Culture Crash: The Sequels and Spin-Offs That Keep On Coming

It’s a common refrain that Hollywood seems to be out of ideas, but it has likely never been more true than it is in this era of giant media companies consolidating. When Warner Brothers Discovery announced the rebranding of HBO Max to Max, it came with a whole slew of titles that will be coming soon to Max in an effort to keep people excited.

That list included The Penguin, a new show that will follow Colin Farrell’s Penguin from Matt Reeves’ The Batman universe. So that would be a comic book adaptation spin-off TV show? Not exactly winning a prize for originality.

Some of the other announced titles? A new Fixer Upper spin-off show, a second spin-off of The Big Bang Theory, and most controversially, a re-adaptation of the Harry Potter series, this time as a TV show. While the internet debated the necessity of such a thing, Lionsgate Entertainment announced it will be adapting the Twilight books into a TV show, too.

And it doesn’t stop there! Disney has, for years now, been adapting their animated movies into live action movies, a trend that doesn’t seem to be slowing down as audiences are being prepared for the forthcoming release of The Little Mermaid, while Lilo & Stitch casting news is grabbing headlines and a number of other titles, including sequels to Aladdin and The Lion King, are in the works.

Then there’s also all the Star Wars and Marvel content… and now a new gold mine has been struck, since the biggest movie of the year, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and the biggest show, The Last of Us, are both video game adaptations.

If I were a betting man, I’d say there’s a whole lot more where that came from.