The film and television ecosystem revolves around intellectual property (IP)—anything based on pre-existing material such as comic books, novels, video games, podcasts and musicals and including remakes, reboots, revivals, prequels, sequels and spinoffs. This IP-driven industry is propelled forward on the back of its inertia. As much as your Film Twitter bubble and TikTok comments section blame Hollywood for the perceived death of originality, the unvarnished truth remains: the entertainment industry simply gives people what they want. Audiences vote with their wallets, and originality and new-to-screen concepts have lost in a landslide over the last 15 years.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Newness can absolutely still break out in a big way (see: John Wick, The White Lotus, etc.) to become valuable IP themselves. But the recent misfires of pricey originals and/or first-time adaptations across the big and small screens slot into a longer-term data trend. This trend suggests Hollywood should invest even more into IP to feed the desires of its audience. Blasphemous, I know. But it doesn’t exclude creative ambition.
The widening gap between original and IP-based programming
Hollywood is going through a painful contraction. The number of English language TV series airing each year has dropped every year since 2022; the number of wide theatrical releases from major studios is below pre-Covid levels; and annual domestic box office revenue from 2021 to 2024 runs $2 billion to $3 billion behind 2017-2019. The industry needs more attention and more money. That’s where leaning even deeper into IP helps as the audience craves familiarity.
Between 2020 to 2024, only about 12 percent of new shows and movies were based on pre-existing IP, according to Parrot Analytics. After peaking in 2021, the share of new premieres based on pre-existing IP trended downward for both shows and movies. What does this mean? IP-based TV series and movies don’t account for a major share of the overall supply—yet both punch far above their weight commercially.
Thirteen of the 30 most-watched titles on streaming (licensed series, original series and movies) in the U.S. in 2024 were based on pre-existing material, according to Nielsen. This includes seven of the 10 most-watched streaming originals, including Netflix’s Bridgerton and Amazon’s Fallout. Of the top 66 movies to earn at least $100 million domestically in the last three years, 47 (71 percent) were a part of an established franchise, per analyst Entertainment Strategy Guy (whose newsletter I couldn’t recommend highly enough). ESG points out that just three of the top 50 domestic grossers in that span (Elemental, Migration, Nope) were completely original non-franchise films that weren’t based on real life events or adapted from source material (though Oppenheimer and The Sound of Freedom were, they still qualify as new-to-screen concepts).
Now is a good time to clarify that we are specifically looking at high-performing titles. Why? Because films that barely register at the box office or TV shows that fail to capture significant tune-in do not move the needle. I loved Sundance Channel’s Rectify and Tim Blake Nelson’s boxing movie Bang Bang, but you’d struggle to find five people outside the entertainment industry to discuss them with.
Interestingly, the global demand share for IP-based movies has fallen slightly over the last five years, while the demand share for IP-based TV series has grown. Yet, IP remains overrepresented among the top ranked titles—and that’s not an accident. If we look at the 100 most in-demand titles each year, around 40 to 50 percent of the top 100 TV shows and 70 to 80 percent of the top 100 movies are based on pre-existing IP, per Parrot Analytics.
Fresh approaches to familiarity
Further embracing intellectual property does not automatically mean homogenizing programming across film and TV. The tone, style and point of view largely depend on the creatives calling the shots. New-to-screen hits can emerge from all manner of sources, providing diverse arrays of potential storytelling approaches.
Sony (SONY), which owns PlayStation, has helped reverse the trend of video game adaptations in recent years. HBO’s The Last of Us represents the rare breed of elevated prestige genre fare that also delivers massive ratings. It’s smart but broad. Peacock’s Twisted Metal occupies the opposite end of the post-apocalyptic spectrum as a wacky action-fueled dark comedy. Uncharted wasn’t my cup of tea, but it made more than $400 million while theaters were still recovering from the pandemic. Universal’s Illumination will surely build out more animated Nintendo adaptations following The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s success.
Filmmaker Jon M. Chu has leveraged lively Broadway musicals to deliver a critically acclaimed Covid-era flop in In The Heights and the breakout franchise-launching blockbuster Wicked. (I may or may not be destroying my neighbor’s ears with my butchered renditions of “Defying Gravity” right now). Hamilton attracted more than 2.8 million U.S. households in its first 12 days on Disney+. Though skepticism seems warranted, toy company Mattel is developing 19 movies (!) after Barbie demonstrated how a unique filmmaker-driven vision paired with atypical IP can succeed.
Even 2024’s most-watched streaming originals run the gamut of IP and tone:
Bridgerton (romance novels);
The Boys (hyper violent comic books);
The Lincoln Lawyer (legal drama novels that had already been adapted to the big screen);
Fallout (video games);
Futurama (a revival of a legacy linear animated comedy);
Fool Me Once (yet another successful Harlan Coben mystery novel adaptation);
Reacher (action drama novels that also previously received the big screen treatment);
Let’s also include Young Sheldon and Law & Order: SVU, two spin-off series that made Nielsen’s top 10 most-watched acquired series list for the year.
These underscore the recyclable formats of sitcoms and procedurals within an IP framework.
There’s little doubt that an over-reliance on IP results in fertile franchise ground being overexploited: Marvel and Star Wars has lost some luster after a groundswell of subpar streaming products; the Fast & Furious franchise battles waning domestic interest; the Lord of the Rings franchise feels scattered; and the less said about the Fantastic Beasts movies, the better. But these failures stem more from inconsistent creative execution than IP itself. When creative craftsmanship comes first, projects like Top Gun: Maverick and the new Dune films can revitalize older IP. By the same token, originality and new-to-screen concepts will always be critical to Hollywood’s sustained success. John Wick started life as a modestly budgeted original action film. Now, its four films have grossed more than $1 billion, and there’s the spinoff series The Continental and upcoming spinoff film Ballerina. Content development is cyclical as the original gambles of today can become the reliable IP franchises of tomorrow.
But as the challenges facing the industry compound, IP-based TV series and films tend to boast higher floors. The overall volume of such projects remains low. The track record of success at the highest levels is undeniable. This is what audiences have consistently shown they want based on money and time spent. It doesn’t preclude fresh ideas from reaching our screens, but it may help cut down on costly misfires that damage bottom lines. So before bemoaning Hollywood’s IP obsession, remember: in entertainment economics, audiences have already cast their vote. The industry is simply responding accordingly.
