10 Most Annoying Phrases In The Movie Business

What it really means: 'We're desperately trying to save our franchise'.

When a franchise starts running out of fumes, but is still managing to turn a profit, an increasingly frequent tactic has been to retain the core concept and some recognizable characters but freshen up the supporting cast and creative team to try and inject some new life into a stagnant series in an attempt to both prolong a certified cash-cow and avoid having to reboot the franchise from scratch.

Its not a new concept; the Bond and Mission: Impossible franchises have been doing it for decades and still remain as relevant and popular as ever, but in the current climate seems to be smacking of desperation a little.

Both the fourth and fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movies are designed as soft reboots but have suffered from mixed critical reaction, with this summer's Dead Men Tell No Tales set to be the lowest-grossing entry since the first. Transformers: Age of Extinction reshuffled that franchise's deck and made no improvement in quality, while the X-Men series has merged its two timelines together to mixed results and Terminator: Genisys has damaged the name beyond repair.

The fact that all of the previously-mentioned franchises are all at least a decade old, five films in and retain at least one major tie to the original movie is surely no coincidence. If Hollywood keeps relying on familiarity to sell their blockbuster franchises, then it gets harder for the genuinely good ideas to make it through.