What do you name a film that takes place after the occasions of a earlier movie, options the identical characters and has the identical artistic staff?
That’s not the set-up to a joke; it’s an actual query that’s plaguing advertising executives at studios. As audiences develop cautious of Hollywood’s tendency to revisit and recycle, phrases like “sequel” and “reboot” have change into taboo.
It’s no secret that the leisure trade depends on remakes, spinoffs and prequels to outlive. This month’s “Scary Movie,” the sixth installment within the horror-parody franchise, simply riffed on this very notion, branding itself a “rebootquel.” So why is Hollywood so delicate to those phrases?
“Audiences have been trained to think ‘sequel’ means homework. People want something new, so when you put a ‘2,’ ‘3’ or ‘4’ in the title, it gets a groan,” says veteran advertising and distribution govt Marc Weinstock, who not too long ago consulted on A24’s “Backrooms” and govt produced “Scary Movie.” “’Reboot’ just sounds like something was underperforming so we’re going to redo it. ‘Remake’ is the same. People think, ‘Oh, you’re just recycling stuff we’ve seen before.’”
So when there’s a grey space, studios have been testing out new methods of framing a film in advertising supplies. Sony, for instance, is insisting that “The Social Reckoning” isn’t a sequel however somewhat a “companion piece” to “The Social Network,” the studio’s Oscar-winning 2010 drama concerning the introduction of Fb. Positive, there’s a brand new director (Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter of the unique, is taking up for David Fincher) and a brand new actor is taking part in Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Robust replaces Jesse Eisenberg, who turned down the challenge). However the movie, which opens in October, hails from the identical studio, which introduced again a number of behind-the-scenes creatives to inform one other chapter at the hours of darkness saga of the social media platform. The newly launched teaser trailer even ends with the identical memorable, haunting theme tune from the primary movie.
Sony isn’t the one studio that’s getting linguistically artistic to persuade the plenty that it isn’t simply rehashing what’s labored previously. Disney has pushed for live-action variations of animated classics like “Aladdin” and “Beauty and the Beast” to be known as “reimaginings.” A24 used the identical phrase to explain “Obsession” director Curry Barker’s upcoming take on the 1974 horror classic “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Common billed 2024’s sequel “Twisters” as a “new chapter” of the 1996 catastrophe film of (practically) the identical title, for the reason that authentic stars didn’t return to chase extra storms.
“There’s a desire to focus on what is fresh and worthy of discovery,” says one advertising govt. “If something is a ‘reboot’ or ‘remake,’ you think ‘I’ve seen this before.’ If it’s a ‘reimagining,’ you think, ‘Oh, I want to see what they’ve done.’”
Some films are genuinely troublesome to categorize. Sony’s 2025 action-comedy “Anaconda” was too meta to be categorized as a reboot or a sequel. The film, starring Jack Black and Paul Rudd, adopted finest buddies who journey to the jungle to pursue their childhood dream of remaking their all-time favourite movie, 1997’s “Anaconda.”
Makes an attempt to create distance from predecessors don’t all the time work. Lionsgate tried to pitch the Ana de Armas-led “John Wick” spinoff “Ballerina” with out highlighting the affiliation. However when viewers consciousness and pre-release field workplace monitoring have been low, the studio was compelled to tack on a cumbersome addendum — “From the World of John Wick” — to the title.
Amazon MGM, alternatively, is comedically leaning into sequeldom for the follow-up to the Mel Brooks 1987 sci-fi parody “Spaceballs.” Though there was a long-running joke that the sequel can be known as “Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money,” the actual title for the 2027 release is “Spaceballs: The New One.”
A part of the aversion to sure phrases is that studios don’t need audiences to assume they’ve change into too protected or too lazy, counting on extending in style properties once they may very well be investing in new concepts. Model consciousness will get folks within the door of multiplexes, however executives really feel that “reboot” and “remake” don’t all the time correctly replicate the creative ambitions of flicks that take a recognized story in new instructions.
“There are sensitivities around ‘reboot’ in particular because it implies you’re just reheating the property, when there’s an actual differentiation,” says a studio supply.
That concern has been strengthened by a 2024 study from the Nationwide Analysis Group, which discovered that 75% of Gen Z audiences want watching authentic content material over remakes or franchise fare. Noting the tastes of Gen Z is vital as a result of they’re now essentially the most lively group of cinemagoers, attending extra movies per 12 months than their elders, according to a Fandango report. It’s not that youthful moviegoers are against familiarity. “Backrooms” was IP, in spite of everything. However the demo isn’t exhibiting up for brand spanking new installments in recognized properties simply because they was in style.
“Everyone is working to keep the momentum with younger audiences, who are a little more cynical,” says the advertising govt. “They’re excited about creative risks.”
When Paramount was gearing as much as launch the second “Top Gun,” the studio selected the title “Top Gun: Maverick” somewhat than “Top Gun 2” to keep away from shedding audiences who hadn’t seen the unique 1986 film; each star Tom Cruise as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. The studio additionally ditched the numbers for 2022’s “Scream” reboot, which is the fifth installment within the slasher collection, in addition to the newest “Scary Movie,” which introduced again the Wayans brothers after a 25-year absence. As soon as youthful audiences have been hooked and “Scream” efficiently revived the property, the studio returned to digits within the title for 2023’s “Scream VI” and this 12 months’s “Scream 7.” (It’s unclear, nevertheless, why there was a change between Roman numerals and the decimal system.)
Although fewer films appear to have numbers within the title today, typically the connection is useful, particularly when it’s an inescapable reality {that a} film — like Disney’s Pixar sequel “Toy Story 5” or “The Devil Wears Prada 2” — is a part of a franchise.
“It’s a tricky balance,” Weinstock says. “Audiences want familiarity, but they want the feeling of discovering something new.”
