Is Hollywood running out of ideas for movies?!

Is Hollywood running out of ideas for movies?

With sequels, prequels, movies made from books, TV shows, cartoons, broadway musicals, and remakes, it sure seems like it! Just think in 20 years, that's all there will be!

For Hollywood, it's not a question of whether the movie that is produced is original. It is a question of whether it is marketable. Studios like to make sure that the stories they are producing have already been proven popular, or at least relatively so. This is why they frequently remake books, Broadway shows, television, etc. into movies. The sequel/prequel phenomenon is of a similar nature. The original sold well, so they capitalize of its popularity, hoping it will be strong enough to support the sequel.

Technically, there are no "new" stories in any medium. (The Odyssey and the Iliad pretty much told all the stories.) There are only new ways of telling them. Hollywood, however, relies on old formulas because they have proven themselves to be most profitable.

(BTW--Hollywood has always relied heavily on books to provide cinimatic material, on Broadway slightly less so, but "the sequel" is a relatively new phenomenom, and the remakes of old television shows even more recent.)