6. Lather, Rinse, Remake
Those sorts of monumental losses have got Hollywood more terrified of taking chances than ever before. Adaptation of stage musicals, plays and ripped-from-the-headlines true stories were the bread and butter of American cinema's golden age, but films came into their own as a form when that rulebook got torn up. The new wave of French directors had their approach imported back to California by the auteurs of the sixties and seventies who started off small before being entrusted with some of the most revolutionary and just plain best films the Hollywood system ever put out. Year by year, though, producers are retreating from original properties. New ideas aren't approached with excitement are avoided at all costs. The risk is just too great to take a chance on an untested film, on something where recouping the production budget isn't all but guaranteed. This shying away from the new means that more than ever cinema screens are filled with familiar-sounding movie titles. In 2014 alone we've already had remakes of Robocop and Godzilla, with multiple new takes on Hercules forthcoming, along with reimaginings of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dracula, and Paddington Bear on the way too. If they're not scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to eating its own past, Hollywood are returning to the bestseller lists, with the adaptation of young adult weepie The Fault In Our Stars already cleaning up at the box office. Hollywood has become the Ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, and sooner or later it's gonna choke.