I published a new column at The Escapist today. The success of David Gordon Green’s Halloween and the announcement of his upcoming Exorcist trilogy seemed like a good time to discuss one of the more interesting modern trends in studio franchising: the rebooted sequel, or the “requel.” The idea is that if an original movie is iconic, but subsequent sequels have devalued the brand, the studio can just roll the franchise back to the earlier beloved film and effectively start franchising again from that point onwards.
It is a frustrating and unsettling trend that illustrates the cannibalistic feeding frenzy that is modern franchising. Hollywood has already franchised every viable property, but this approach allows studios a second (or third) bite of the apple by effectively erasing perceived mistakes and rolling the clock back to earlier and more nostalgia-friendly points in the shared continuity. It’s interesting to see this approach becoming increasingly mainstream.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: canon, continuity, david gordon green, Franchising, halloween, intellectual property, prequel, reboot, requel, requels, sequels, terminator, the escapist, the exorcist |
the m0vie blog 
Oddly enough, the earliest studio I can remember doing one of these “requels” was Toho. Their 1984 reboot of Godzilla was positioned as a direct sequel to the 1954 original, while ignoring the fourteen (!) films that had followed it. They did another half dozen films in this rebooted continuity before pressing the rest button several more times–but, in almost all cases, treating the original film as the one indisputable piece of canon.
Oh, that’s a really great observation!