Pressing Questions: Why does Hollywood love remakes and reboots?

I think the main reason for so many remakes and “reboots” is simple: economics.

The movie industry - or “Hollywood” - is not an altruistic community of artists who seek to entertain and/or enlighten us just for the sake of it. It’s a business, and its primary goal is to make a profit by producing a product that is intended to entertain or enlighten us, the consumers. The artists themselves may have some artistic impulse to create, of course, but “Hollywood” really means the studios, which are run by business people.

Superman: The Movie is a classic….did it need a reboot?

Now, studio executives are extremely risk-adverse when it comes to making movies. Financing a film project is almost like gambling; the suits at 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Universal, and Sony don’t have a money-printing machine in their basements, so they prefer to play it safe and go with tried-and-true concepts instead of taking a leap of faith and financing an original script based on an original story.

Man of Steel is a hard reboot of Superman…

Think about it. A big budget movie can cost between $40,000,000 and $200,000,000 (Titanic had a budget in that $200 M range). If you’re a studio head and want to play it safe with that investment, do you go with a property that people are familiar with and will draw butts to the theater seats? Or do you gamble that much money on “something new and untried”?

So…for Paramount Pictures (just to name one studio) it’s far more likely to get your movie greenlit if it’s Star Trek than if it’s…I don’t know…Waking Up in Astoria.