There are no shortage of films being made, nor is there any serious evidence that the film industry is in decline. Studios such as Disney, Warner Bros., and Universal Pictures continue to operate at an extraordinary scale, with individual productions regularly exceeding $200 million and global box office revenues still hovering around $30 billion annually, while the UK alone contributed close to £1 billion in 2024. By any conventional measure, cinema is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, and yet something has shifted.

 Modern cinema is not failing; it is functioning too well. It has become so efficient, so predictable in its output, that it risks undermining the very qualities that once made it culturally dominant. This is not a crisis of output, nor of talent, but a crisis of courage, rooted in an industry that has become structurally unwilling to gamble.

Modern cinema is not failing: it is functioning too well

The evidence for this is not subtle. In recent years, roughly two-thirds of the highest-grossing films annually have been sequels, prequels, or franchise entries, with original films making up only a small fraction of the top box office. This is not because audiences are inherently resistant to originality, but because studios are increasingly unable to justify the financial uncertainty that comes with it; when budgets stretch into the hundreds of millions, risk ceases to be a creative choice and becomes a liability.

 Sequels, reboots, and biopics are therefore not the cause of the problem so much as its most visible symptoms. Films such as Transformers: Rise of the Beasts or Jurassic World Domination are not designed to reinvent their respective franchises, but to sustain them, extending narratives rather than evolving them, substituting spectacle for development, and prioritising recognisability above all else. They succeed because they are built to succeed, and in doing so they reinforce the system that produces them.

 The modern biopic follows a similar logic under the guise of prestige. Films such as Bohemian Rhapsody, Elvis, and Napoleon arrive with cultural legitimacy already attached, offering narratives that feel significant before they have done any real interpretive work. Yet rather than using that familiarity to interrogate complexity, they frequently reduce it, streamlining contradiction into arc and merely acknowledging discomfort without allowing it to linger. They reduce ambiguity through clear cut resolution with authority. They look serious, but they are rarely willing to be difficult.

They look serious, but they are rarely willing to be difficult

The live-action reboot/remake represents the most explicit expression of this mindset. Disney’s catalogue demonstrates how thoroughly familiarity has been monetised, with films such as The Lion King recreating their animated predecessors with remarkable technical precision while offering little reinterpretation. In the case of The Lion King in particular, the shift to photorealism constrains emotional expression, flattening performances that once relied on the elasticity of animation. The story remains intact but the affective range is reduced, leaving an impressive reconstruction that struggles to justify its own existence. More telling still is the speed at which this model now operates: the announcement of a live-action Moana remake, barely a decade after the original’s release, suggests an industry less interested in revisiting material with distance than in recycling it while recognition remains high.

This is the through-line. Not a lack of ideas, but a preference for containment. The industry has become exceptionally good at managing its output, controlling variables, and ensuring that nothing deviates too far from what has already been validated. Cinema has always been iterative, but it has not always been this cautious; the difference lies not in repetition, but in how far repetition is allowed to go. A film such as Evil Dead 2 illustrates this clearly. As a sequel, it could have stabilised itself into something more accessible, refining its predecessor’s formula into a safer product, but instead it escalates, amplifying tone, pushing visual style into aggression, and leaning into excess to the point of absurdity. It risks alienating its audience in pursuit of something memorable, and that willingness to push beyond safety is precisely what gives it its identity.

Cinema has always been iterative, but it has not always been this cautious

Similarly, Shrek 2 expands its predecessor not by preserving its formula, but by testing it, sharpening its satire, broadening its tonal range, and complicating its central relationship rather than stabilising it. It allows sincerity and parody to coexist without collapsing into uniformity, resulting in a sequel that feels larger, stranger, and more confident precisely because it does not minimise risk.

Both films operate within familiar frameworks, but neither is governed by them, and that distinction has become increasingly rare in contemporary mainstream cinema. Modern blockbusters are not incapable of complexity or experimentation, but they are structurally disincentivised from pursuing them.

As budgets increase, tolerance for risk decreases; as films are designed for global markets, specificity becomes harder to justify; and as intellectual property becomes central to production, deviation from established formulas becomes financially precarious. The result is a system that rewards predictability, and predictability, sustained long enough, becomes indistinguishable from blandness. What makes this particularly frustrating is that the industry still demonstrates, in isolated cases, that it can operate differently. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, despite being a sequel within an established franchise, introduces stylistic variation and engages directly with mortality in a way that raises genuine stakes, while Project Hail Mary retains the core strangeness of its premise rather than reducing it to immediate familiarity. These are not radical departures, but calculated  gambles, and it is precisely because they are gambles  that they stand out. The broader industry, by contrast, is increasingly designed to avoid these risks. High production costs demand reliable returns, and reliable returns favour familiarity, creating a self-reinforcing cycle in which safe films perform well, encouraging the production of more safe films and further reducing the incentive to take risks. In the short term, this model works. In the long term, it raises a more uncomfortable question. If cinema’s defining strength is its ability to deliver something singular, something that justifies attention through its distinctiveness, what happens when the industry optimises that distinctiveness away?

 The film industry is not dying. It is doing exactly what it has been designed to do. But in designing itself to avoid failure at all costs, it has also made it significantly harder to produce anything that genuinely stands out. And in a media landscape that increasingly rewards novelty, experimentation, and risk, that may prove to be the more serious problem.

Image: Megan Beach