Death of Originality in Hollywood
The Remake Epidemic
When did Hollywood give up on originality? This is the question that has been ringing through the public conscience in recent years. It seems as if every new release in theaters or new show airing is a remake. Of the 52 releases listed in Rotten Tomatoes’ The 52 Most Anticipated Movies of 2023, roughly 35 of them are remakes, prequels, sequels, or film adaptations of books or video games. This is also the case within the television realm: Yardbarker lists at least 15 reboots or remakes either set to air, are currently airing, or are rumored to be brought into production in coming years in their article TV Shows Being Rebooted, Revived, and Revamped in 2023. Companies have been investing more frequently in these types of projects, leaving many either dissatisfied with the result or starving for fresh content.
Despite what it may feel like due to the obscene amount of this sort of content flooding our screens as of late, this is not new. In fact, it has been occurring since the beginning of film. One notable example of this is the remake of one of the most iconic movies of all time: Georges Méliès’ 1902 short epic A Trip to the Moon. Banking off the recent success of Méliès’ masterpiece, director Segundo de Chomon released Excursion to the Moon in 1908, an almost frame-by-frame remake of A Trip to the Moon. This tactic has been employed countless times since and even before then (Méliès himself fell “guilty” to this in 1896 when he remade the Lumiere Brothers’ A Card Game, which was released earlier that year) to varying degrees of success.
One company who has seen colossal success in film remakes is Disney. In the past 10 years, Disney has remade or followed up 56 films and are set to release more than 40 in the coming years. Despite having some negative backlash (most notably the 2020 release of Mulan and the 2022 release of Pinocchio), these films are insanely profitable. Disney is able to play upon individuals’ nostalgia, as well as their undying love of the company, to make vast amounts of profit. Seeing their immense success, other companies have been following their example, thus inundating theaters and television screens with unprecedented amounts of unoriginal content.
Companies tend to lean more towards projects such as these that are bound to give them guaranteed success other than strive for an original screenplay. It should be noted that not all of these films and shows are necessarily bad, but all suffer from that ailment plaguing Hollywood: unoriginality. It seems the fight for originality has a cinematic quality to itself: the David and Goliath struggle against the remake epidemic. Only time will tell if Hollywood will ever remedy this problem.
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