Movies have been around since the mid-1890s with multiple movie studios like Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios celebrating their 100-year anniversaries. Suffice to say, films have been around for a long time. 

This year marks an important milestone in movie-making history with Walt Disney Pictures, the most famous film company in the world, commemorating its 100th birthday. 

With age, however, ideas seem to dwindle. While original movies like the popular “Knives Out” and “John Wick” still exist, many movies and television shows are beginning to be based on pre-existing content.

This year alone, “The Last of Us” and “The Super Mario Bros Movie”, both inspired by video games, have already been released. The Marvel Cinematic Universe [MCU] is the world’s most profitable movie franchise, grossing over $25 billion dollars worldwide, and is based on comic books dating back to 1939.

It does become interesting to watch as the box office begins to become bloated by sequels, requels, reboots, franchises, etc. in recent years. The second most profitable movie franchise in history, Star Wars, was originally intended to only be one self-contained film. Now, the “Star Wars” franchise has spanned 11 movies and approximately eight TV shows, with more on the way.

Currently, HBO has teased a possible reboot of the Harry Potter films for a direct-to-streaming television show which has gotten people outraged.

An article by Forbes entitled “So Many Things Can Go Wrong With HBO’s ‘Harry Potter’ Show” by Paul Tassi highlights the many downsides to the reboot.

“Recasting [Daniel Radcliff, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint] would be…a challenge, to say the least,” Tassi wrote. “And would likely get a whole lot of people upset.”

Even at Powell High School, students are voicing their opinions on movie and TV adaptations.

“Some [adaptations] are really bad, like the ‘Halo’ show,” junior Ayden Heine said. “But there are some good ones out there — like for a movie, ‘13 Hours’, because it was based on a real event and a book.”

Many students across the PHS campus seem to share this point of view.

“[Adaptations] can be good or they can be trash,” sophomore Salem Brown said. “[It] depends.”

At this point in time, it does not seem like the flood of sequels, requels, and other adaptations are going to disappear. The fifth installment of the “Indiana Jones” franchise will be released later this year on June 30 and franchises like “Star Wars”, “Jurassic Park”, and the MCU are still running strong.