Movie franchises and sequels also existed in the 30s and 40s, with series like The Thin Man and the Road to... cranking out new installments every year or so. T

Movie franchises and sequels also existed in the 30s and 40s, with series like The Thin Man and the Road to... cranking out new installments every year or so. They thrived for similar reasons to today's comic book movie franchises, and I think they will ultimately share the same fate. Why do people go to comic book movies today? 1. They like knowing what they're signing up for. As evidence, look at how movie trailers have evolved into Cliff Notes versions of movies over the last few decades. 2. This particular market had been ill-served; so anything catering to this niche was disproportionately rewarded. Comic book fans had long lamented that there were no big budget adaptions of their favorite books. 3. It's easier to make variations on an established template from a production standpoint, and it's easier to obtain financial backing when you can point to prior successes (the "it's like Uber but for Netflix" startup syndrome). It isn't that comic book movies are creatively bankrupt by definition (nor were The Thin Man movies, and many other franchises over the years). They have a rich well of prior stories to draw on and splash together, and a lot of what Marvel in particular is doing with ongoing narratives is interesting. But they are also racing towards a saturation point which will inevitably result in the collapse of their entire enterprise. They have attracted a lot of good actors, directors and other collaborators; but even with all of that talent they are simply producing too much, too quickly to avoid reaching a point of creative and financial exhaustion. As others have noted, it's pretty laughable that Marvel and DC have announced slates that run all the way to 2020. They are certainly going to have to cancel or postpone some of those films when audience indifference becomes impossible to ignore. And then like other things that have oversaturated their markets (music / rhythm games), it's going to be a long, dark winter before they get to show their faces in any respect again. I am certain that within the next ten years we'll see articles and interviews talking about how "comic book movies don't sell" and "guys running around in spandex suits are passe". Meanwhile, if you could approach this stuff in moderation, I think it might work out differently. Make a few comic book movies a year. Make them all distinct from each other. Don't tell the same stories again and again and again (origin stories of characters that have existed for 80 years, for instance). Approach the material from the perspective of telling a story in a new way, rather than rehashing the same story for new money. Unfortunately, this isn't the way business is done in Hollywood or Silicon Valley or anywhere else. If someone makes money doing something, then thirty other people are going to try to reproduce that success, and many of them may have missed the point of how and why the original succeeded.