With movie theaters finally getting back to normal amidst the pandemic, movies are coming back in a big way with titles like Spider-Man: No Way Home, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and the new Scream sequel. But a majority of what options viewers will see on the big screen are predominantly sequels, prequels, and franchise titles with a lack of original movies topping the box office.
With the summer blockbuster season ahead with franchises like Jurassic World, Top Gun, and Lightyear, it looks to be another summer filled with nostalgia picks and world-shaking action flicks. So the question that is floating around film circles now is whether or not studios are relying too much on the nostalgia factor to get people back to the cinema.
This past week's domestic box office results show that three of the top five grossing films have been a sequel or part of a larger franchise, with those films being Jackass: Forever, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Death on the Nile-which took first place at the box office this weekend. If one were to look at the rest of the US box office, they would see even more franchise titles and sequels with Scream, Sing 2, and The King's Man, making most major theaters-like Marcus Theaters and AMC-having around half of all movies playing at a time either a sequel/prequel or part of a franchise.
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For many, this does not come as a shock, as it's not uncommon to see major studio releases that are already linked to other media reign supreme at the box office, both domestic and internationally. These are the movies that draw mass audiences into theaters, with eight of the top ten grossing films of all time being linked to other media-the two original films being James Cameron's Titanic and Avatar.
The last time, an original movie was number one in the box office was in early December with Disney's Encanto, but with it being a Disney film, it's almost a given that it would become a major hit for the box office as most Disney studio films reach number one at the domestic box office at least one week of its life span. There's only a handful of movies that topped the box office while also being wholly original, with some being huge successes like Christopher Nolan's Inception and James Cameron's record-breaking Avatar-which will be getting a few sequels of its own, now making it a franchise. It's becoming rarer that original movies become hits, especially while showing alongside with other titles being sequels or based on beloved material from other mediums. It is difficult to compete with movies that for some have been years in the making and have audiences clamoring for it.
With there seeming to be a trend of filling the box office with already used titles, audiences could also start seeing a downward trend on new and original movies and creators as studios don't want to take the gamble. Why would they when they know that just making a sequel to something that already made money is almost guaranteed to make money once again? It is actually the newer studios, like A24, where viewers will see much more original movies like Barry Jenkins' 2016 Best Picture winner Moonlight and Ari Aster's 2018 horror film Hereditary.
With all of this said, franchise and nostalgia titles do have an important place in the box office. Without many of these titles, the box office would most likely still be struggling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. But with the likes of Dune and Spider-Man: No Way Home having viewers swinging back into theaters, many were able to save their local cinemas from closing permanently. It was the larger franchise movies that cinemas had to rely on to keep their heads above the dark waters and viewers used to escape the reality of what came from the pandemic.
But before theaters opened back up, the question of what would bring people back in amid fears of going back to what seemed not so normal anymore. The answer became Christopher Nolan's original movie, Tenet. Granted, Tenet didn't necessarily hit the mark in terms of expected box office numbers, but wanting to see something from an original creator that people hadn't seen before is what brought cinemas back. If it was Spider-Man webbing people back into cinemas, could the box office have seen higher numbers? Possibly, but the excitement of seeing something big while also being fresh had viewers ready to return to cinemas.