The Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes, and SAG Awards are some of the biggest nights of the year for film. Recently though, it feels like most movies released or set to come out have been remakes or live actions, sequels, or adaptations. With at least 20 notable remakes or sequels made over the last year, a question is proposed: Why is there no new content in the film industry today?
Disney is a frequent culprit of recycled content. With movies like “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin,” “Mulan,” and most recently “Snow White” getting live-action remakes, this has caused the media to stir up some controversy. These include the casting choices, controversial comments, and altering the original story. According to Forbes, “While speaking to Entertainment Weekly back in December [… Rachel Zegler] said she was ‘scared of the original version,’ having ‘watched it once and never picked it up again.’” The Forbes piece later went on to say, “In a Variety interview from September, Zegler talked about the changes made to the original, emphasizing that ‘it’s no longer 1937’ and that Snow White was ‘not going to be saved by the prince.’” This caused fans online to express their strong opinions by going so far as saying that Zegler is a “walking PR disaster for Disney.” While this isn’t the only controversy involving this live-action, it has significantly damaged its reputation.
“Gladiator II,” “Alien Romulus,” “Twisters,” and “28 Years Later” (coming out June 10 of this year) are just a few of the classic movies that have gotten sequels in the past year. According to Stylist, “It’s a trend that Hollywood has embraced for a few years now. Not only are sequels safer bets when it comes to bringing in money for film studios, but they’re arguably easier to put together as the material already exists, and a story doesn’t need to be started from scratch.”
There are plenty of new movies out there that aren’t sequels or remakes, but there is still a good chunk of them that are. “Wicked,” “Dune: Part Two,” “Gladiator II,” and “Nosferatu” are some of the Oscar-nominated movies that are either sequels or remakes (“Wicked” being an adaptation of the musical and book “Wicked”). The sequel and remake takeover have caused some movie lovers to be happy and not as angry as others. Some fans love the nostalgia of old movies getting a sequel or remake, but others disagree. According to a quote by Anna Belden, a movie lover on The Minnesota Daily, “‘I don’t like the idea of taking something from the exact same animated format to real people,’ Belden said. ‘I don’t think that’s doing anything different. It’s not interesting. It really just feels like a cash grab.’”
So has Hollywood just gotten lazy about coming up with new movies and just played it safe with remakes and sequels? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that a lot of movies are just a new version of an old movie. But also no, in the sense that there are still plenty of movies that have come out that people haven’t adapted from anything else. We should give writers the benefit of the doubt though, because, now, it is hard to write something without it being an adaptation of some movie or book that came out years ago. It’s also hard to come up with a whole new idea and only be able to fit your idea into an hour-and-a-half movie. Maybe in the future, we’ll see fewer of them because writers have no motivation to write something, or maybe every movie from the 90s will get a remake or sequel. Only time will tell, but for now, fans probably want more sequels than using AI to write a movie.
