Star Wars: Episode III Shows How We Can Save Movies
The film industry has been in a jam lately. The box office numbers never quite recovered after the COVID-19 pandemic, when everyone got used to watching movies at home. Back in 2019, a record-breaking 9 films made more than a billion dollars at the box office. In 2024, that number was down to three.
What’s worse, Hollywood storytelling has been stuck as well. Despite everyone clamoring for original movies that share a new and relevant message for the world in which we live, the culture of Hollywood is built around sequels, reboots, and major IPs. The fault is not totally with the studios. Although people claim to want original movies, box office numbers suggest otherwise. People are far less likely to see original movies than they are to see reboots and sequels or major IPs. Per the Wall Street Journal:
“Nearly every movie released by a major studio in the past year based on an original script or a little-known book has been a box-office disappointment. Before this weekend’s flops were Warner Bros. Discovery’s “Mickey 17” and “The Alto Knights,” Paramount’s “Novocaine,” Apple’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” Amazon’s “Red One,” and the independently financed “Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1” and “Megalopolis.”
Jason Blum, who produced “Drop” and built his company Blumhouse largely on original horror franchises, said audiences’ preference for known properties has made it harder to release original movies in theaters, “even though that’s where some of the most exciting and risky storytelling still lives.”
The problem is a culture of risk-aversion on both sides: the studio executive and the moviegoer. Studio executives don’t want to greenlight something risky, because it will cost a lot of money to make and promote. If it doesn’t work, it might cost them their job. (Seth Rogan has discussed this issue extensively in the promotion of his new TV show The Studio.) Likewise, moviegoers are feeling the pinch in their wallets from the economy and don’t want to go to a movie that won’t give them a satisfying experience, particularly when there are so many options at home. Original movies are just not as safe as sequels or established IPs.
Many people are concerned about this trend on a cultural level. Movies remain one of the main engines of shared culture in our society. With the collapse of movie theaters, we can still stream movies, but we no longer have a shared experience. This shift contributes to the splintering off of American society Jonathan Haidt discusses in The Anxious Generation. As we lose avenues of shared culture and experiences, we become more lonely and tribal. Even if you believe Christianity should unite us, having a shared culture makes evangelism easier.
So what’s to be done? Well, ironically, Star Wars has given us the answer: movie re-releases.
Movie re-releases have been slowly growing as a financially successful phenomenon in recent years. Re-releases have always been a thing. But after the pandemic, they became more common as theaters tried to find ways to bring in audiences, even when there were no new releases. But slowly, these movie re-releases started making noise and breaking records. The 2024 re-release of the Lord of the Rings trilogy made a combined $8 million at the box office, and the re-release of Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi drama Interstellar became the highest-grossing IMAX release of all time.
Then Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was released in April for the film’s 20th anniversary and quickly became one of the highest-grossing re-releases of all time. The film made a whopping $25.2 million domestically over its opening weekend, launching it to the number two spot at the box office. As Disney reports, “This is one of the top-grossing re-release weekends in domestic industry history, playing behind Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope ($36 million from the January, 1997 Special Edition release) and The Lion King ($30 million from September, 2011 3D release).”
Likewise, Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice was re-released the same month and also cracked the top ten at the US box office, making $2.7 million over the weekend, nearly the same as the $2.8 million total that it opened with in 2005 (not adjusted for inflation).
These numbers show that re-releases have the potential to make real money. And, therefore, the potential to save the film industry. They perfectly satisfy the needs of executives, theaters, and moviegoers in a risk-averse market. It costs little to put the movie out, because it has already been made. And audiences already know they will like it, because they’ve seen it before.
Re-releases suggest that people value the theatrical experience—watching movies in a big room with other people—for its own sake. They could watch the movies at home, but they are choosing to go to the theater specifically because they want to see the film with other people who love it as much as they do.
If studios and theaters lean into this trend, there could be great benefits to the film industry and culture at large. Having a stream of revenue that comes at a low cost makes it much easier to absorb other losses, which allows more room to take on riskier original projects. Just as the DVD market made mid-budget movies possible (because there was a lucrative second life for those films after their theater run), re-releases can serve a similar function today.
Re-releases can also reap positive cultural benefits, as they do something that even original films can’t: show people something they have in common with those around them. Because the movie has already been released, moviegoers can assume most other people in the theater know and love the film as much as they do.
Shared culture matters. The film industry creates shared culture, and is therefore worth preserving. Star Wars Episode III’s success has given a “new hope” for the future of both. And where there is hope, there is something worth trying.
