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Comment by TomSwirly | Hacker News Reader

> Studios need to reach the widest audience possible to make the most money, so it's a safer bet.

As opposed to... what time in the past where this was not true?

It's now a "solved problem" though. We live in the endpoint where the formula to craft an optimally revenue generating movie is not only possible but expected, and studios are designed with that expectation as a baseline.

There are certainly fewer happy accidents out there now.

I would say it's been a solved problem for all movies. We all know what sells and have for 100 years. People claiming modern movies are all sequels, prequels, and unoriginal aren't really paying attention. We've been telling the same stories for the past 2000 years with the same archetypes, skeletal plots, and emotional presentations. 4 out of 5 times I can tell you what is going to happen at any point in a given movie. All the stories have been told. Critics like to act like this or that is original, but it's really not and they know it. What makes a good movie is acting, immersiveness, humanity, and coherence.

I would argue that there are new twists on the old stories. New settings, new ways of presenting the material, et.c

The Matrix, Memento and Delicatessen come to mind as examples.

And then there are examples of non-original stuff that is just beautifully executed like Die Hard, or Alien.

I'd guess this was always true, but to a lesser extent. Movies today are super expensive, and at least the movies discussed here are considered failures if they don't reach a huge ammount of people.

The risk was still there before, but may be not to this extent.

That is the game the studios have been playing. Larger investments, higher risk, but more calculated same-ness with high appeal to the 4 quadrants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-quadrant_movie

Netflix has turned this model upside down and releases films on its platform that are designed to target specific audience groups.

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