Post 2
Many filmmakers are saying sequels and franchises are killing the film market with huge blockbuster movies over shadowing content from original film makers. Hollywood has slowly lost their originality over the coarse of three decades. The idea of having separate films and characters inhabit the same universe and meet each other in epic event films was an unprecedented fantasy for many film nerds. Since Disney and Marvel crossed 10 billion at the worldwide Box office in 2016, the fantasy has become a nightmare for the film going audience. Shared universes in movies is what every studio in Hollywood is desperately urging to get into. Dead properties from all kinds of media are being brought back so that Studios can make money off the nostalgia people have for those those properties. Movie news sites like Slashfilm and Variety have reported countless times the attempts by studios like Sony Pictures and Universal studios to make their own film universe franchises. However, the online film community has not been greeting these ideas with open arms. The film industry is a business first and an art form second. This always needs to be taken into account when discussing the subject. Although these films are taking revenue from smaller films that may actually need the money, the smaller films still gain recognition from award shows and film festivals as well as the online film community as a whole.
The number of original films that are successful has declined in the past thirty years. However, the revenue of these original films has actually held steady. Franchise films seem to be making a lot more where as original films seem to be making about the same. Using the data on boxofficemojo.com editor Free Reyes at Geektyrant (http://geektyrant.com/news/the-decline-of-original-movies-infographic) made a graph that showed the decline of original films in the top twenty grossing films of their respective years. Hollywood has gone from ten original films out of twenty top earning in the year of 1980, down to only three original films being in the top earnings in the year of 2014. It can be argued that these films aren’t being seen in theaters because audiences rather wait till they can see it on demand at home and spend money on a property they are already familiar with.
Original films are being suffocated by the weight of sequels prequels and spin offs hitting our silver screens. It should be noted higher budget films aren’t stopping the creation of original films. Original films are always being released every year, however these films are being made less and less by big studios and more by independent filmmakers with a vision. Unfortunately pitching a smaller film like a character piece or a simple drama isn’t very lucrative to a studio. In the studios eyes its always going to be better to spend a high budget on a film based off a known property, than it is to fund a smaller film with a small return. Film festivals like Sundance and TIFF will always be here to shed a light on these films but the general movie going audience has shown where they believe their money should go and studios are doing what they know best. That’s following the money.
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