A week ago, my friends and I decided we wanted to see a movie together. I looked up “movies in theaters near me,” and found myself staring at a list of unoriginal content:“Lilo & Stitch” (live action), “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” “Thunderbolts” and “The Accountant 2”. Most of them were reboots, sequels or spin-offs. It wasn’t that no original films were showing; it’s that the most heavily promoted ones were all part of something I’d seen before.
Generation Z has grown up in a time where recycled content is the norm. Instead of fresh stories, we get another version of something we already saw five or ten years ago. Hollywood isn’t chasing creativity anymore. Instead, it’s pursuing familiarity and guaranteed profit.
The numbers tell the same story. The top 15 box office films in 2024 were entirely made up of familiar titles, with no original stories making the cut, according to Business Insider. While it may seem like a reflection of the general public’s deep love for these franchises, it’s actually a byproduct of what the industry prioritizes. Hollywood pours massive budgets into already established stories, giving them the marketing power and visibility to wipe out the competition. Meanwhile, original films, often with smaller budgets and limited promotion, don’t get the same shot. It will always require more resources, whether that be time or money, to create a whole new story. Producers will always be more willing to spend on the more reliable option rather than taking the risk.
The imbalance is not just in production budgets, but it’s in marketing power too. Major studios dominate the conversation not just by making more franchise films, but by ensuring they are the ones audiences see and hear about. In 2019, marketing costs for indie films totaled $338 million, while the 5 largest production companies in Hollywood spent close to $1.122 billion on their movies, according to Variety. This kind of disparity means original films struggle not only to get made, but also to get seen. Without the funds to compete for attention, indie films are buried under an avalanche of ads for the latest sequel or reboot.
The success of sequels isn’t always about what audiences love most but instead about what they’re most exposed to. This endless loop of sameness comes from fear: fear of financial loss, fear of critical failure and fear of risk. Studios are clinging to recognizable names and formulas because they are guaranteed to bring in audiences. What we lose in the process is innovation. We miss out on truly personal stories that don’t fit neatly into a franchise.
Of course, it’s not all bad. Reboots can be comforting. They bring us back to characters we loved growing up. Some sequels push boundaries or fix past mistakes, such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Top Gun: Maverick and Barbie. And sometimes, audiences genuinely want more of something great.
However, when almost all new movies are sequels or reboots, originality stops being the standard. It lowers our expectations and reshapes our relationship with cinema. We become less surprised, less moved and less challenged.
This isn’t about being a film snob. It’s about wanting more from the most powerful storytelling industry in the world. There are thousands of emerging filmmakers with fresh perspectives who don’t get a shot because their scripts don’t come with brand recognition.
We deserve new stories. We deserve to be surprised, confused and even inspired. The world doesn’t need another M3GAN 2.0. It needs the next Moonlight, Nope or Parasite. We should walk away from theaters asking ourselves what did we just watch in the best possible way.
