Unless you live on Mars, it’s impossible to avoid being bombarded by aggressive Hollywood advertising for upcoming films. These are mostly remakes of old 70s movies and television shows, or awful sequels to awful films, which should have never been made in the first place.

Why does Hollywood have the nerve to green light this crap and then act surprised when these films don’t make the profits they had hoped for? And then, to add insult to injury, they actually whine and complain about being trapped in the lowest box-office slump ever.

The answer is simple: Money. To come up with a successful, original film today requires several miracles to be performed, not to mention an exorbitant amount of time and money to be spent in the process. Usually, such endeavors are doomed to failure before they even begin.

First, one must write an original screenplay. That takes a miracle, since most are trashy and imitate whatever is hot in the theaters. Ask any agent or producer and they will say most screenplays fall apart in the first twenty pages. Next, think of the thousands of screenplays submitted every week. One well-written screenplay among a mountain of slush will be difficult to spot. Getting noticed is a miracle, too. Even if every studio and production company in town discovers and admires it, it will still get rejected, particularly if the script doesn’t have an A-List star attached or if the writer isn’t notorious like Joe Eszterhas or Shane Black.

If it does get accepted, it then goes into development hell. The script is second-guessed and “gang-raped” by producers and studio executives to the stars themselves. Some of the changes that are requested can be absurd and the writer has no say in the matter. He has agreed to sell his script and must go along with these changes if he wants to receive credit for it. The writer will make the changes as demanded, but not without either mutilating the script or turning it into something completely unrecognizable. If the studios don’t like the end result, it is sent to other writer(s) for a rewrite (”doctoring”). Eventually, after they cannot improve it, the script is ultimately tossed. Once a studio nixes the script, word quickly goes around town and everyone else avoids it too, as if it were The Plague. This is why some of the best screenplays in Hollywood never get made, which brings me back to the idea of remakes and sequels.
When using an old screenplay (a 70s TV show, film, or any sequel), you save time and money by not having to find a script and send it through development. Next, since the public already recognizes the film, you save even more on advertising. Finally, by appealing to public nostalgia for 70s films and television shows, you have people that will pay to see it. The end result is a film that has been poorly assembled, rushed through production and shot on a tight budget, affords the stars $20 million dollar paychecks, but only pays the rent that month for the production crew. It’s a wonder that people still go to movies in the first place and spend their hard-earned money on such tripe. This propagates the making of even more garbage the next time around. So how does one end this madness? The answer is simple:

if you want to stop seeing bad films get made, you simply have to stop watching them.

By not subscribing to the warped idea of packaging films, like processed junk food, and shoving them down your throat, you take the first step towards telling the studios and producers out there that enough is enough.