If you’ve recently been to the cinema or turned on your streaming platform of choice, no doubt you’ll have been offered ‘new’ stories that are fundamentally familiar. From Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, to Dune: Part Two, and now Bridget Jones 4 – the film industry is being driven by franchises and sequels.
Of the top 10 highest-grossing films released in Britain in 2024, franchises and sequels accounted for nine. The exception, Wicked, was a prequel. Despite innumerable creative possibilities, studios are flogging offshoots of things we’ve either already watched or already rejected.
The trend is driven by one thing: money. Hollywood likes to present itself as an artistic community, underwritten by great ideas and talent, but really it’s a cold-hearted corporate industry. New films – where prospective viewers don’t know the characters or the ‘world’ – can be a financial risk. They require a large marketing budget, and the public’s response is sometimes hard to foresee.
Contrast that to a sequel or to a film belonging to a franchise. Here you have data from the previous release, and existing fan interest that can be exploited. Turn something into a franchise, and you can sell T-shirts, toys, even theme park rides. You can ‘grow a brand’, and enjoy the profit margins. You already own the IP and – particularly if we’re talking fantasy – you’ve already made some of the expensive virtual-reality sets. Why work hard to create a fresh product when you have something derivative that people will buy?
The result is that, unless you want to go indie or arthouse, what contemporary films offer is homogenous. Checking what’s being shown in your local cinema is like looking through a menu that consists entirely of reheated lasagnes.
Hollywood’s lack of creativity extends to TV, where the trend is for (invariably terrible) reboots. These include a new Frasier, a new Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and – recently announced – a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The same economic principles are at work, perhaps even more than in film, because of the fierce competition between streamers. The resuscitated shows try to lure viewers with familiarity, with homely pleasure. They’re nostalgic, and not as good as they used to be.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The studios have data models that can predict the public’s response, allowing them to invest in new ideas with more confidence than ever. It’s worth remembering that back in 2013, Netflix commissioned House of Cards (its first big hit) based on a much smaller amount of data. Knowing that viewers who watched the 1990s BBC version also watched David Fincher films and those starring Kevin Spacey, they got Fincher on board as the initial director, and gave Spacey the lead role. The result was a series that, although it borrowed from the original, was popular and distinctive.
More than ten years later, the data models are much more sophisticated. AI can estimate the marketing budget required to make a profit, how long a film should run in cinemas before going to a streaming platform, and even analyse scripts. Studios could use these tools to help produce original, stand-alone productions that appeal to mainstream audiences.
The question, is whether they want to. The evidence from forthcoming releases suggests they don’t. In addition to Bridget Jones 4, 2025 will see a fourth Captain America, a seventh Jurassic Park, and an eighth Mission Impossible. Superman also returns this year because, when you’ve given him 13 films, why not give him another?
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