is Hollywood Addicted to Sequels?

The summer months, known to most movie fans as the “Blockbuster Season,” is the time of the year when studios release their most-anticipated and largest-scale films.

However, in recent years, fans have been experiencing deja vu as they notice each summer’s lineup of movies growing more and more familiar…

Sequels, remakes, and spin-offs have long been a way for filmmakers to revisit and renew old ideas. But now, something has changed in Hollywood.

Franchise films and reboots have become almost the norm, in many cases eclipsing the successes of original, standalone films. Many fans have been quick to notice this shift, but most are left with more questions than answers in seeking the root of the problem.

Why have sequels taken over Hollywood? Where has the originality gone? What has changed?

This Summer’s Reboots

The answer is neither one-sided nor easily fixable. In order to diagnose Hollywood’s affliction, let’s look at the remakes set to release this summer:

This list includes only the films that are true remakes– ones that follow the exact plot of the original, acting as an updated copy. 

These remakes typically receive the largest amount of backlash from audiences of any category of movie, as they conjure feelings in long-time fans of the originals that their beloved films are being, in a sense, “replaced” by the new version. 

The discourse on these films is not one-dimensional, however. Many fans maintain that new adaptations are crucial to keeping ideas fresh– after all, many of the most popular modern stories of all time are simply retellings of Shakespeare (Hamlet as The Lion King, The Taming of the Shrew as 10 Things I Hate About You , et cetera.).

While traditional remakes are the most talked about and easily identifiable examples of recycled media in Hollywood, studios have other ways of making everything old new again.

Old Movies, New Sequels

When we include films that are instead sequels to old properties rather than direct remakes, the list expands:

These films are all prime examples of resurrecting a beloved standalone classic by continuing the story. This is what is sometimes called a “soft reboot”– keeping with the general story of the originals, but with a mostly new cast and/or setting.

For a variety of reasons, soft reboots are generally received better than outright remakes.

Some fans look forward to seeing the original stars return as their favorite characters, while others simply may feel that the world of the original is worth exploring in further depth.

Sequels do contract their fair share of controversy, however. Many question whether a sequel to an older film is “needed,” worrying that a poorly executed installment could tarnish the reputation of the original– if these films didn’t receive sequels decades ago when they were most popular, why should they now?

Franchises: The Gift That Keeps On Giving (?)

It is impossible to have a conversation about Hollywood’s obsession with remakes without discussing the biggest sequel engine of them all: multi-film franchises. Here are the biggest franchise film installments releasing this summer:

These kinds of films are distinct from the aforementioned soft-reboot-type sequels because each installment in the series is released in deliberate succession, rather than tacked on to the original story years later.

Franchise films generally do not receive the same level of criticism as remakes and reboots– in fact, they are generally not even included in the same conversation. But they should be.

To understand why, let’s look at the cultural and economic factors that have gone into Hollywood’s overproduction of recycled media.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – How Studios Stay Afloat

Rewind the clock a bit. 

It’s 2020. Streaming has just become the latest, greatest thing in entertainment. And, outside, every movie theater is shuttered because of the one-week lockdown that is starting to look like it might not be going away any time soon.

Imagine you are the head of a film studio. What is there to do? How can you pull profits when your single biggest source of income, the box office, is indefinitely closed? So, you put your eggs in the streaming basket, and drop all your new movies there. That works okay for a while.

Flash forward. Now it’s 2022 and theaters are open for business again. Great, right? Not so fast.

Audiences do not show up the way they used to. Film as a medium has been expanding across platforms for years, but now it seems as if it has left beyond the movie theater experience behind entirely. The pandemic has all but killed the bread and butter of your industry. Now what?

You stick to ol’ reliable. Actually, you pull out every ol’ reliable there is in the book. 

In order to make theaters full again, you need to create films that have a guaranteed audience– films that people will see no matter what. Sequels, spinoffs, reboots, and remakes: these are your golden tickets, the key to your survival. This is no time to take risks; it’s time to focus on staying alive.

Flash forward again. It’s 2025 now and we’re up to date. New films are finally being made, however the industry has yet to release their death grip on the sequel safety net.

Now what?

The Current State of Affairs

In many ways, this summer’s lineup of movie releases serves as a microcosm for the industry’s current state of affairs.

While the fourteen films listed above show just how extensive the domination of sequels and franchise films has become in recent years, there have been a few notable bright spots so far this blockbuster season, and many more on the way worth being excited about. 

Sinners, the new film from Director Ryan Coogler (Creed, Black Panther), is a recent example of an original film that was a smash hit with critics and fans alike. Not only is it a fresh idea, but its premise– a gory musical-thriller about vampires in the 1930s deep south– is highly creative to the point of bordering on bizarre.

Other upcoming films that fall into this vein include:

• Caught Stealing, a Guy Ritchie-style crime flick directed by Darren Aronofsky.
• One Battle After Another, an action-comedy from director Paul Thomas Anderson.
• The Materialists, an A24 rom-com starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans.
• Elio, an adventure from acclaimed animation studio Pixar.
• Eddington, a Neo-Western film from Ari Aster, director of Hereditary and Midsommar.

And many, many others.

All of this is to say that there are other ways of securing an audience than rehashing old characters and stories. Attaching a beloved actor, a respected director, or even a particularly fascinating premise to a given project are all ways of guaranteeing a profit while making space for new ideas.

The Future

The recent success of films like Sinners is an amazing sign for the future of the movie industry. 

It is an indication both to fans that Hollywood is still capable of making new and interesting projects, and a lesson to studios that taking risks can pay off big-time.

What is the moral of the story? What can we expect to see in theaters ten years down the road?

Who knows. If one thing is for sure, it is that sequels and remakes will never truly go away. This is not a bad thing at all– so many of the all-time most beloved films are in some way a reinterpretation or adaptation of some sort of source material.

Films based on comic books, novels, ancient myths, Shakespeare, and yes, even the occasional nostalgic remake of a classic movie from decades before, all have their rightful place in the industry. It’s all about maintaining diversity and moderation in the content we consume.

Go see what interests and excites you. Don’t watch what doesn’t. 

If audiences are willing to risk two hours of their time on a ticket to an original film, studios will risk their box office numbers to fund more exciting ideas.