Hollwood, Wall Street and Washington All Agree: Originality Loses, Sequels Sell

We think of derivatives as those insanely complicated mathematically based models which caused the financial crisis: whose origins few fathom and whose implications no one can even imagine. But they are actually an entity whose price is based on an existing, underlying asset.

So, hey, welcome to Hollywood, Tin Pan Alley, Washington, real estate and virtually every other human endeavor. Because, as the following article explains, it turns out that the aggregated global citizenry, yourself included, far prefer themes with which they are familiar and outcomes they can predict with some certainty.

Whether it's music, art, finance, film, food, literature, real estate - or politics - the familiar sells. And besides, they require less marketing which makes their margins better. Just look it up on your personally designed, self-reinforcing social media feeds. JL

Gary Silverman comments in the Financial Times:

In a world where investment decisions are made in fractions of seconds, new ventures are incredibly nerve wracking. Easier to recycle existing stuff: Hollywood squeeze(s) more money out of old ideas; in music, “reality” competitions spotlight new performers singing old songs. So, we need to prepare ourselves for sequels in the White House: Clinton 3 or Bush 4.
There was good news out of Hollywood this week for Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush and Han Solo. The latest box-office receipts suggest that the public appetite for the old and the familiar is surprisingly robust.

The numbers emerged after Walt Disney tried to do things a little differently during the recently concluded Memorial day weekend. The US holiday marks the unofficial start of summer in this part of the world and Hollywood typically joins in the fun by releasing big-budget sequels such as X-Men: Days of Future Past in 2014 or Fast & Furious 6 the year before.

Last weekend, however, Disney served up Tomorrowland, a fantasy starring George Clooney that featured such novelties as original characters and an original story (albeit with synergistic connections to the attraction of the same name at the company’s theme parks). To create an air of mystery, the studio’s advance marketing campaign kept a tight lid on plot details.

The response was dismal. In its first four days in cinemas, Tomorrowland , which cost a reported $180m to make, earned $42.7m, less than half the take of the X-Men and Fast & Furious sequels that debuted during Memorial day weekends, according to Rentrak, a US box office tracking firm.

To be sure, it is entirely possible Tomorrowland isn’t a good picture. Many reviewers, in fact, have expressed disappointment. But quality isn’t always synonymous with success in the creative world, and industry observers said it appeared that movie-goers were turning their backs on original content itself. They prefer sequels.
“When audiences are spending their hard-earned cash on a blockbuster,” Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Rentrak, told The New York Times, “they want to know what they are getting going in, for better or worse.”
Variety, the traditional US show business bible, said the Tomorrowland opening “exposes Hollywood’s originality problem” and fretted about its capacity to fund original work in the future. I share those concerns. But I would add that the fault is not only in our stars, or their producers, but in ourselves and the way our economy is constructed.
In a world where investment decisions are made in the fractions of seconds, new ventures of any kind are incredibly nerve wracking. It becomes easier to recycle or reconfigure existing stuff — stories, songs, stocks, bonds or what have you. As a result, we have come to live in the era of the derivative.

Most people are familiar with that word as it is used on Wall Street. Long gone are the days when its denizens functioned primarily as financiers — in the sense of connecting savers with new ventures. Few of our friends in finance actually finance anything. Rather, they “make markets”, which is another way of saying they organise wagers on the financial questions of the day. Developing derivatives has enabled the bankers to book more bets — on existing assets, such as bonds or mortgages, or enduring mysteries, such as the direction of interest rates or oil prices.

The film sequel is a variation on that theme, helping Hollywood studios to squeeze more money out of old ideas and existing properties. Curiously, to see how the game is played one need look no further than Disney itself and Bob Iger, its successful chief executive.
In many respects, Tomorrowland was out of character for Mr Iger’s Disney. Mr Iger is considered a genius these days — in the sense of Hollywood, where, as the lyricist Johnny Mercer noted, “you’re terrific if you’re even good” — because he doesn’t try to be genius. He bets on well-known brands — securing the Star Wars franchise, for example, by buying Lucasfilm — and then gives the people more of what they wanted in the past. Another Star Wars film (with septuagenarian Harrison Ford returning as Solo) is due in December, and two sequels and three spin-offs are in development.

Cultural cud chewing of this kind is, if anything, even more endemic in the music industry. An entire generation has grown up on American Idol and other “reality” competitions that spotlight new performers singing old songs. The argument could be made that the most unexpected moment in pop this year came when a Los Angeles jury ruled that the hit “Blurred Lines” — written by Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams — borrowed too liberally from the late Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up” and awarded his survivors more than $7m.

But the truly amazing thing is that all this repetition remains popular with the people and that suggests we need to prepare ourselves for sequels in the White House. I speak as one of the doubters who wondered whether Americans could stomach a presidential campaign in 2016 between the wife of one president, Mrs Clinton, and the son and brother of another, Mr Bush.

Now I’m not so sure. A citizenry that would want to sit through Fast & Furious 7, which opened this year, could probably handle a Clinton Administration 3 or a Bush Administration 4. For all we know, it might even look forward to a star turn by Hillary’s daughter, Chelsea, or Jeb’s son, George P. They are both waiting in the political wings, you know, polishing their acts.