Thirty years ago, in the ancient age of the 1980s, it seemed like once a movie franchise was done, it was done. Nobody immediately threw on Superman’s red cape after Christopher Reeve’s final outing. RoboCop got three movies and then was put out of commission for decades. As soon as a series had worn out its welcome, Hollywood moved on to the next big thing. But not these days. Now everything old is new again really, really quickly, thanks to reboots!
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Franchises get rebooted at stunningly fast rates these days. People thought 2014 was too soon when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles got a brand new, big-screen incarnation after they just had one in 2007. But that was nothing compared to four short years between “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Batman vs. Superman.” Or the even shorter two years between “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” and a whole different Spidey swinging into action in this year’s “Captain America: Civil War.” In the future, kids may have no need for the concept of nostalgia. Why would they? None of the movies or TV shows they love will ever go away. They’ll just be rebooted over and over again until the end of time.
There’s no sign of this trend slowing down, either. There are more than 70 reboots being developed by major studios scheduled to be released over the course of the next five to 10 years. Everything from “Ben Hur” to “Ace Ventura” could soon be returning to a theater near you. But is that necessarily a positive thing? Do reboots really pay off, critically or commercially?
Well, in a word … no. We conducted a survey of 27 recently rebooted franchises versus their original debut and looked at how they fared over four different categories: adjusted domestic gross revenue, adjusted worldwide gross revenue, critical response and audience response. In every category, the originals handily beat the reboots. In critical response, only eight reboots did better than the versions that came before them. Audience response treated reboots only slightly better, with nine reboots coming out on top. But the truly surprising statistics were the box office results. At the end of the day, money rules Hollywood, so you’d have to assume that the reboots would, at the very least, be proving financially successful for them to keep being made. But only seven of them made more money than their predecessors once you adjust their grosses.
Of course, while most of these reboots may not have hit the highs of the originals they were based on, none of them were outright flops either. Out of all 27 films surveyed, only the 2015 reboot of the “Fantastic Four” was considered a major loss for its studio. A lot of them even made it into the top 10 grossing films of the years they were released. So while audiences may not be as hungry for these properties as they were when they were fresh and new, they’ll still come out to watch. Reboots are a safe bet from a studio standpoint, especially when you consider how hard it can be to attract people to things they don’t know. Every once in a while, you may stumble upon an “Avatar”, an original film that manages to capture the imagination of the world and become the highest grossing film of all time. But more often than not, a completely new movie can struggle to find an audience.
How long will the trend towards rebooting last? Is there a point where we’ll all just get sick of characters like Spiderman and Batman, and say “enough is enough”? Or will they always be worth checking out, no matter how many versions of them we get. It’s hard to say. Ultimately, the decision lies with you, the audience. In the meantime, you might want to flip on Netflix and chill in your apartment with these classics before the next reboot comes out.