*Pops head up from the trenches* This is a great idea in theory. However. We are in a deeply nostalgic cultural moment. Everybody, right left and center, wants the stories/characters they grew up with. So it makes more $$ sense to hitch new wagons to old horses. That's how you get The Acolyte etc
Here's a radical fucking idea; instead of catering to fanbases who don't want to be challenged in a new medium, MAKE NEW FUCKING THINGS. Put money into marketing those new things and create new IP. Hollywood did this for DECADES. variety.com/2024/tv/news...
The threat of toxic fandoms — from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings to Bridgerton and Game of Thrones — has become an intractable headache for almost every studio.
Cowards. They should double down on the stuff the toxic right wingers hate, and watch them burn themselves like Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
It's also a creative express lane to just take an existing IP and mess with it rather than hunt through original scripts. It was probably 10 years ago Entertainment Weekly ran a huge piece on why it was the new path. And studios stopped using blockbusters to fund the indie/ambitious projects.
Some of these new twists on old IP turn out awkward or actively terrible, and would work FAR better as new IP, rather than reconfigured old IP. But new material is a very hard sell right now.
Yes, fandoms are a symptom of larger forces (as are the problems in fandoms). When I think of what I like at this moment in time, it's *comfort*, familiar and trusted.
I see tons of new IP, but nobody's watching
Hollywood has been doing remakes of previous IPs since the very beginning: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wiz...
