“A sequel is an admission that you’ve been reduced to imitating yourself.” – Don Marquis
“The only reason I would write a sequel is if I were struck by an idea that I felt to be equal to the original. Too many sequels diminish the original.” – Dean Koontz
“With all due respect, nobody knows anything.” – William Goldman
Hollywood loves churning out sequels, much to the chagrin of movie critics everywhere. Most of the time, sequels betray a lack of imagination and originality (unless you’re Christopher Nolan, of course). And all of the time, it’s really a ploy to make money (surprise, surprise).
Very few sequel announcements actually make me happy. Recently, Ellen DeGeneres announced that Finding Dory, the sequel to Finding Nemo, would be released in 2015.
My immediate thought: Well, ABOUT TIME!
So why do movie producers make sequels and why are they so selective about which movies get to make a “comeback”? Well, for one, there is a demand for sequels when a first movie is successful, a hunger among fans that needs to be addressed. People naturally want to experience more of what they enjoyed the first time. As for selectivity, the movie business in general is risky and there are definitely strategies producers used to reduce risk, especially when it comes to making sequels.
According to Vany and Walls, there is a science to the movie industry. Hollywood can be as strategic as possible with screens, budgeting, marketing, hiring of quality producers, directors and actors, but really, what determines a movie’s success is the audience. The audience decides if a movie is hot or not; no amount of marketing or “star power” can change that. The real star is the movie.
A study by Vany and Walls comparing movies with and without stars.
Deciding whether to produce a sequel of a movie really boils down to the “survival function” of a particular movie franchise, which in turn really is a stochastic process independent of the number of stars in a movie. The trend seems to be that if producers decide that a movie is “successful enough”, they are likely to go ahead and make a sequel. Each movie has a different probability of continuing its “run” and moving on to higher revenues with sequel releases. Again, this is a process that can be extremely random. As an example, check out the graph of the run profiles of the series of Batman films (I just really like Batman okay). Successive Batman films cost more to make, opened more widely, played out more rapidly, and earned less at the box office.
Run profiles for the old Batman series
But why do movie makers still choose to make sequels of some movies and not others when the success of the sequel is so non-deterministic? And why do they abstain from making sequels to some quality movies which garner excellent ratings?! The sequel to Finding Nemo certainly took long enough.
My theory is that a movie’s success has to fall within a certain range for it to “qualify” for a sequel – and this range is completely up to its producers. Below this range, the movie is not successful enough and not worth the risk to produce a sequel. Above this range, the movie is deemed as “too good” that a sequel might retroactively damage it, which is what may have happened to Finding Nemo for the longest time, being one of Pixar’s best.
Portia pointed out that if the movie is called “Finding Dory”, I’m probably gonna be missing for most of it. Somebody get my agent.
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) April 3, 2013
As Ellen said in the video, anything is possible if you’re patient and beg hard enough on national television.
Are you excited for Finding Dory? Thoughts on movie sequels? Have a favourite/least favourite movie franchise? Comment below!
The Harmonic Oscillator 