Hollywood’s obsession with sequels has reached a fever pitch, and it has to be said: It’s enough. No more sequels.
The Devil Wears Prada 2, Bend It Like Beckham 2, Freakier Friday, 28 Years Later, Jurassic World Rebirth, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Happy Gilmore 2, Karate Kid: Legends, Top Gun: Maverick, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the possibility of My Best Friend’s Wedding 2—this is an abbreviated list of the many sequels that have either been released or greenlit during the past few years. Some of these have fared better than others—both in terms of box office performance and critical reviews. But it doesn’t matter to me whether the sequel is good or if it’s bad or if it’s mediocre. It’s the principle of the thing that irks me most. Why must we continue to revisit the past, resurrecting often beloved but long-dead titles from the ‘80s, ‘90s, or 2000s, rather than forging ahead? Surely the studio executives responsible for making these decisions don’t believe we’ve run out of stories to tell. Right?
I’m hardly the first person to bemoan the sequel obsession—this is an argument that’s been ongoing for well over a decade, and even inspired a sitcom about a sitcom which gets rebooted, called Reboot. (It was canceled after one season, but hey, there’s always a chance it might get a…don’t make me say it.) However, in August 2025, as images from the set of The Devil Wears Prada 2 fill my social feeds, Happy Gilmore 2 dominates Netflix, and Freakier Friday opens in theaters, the conversation about sequels feels particularly urgent. And I’m not alone in thinking this way.
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When Variety reported last week that a sequel to My Best Friend’s Wedding—a perfectly good 1997 film starring Julia Roberts and Dermot Mulroney—was in development, there was a rousing cry of “who asked for this?” across social media. What could possibly be gained from revisiting Michael (Mulroney), his bride (Cameron Diaz), and his problematic and possessive BFF Julianne (Roberts) in the modern era?
“NOT everything needs a sequel or a remake!” wrote one of many exhausted fans on X. “this era we’re living through is overflowing with emotion, chaos, and beauty MORE THAN ENOUGH to inspire something truly NEWWW.”
It’s hard not to feel like corporate greed and general laziness are responsible for this onslaught of sequels. We’ve heard again and again that viewership isn’t what it used to be, especially in theaters, and that studios are struggling to compete for our shrinking attention spans. Superhero films used to be a sure bet, attracting Hollywood’s A-list with the promise of a blockbuster success. However, as their relevance fades, it seems like studios are rolling out sequels to fill the void. But they’re not the solution, either.
If the problem facing the industry is shrinking audiences, what good can come from revisiting a story that appeals to a finite number of people who watched the original? What if we draw inspiration from the classics, and the elements that made them truly great, rather than iterating on them again and again?
I can’t help but think of the success of The Pitt, HBO’s hit medical drama which stars ER alum Noah Wyle as Dr. Robby, a handsome emergency room doctor with shades of Dr. John Carter, Wyle’s ER character. If ER had been rebooted, as was initially reported by the rumor mill, would the final product have been as successful as The Pitt, one of HBO’s ratings juggernauts? I, for one, wouldn’t have watched it. Why would I have, when there’s a barrier to entry? When the audience is required to come pre-programmed with details from the original film or TV show, you’ve already lost out on forging a bond with a new audience.
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Then there’s the viewer’s sacred and often fragile relationship with great movies and TV shows. The best intentions are no match for the nostalgia we have for films of a place and time, films that shaped us or marked a specific period of our lives. Everything I’ve learned about And Just Like That…, for example, I’ve learned against my will. And somehow, knowing these women’s future storylines has tainted the original Sex and the City for me. Just because we remember a project fondly doesn’t mean we should know exactly what happened in the end.
The most satisfying and impactful endings are the slightly ambiguous ones. I’m not talking about cliffhangers, but one in which a protagonist emerges changed—for better or worse—and the audience is left to imagine what happens next. Can you imagine a sequel to the Sopranos, where the audience finds out what really, definitively happened in the final scene? Trust me, Hollywood, your sequel will never be as interesting as my imagination. Please, let’s all move on.
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