Everything that’s old is eventually new again in Hollywood, but that’s become especially true throughout the last decade, where the desire to continue mining marketable properties has seen the straightforward sequel or reboot joined by a whole host of new offshoots.
Re-imaginings, reinventions, legacyquels, sidequels, preboots, continuations and several other completely made up buzzwords have allowed the various studios around Hollywood to approach franchises from a multitude of brand new angles, where new installments don’t have to be pigeonholed, defined by or even related to what came before.
A tweet pointing out this relatively new phenomenon, one that’s set to become more prevalent than ever before in the coming years, has left countless fans questioning whether they’ve found themselves stuck in an early-2000s blockbuster time loop.
Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, Keanu Reeves’ Neo, Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus, Scream‘s Ghostface, Michael Keaton’s Batman, Bill Murray’s Peter Venkman and many more are all set to appear in some of the biggest movies coming to theaters between now and the end of 2022, a statement that also rang true at various points between the early 1990s and 2003, which is incredible when you think about it. Who said the movie business was running out of ideas?