Are Studios Relying Too Much On Nostalgia?

gamerant.com:

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 likeJurassic 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.

Related: Spider-Man: No Way Home Becomes Fourth Highest Grossing Movie at US Box Office

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.

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