Many franchises have been continuing series that are more than a decade old. When they aren’t, they are making adaptations of media that has already have countless ones. Shrek, 15 years old, is getting a sequel. Incredibles 2, having come out in 2018, is getting a sequel. Smurfs had their last movie is in 2017 and it’s also getting a sequel.
According to Urenna, Onwuka, writer for Medium, writes, “For example among the nominees for best picture in the 2024 Oscars, the only movies with original scripts unaffiliated with any existing properties were the French legal drama Anatomy of a Fall and the Christmas comedy, The Holdovers. Entries like Celine Song’s Past Lives and Bradley Cooper’s Maestro were loosely based on real-life events.”
Studios have lately been relying on their audience’s nostalgia for shows from their childhood. This is exemplified by T.V. networks rebooting shows like the Backyardigans, Dora, and Gossip Girl.
People are wondering why these movies and shows dominate both streaming services and the big screen. According to a student of the Erin Kayata, ‘”“Part of the reason you see so many reheated intellectual properties has to do with (the availability of) many different delivery methods and so many different audiences,” says Steve Granelli, a pop culture expert and associate teaching professor of communication studies at Northeastern University.”
Streaming services are in constant demand of new content, deleting the old in favor of whatever will bring on the most viewers. Streaming services constantly have new services popping up, with most of the ones that do ending up quickly going out of existence. While people are starting to especially notice it now, it has been around long before now. Writer for the Cosmopolitan, Daniella Scott, Dr. Mathhew Jones says, “It’s often framed as something novel and unique to our postmodern times, but there is actually a rich tradition of remakes in Western film culture that runs back to the earliest days of cinema (arguably as far back as 1896) . . . there are more of them at certain moments in history. And we’re certainly in one of those moments now.”
The presence of these have been around for centuries and doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. There is hope they that they deliver new spins on what they’re based on, and not just retell it
