Studios favour known titles because marketing is the least controllable cost in a release. A recognised property arrives with awareness already paid for, performs more predictably abroad, and supports merchandising and library value. The pattern reflects risk management on nine-figure budgets rather than a shortage of original scripts.
Marketing is the uncontrollable number
A studio can forecast production cost fairly accurately and cannot forecast how much attention a film will need to buy. For an original property the marketing spend has to establish what the film even is, which on a wide release can approach the production budget itself.
A known title removes that first job. Audiences already understand the premise, so the campaign can spend its money on urgency rather than explanation. That is the single largest reason the pattern exists, and it applies with more force as global release costs rise.
International performance rewards familiarity
Recognisable properties travel better, because awareness crosses borders more easily than a specific pitch does. When a majority of a large film's revenue comes from outside its home market, a title people already know in twenty countries is worth a great deal more than an equally good film nobody has heard of anywhere.
This is also why the effect is concentrated at the top of the budget range. Small films remain overwhelmingly original, because at that scale the marketing arithmetic does not dominate and distinctiveness is the advantage rather than the risk.
What it actually costs you
The visible cost is sameness at the multiplex. The less visible one is that original work still gets made and gets no attention, so the perception of scarcity becomes self-fulfilling: people conclude nothing original exists, do not seek it out, and the box office confirms the studio's caution.
Which is a discovery problem rather than a supply problem. There are more original films released now than any one person could watch, and almost none of them will be advertised to you. Finding them requires a filter that is not the marketing budget.
Recommended viewing
Sources and further reading
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FAQs about Why Are There So Many Remakes and Sequels?
Are there actually more remakes than before?
Proportionally more at the top of the market, yes, and Hollywood has always remade things: the 1930s and 1950s both had heavy remake cycles. What changed is concentration. A larger share of total production spend now goes to a smaller number of known properties.
Do remakes make more money?
More reliably rather than more on average. The value is a narrower range of outcomes, which matters enormously when a single release can be a nine-figure loss. Several of the biggest recent flops were franchise entries, so the strategy reduces variance rather than guaranteeing returns.
Where do I find original films then?
Not through the channels that advertise to you, which is the actual problem. Festival coverage, distributor catalogues and curated recommendation work better than any streaming home screen, because those surfaces are optimised for retention rather than for pointing you at something unfamiliar.