There is no such thing as a new idea. Mark Twain made that observation, and who knew he would be anticipating Hollywood’s compulsion to reboot and spinoff and treat any stand-alone story as a launchpad for an entire universe of stories.
Everything old is new again. And again. And again.
Did you hear there’s a “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” spinoff in the works? An “Ally McBeal” sequel, too. Jake Gyllenhaal is set to star in a “Road House” remake and there’s a “Dirty Dancing” sequel on its way. A rebooted “Quantum Leap” premieres on NBC this fall. Disney+ is developing a live-action King Kong series, while Netflix has its own anime version on the way called “Skull Island.” Kenya Barris is tackling “The Wizard of Oz,” and that’s on top of another Oz movie that’s also in development. A reimagining of Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” will premiere on Hulu, while Apple TV+ has a “Godzilla”-something coming. “Planet of the Apes” is being reborn as well — actually the most recent reporting I read referred to it as “the next series of ‘Planet of the Apes’ films.” Films, plural.
Titles don’t even have to be old to be new again. HBO just premiered its “Game of Thrones” prequel “House of the Dragon” and Amazon is launching its “Lord of the Rings” gambit called “Rings of Power.” Starz has its own rings of “Power,” with a franchise of three spinoff series. And the success of “Yellowstone” has resulted in a 19th-century origin story (“1883″) and a 20th-century version as well (”1923″).
With every announcement I think: Make it stop.
Hollywood will not stop.
Because when these properties hit, they really hit. The biggest movie of the summer is “Top Gun: Maverick,” a sequel to the 1986 original that’s made $1.3 billion globally since opening in late May.
On Amazon, the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own” has been transformed into a terrific TV series, and AMC’s “Breaking Bad” spinoff “Better Call Saul” just wrapped after six seasons to considerable critical acclaim and possibly some Emmy wins next month.
Which is to say, stories that noodle around in the same world as the original aren’t automatically a bad thing.
But the sheer number of them being churned out? Numbing.
Audiences are faced with more TV and film premieres than any viewer can reasonably track, and if producers can repackage something familiar, they’re at least guaranteed some awareness and interest before the marketing department starts spending real money.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. I mean, Twain said as much. Ironically, that holds true for his own work as far as Hollywood is concerned: His 1884 novel “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” has been made and remade at least eight times since the advent of moving pictures. The novel, of course, is a sequel to “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” which itself has more than two dozen screen adaptations.
But for the last decade, at least, there’s been a palpable cynicism driving a lot of this. Redo, reimagine, whatever you want to call it: We’ve reached the point where intellectual property is viewed as a resource to be mined into infinity. Because what’s the point of owning the copyright to back titles if those titles aren’t making new money? That’s how movie studios, TV networks and streaming platforms see it.
George Lucas has expressed his own dismay about this line of thinking, which he himself helped usher in when “Star Wars” became a multipart juggernaut, telling an interviewer, “The studios said: ‘Wow, we can make a lot of money. This is a license to kill’ ... and the only way you can really do that is not take chances — only do something that’s proven.” The result, he said, is lack of imagination and “fear of creativity on the part of an industry.”
Which is why, come October, we’ll see the release of “Halloween Ends,” aka Laurie Strode’s last stand. Talk about a license to kill. The number of films in the “Halloween” franchise has hit double digits and despite that title, don’t expect any end in sight. Producers are saying this is the last one, but do you believe it? If an executive thinks there’s money to be made, well … you know the rest.
I’m not unsympathetic to what we might euphemistically refer to as market forces. It’s an uphill battle for brand-new projects, and sometimes that comes down to landing on just the right title to capture a sizable audience. The vampire movie “The Invitation,” out this week, was originally called “The Bride” but that didn’t track well with men. (Men, I implore you: Come on.) You know it’s bad when a writer-director of a wholly original story says the process of script revisions — a normal thing that happens all the time with original ideas — “felt like adapting a great piece of IP,” as Olivia Wilde did recently when discussing her new film “Don’t Worry Darling.”
Revising the script felt like adapting a really great piece of IP — as if that’s the standard to which everything is compared. The default.
Well. It is.
At least the announced “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” project is coming at the story from a newish angle. Developed by the same team behind the Netflix series “Cobra Kai” (which itself reimagines “The Karate Kid” franchise) the new “Day Off” will apparently focus on the downtown parking garage attendants who took that purloined red Ferrari for a joyride while Ferris and friends ditched school to take in the sights and sounds of downtown Chicago.
Is this all a phase? Or is this the long-term future of filmed entertainment? The dirty little secret is that unscripted shows, aka reality TV, tend to outperform the bulk of what’s out there — and they’re cheaper to produce. Maybe we should just be glad we’re still getting as much scripted content as we are, even if many of these projects feel like the equivalent of someone turning a T-shirt inside out and pretending it’s the same as putting on something fresh.
Back in 2018, when we were having this same conversation — oh gawd this very column you’re reading is a reboot — NBC executive Jeff Wachtel had this to say:
“We would rather not do reboots. We prefer an original vision.”
Two years later, he was out.
And reboot mania remains as entrenched as ever.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Nina Metz is a Chicago Tribune critic who covers TV and film.
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