For years, I've heard people complain about how all new movies are either sequels or remakes and that there's no original movies, or that Hollywood has run out of ideas. The problem I have with this logic is that this same complaint comes up every single year. If people are making the same complaint every year, it would seem that nothing has actually changed.
In order to test this, I looked at the
top 10 grossing films of each year and categorized them as originals, sequels, series, and remakes. This is a surprisingly difficult task because there are many movies that defy any kind of categorization. Would Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" be an original, sequel, or remake? It reusing established characters, but the story is original. It takes place after the the events in the books and the animated movie, but it's not a direct sequel. Then there's "Thor" which is the first movie about the comic book character, but the character has actually been around for a long time. So is it an original since it's the first movie or a remake because it's using an established story? Then there's the problem that there are a lot of movies that are remakes, but it's not widely known that they are. I just happened to know that "Gladiator" was a remake, but when I started looking the top 10 movies prior to 1990, I had no idea what some of their histories were because I had never heard of them.
I finally decided to use a fairly narrow definition of "original". An original movie was one wherein the story was either created by the writers, or was based on source material that had not been widely-adapted to any visual media such as film, television, or theater.
Much to my surprise, it appears people are right, movies are becoming less original. In fact, not a single original movie made the top 10 in 2011 by my standards. I should add the caveat that even though it appears more original movies made the top 10 in the 80's and 90's, I'm less familiar with those films, so some of them might be remakes, but I wouldn't know.
