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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

This year seems to be turning a bit of a corner. Of the top box office movies so far this year there's Michael, Project Hail Mary, Hoppers, Wuthering Heights, GOAT.. with Obsession and Backrooms rapidly rising.

Last year it was basically F1 and Minecraft (and while not sequels, both are arguably well known "franchises" outside of movies - but I guess MJ and Wuthering Heights are too ;-)).

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Wuthering Heights was a remake, and Hail Mary was also a safeish bet since it's a novel by the same guy as The Martian.

Not to say that it isn't an improvement, but we're still pretty far from seeing American cinema catching up to the world stage in originality, let alone to the golden Hollywood era.

I don't think it's a hot take to say: give Kane Parsons the keys to the kingdom.

And Michael was based on some of the most expensive & beloved IP in the world (extremely popular with Gen X despite everything)

At least Hail Mary was an original IP with no built-in sequel opportunity. These days, I'd be happy if more major studio, big budget releases were adapted from original IP books.

Sadly, I heard that the studio is apparently trying to figure out how to make a Hail Mary sequel (sigh).

> Sadly, I heard that the studio is apparently trying to figure out how to make a Hail Mary sequel

they put a lot of subtle hooks in the ending montage. i just hope they dont try to force it and make a direct sequel with ryan as the lead.

I remember reading Project Hail Mary years before the movie was announced, and thinking "this is written, if not exactly as a screenplay, in such a way to make it SO easy to adapt to a screenplay that given this is from the Martian author there is no way this will not be made as a movie"

I enjoyed both the book and the movie btw

Yeah a lot of authors nowadays just write screenplay, either thinking on licensing or just by being influenced by tv. Sanderson and Abercrombie come to mind as other authors that basically have action scenes and movie cuts baked into the books.

Agreed, I've already been to the movies twice this year (PHM and Backrooms), usually it's maybe once every other year for some one-day anime movie airing. Really enjoyed both of them, just as with PHM, I think Backrooms is best viewed on a big screen.

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