At this point, the obsession over IP’s has been digging so deep that studios are pulling obscure IP’s out from decades ago that no one has ever heard of, which completely negates the original point of doing reboots and remakes of old IP’s in the first place. It’s just cringey and desperate feeling and I’m embarrassed on their behalf when I see it.
What’s even crazier is the amount of execs I’ve met that don’t want to do this (all of them). I’m constantly told by execs that lament about how they wish they could make original stuff and not IP’s, but that their hands are tied. None of us got into this business so that we could remake old stuff. We didn’t watch some movie as an 8-year-old and say “When I grow up, I want to make this same exact movie but for a modern, four-quadrant audience, and as the jumping off point for an extended universe of films.” No one wants to do this, but for some reason, everyone in charge feels forced to.
I mean aren’t we all starting to laugh at and get bored by “universes”? It’s alienating at this point, and a turn off, when you know that a movie or show you’re watching is just there to set up some other movie or season you’re supposed to watch later. You can really feel it in what you’re watching and it just feels gross. Let’s just make things we wanna watch now with an actual ending, then we won’t feel gross when we watch stuff and can just sit and enjoy it!
I think it’s a huge, joyless loss that an entire generation of artists are having their original, unique, and timely voices shifted almost entirely into the IP mines. A loss that I feel won’t be seen or understood fully for at least a decade, but when it happens, will feel like we’re missing an entire part of our collective souls.
Really good post from Owen Dennis, creator of the late great Infinity Train, on the focus on existing IPs in entertainment
David Schlaepfer
@davids