A New Golden Age Emerges for O.G. Film Stars

A new normal has descended on Hollywood as studios keep mining their intellectual property archives: tap into the huge gold mine nostalgia can provide at the box office by going back and casting original franchise actors in an umpteenth sequel or reboot. Look no farther than the success of Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home — which features prior Spidey stars Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield alongside current Spider-Man Tom Holland — or Paramount’s Tom Cruise sequel Top Gun: Maverick.

“Toying with legacy characters can be a fantastic weapon and is shorthand with the audience. It invokes a love for the original and sort of promises that it will carry over into this version of it,” says Michael Ireland, who is co-president of Paramount’s Motion Picture Group alongside Daria Cercek.

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“Authenticity is the real McCoy. The choices are so vast now from a content perspective,” adds Sony Motion Picture Group president Sanford Panitch. “Why do you want to see a redux when you can see the real thing?”

Notes a rival executive, “Spider-Man: No Way Home proved the power and scale of this.” (And no, that rival exec isn’t from Warner Bros., now readying DC’s The Flash, another multiverse superhero pic that is bringing back both Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck as Batman.)

Next up, though, is Universal and Amblin’s Jurassic World: Dominion. The latest installment in the franchise, which opens June 10 in the U.S., sees Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill and BD Wong reunite for the first time since they appeared in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993). They join Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, who have anchored filmmaker Colin Trevorrow’s newer Jurassic World trilogy. Trevorrow, who works closely with Spielberg, succeeded in uniting new and old. “It’s obvious that if you can combine the nostalgia and the new, you stand a chance of growing your audience,” says Universal marketing chief Michael Moses.

One could argue that Universal had to ensure the roar stayed strong. Jurassic World was a mega-success, grossing $653 million domestically and $1.67 billion globally. While 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom joined the billion dollar club, it was down notably from the 2015 film, particularly in the U.S. ($417.7 million versus $653.4 million.)

Disney’s 2015 reboot of the Star Wars franchise, The Force Awakens, which brought back Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, helped set the template to follow. But it was Universal and Blumhouse’s Halloween (2018), which returned Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, that accelerated the trend with ferocity — the horror pic grossed $255.6 million worldwide against a budget of less than $15 million.

Its follow-up, Halloween Kills, released in October 2021 amid COVID, did quite nicely considering it was a day-and-date release, grossing $92.1 million domestically — nearly double Wonder Woman 1984’s gross — and $131.6 million globally. The final title, Halloween Ends, opens in October. “It has been the ride of my life to portray Laurie Strode since 1978,” Curtis recently told theater owners at CinemaCon.

But convincing Curtis to return to a franchise she’d grown frustrated with wasn’t easy. “When I first called Jamie’s agent, they said, ‘don’t even bother. She’s not going do this ever again,’” recalls Blumhouse founder and uberproducer Jason Blum, who partnered with Halloween rights holder Miramax on making a new trilogy. Blum succeeded in settling up a 15-minute meeting with original Halloween filmmaker John Carpenter. “He’s famously very gruff and made no exception with me,” Blum says, who stuck to his pitch and told Carpenter the movies would be made either way — this is Hollywood, after all — so why not help? Carpenter, who was initially a “No,” changed his mind by the next day and said “Yes.”

Blum knew Carpenter would attract other top talent. David Gordon Green came aboard to direct and write the script with Danny McBride. “I don’t think David wanted to reinvent a movie that already existed when the original creator of that movie is around, and somehow either against it is not involved,” says Blum. When Curtis learned of Green and Carpenter’s involvement, her resistance fell away. But she’s made it abundantly clear that Halloween Ends is really the end.

“It’s good that the tide has turned toward a reverence of the people who were originally responsible for these amazing movies,” says Blum.  “Right?  I think it’s dumb to ignore them.”

Similar to Halloween, there have been umpteen titles in Wes Craven’s Scream slasher franchise. Installments started trailing off at the box office, but this year, Spyglass and Paramount’s Scream — a direct sequel to the first films — energized fans when packing the cast with legacy actors including Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette. “I think it speaks to the exponential expansion of stories that are being told, whether across TV or film,” says Cercek. The film did terrifyingly good business, grossing $140 million globally. (As this story went to press, Campbell announced on June 6 that she won’t be returning to the next Scream installment over pay issues.)

The Age of the O.G. is part of the “requel” era, whereby studios return to the source, compared with doing a remake, reboot or spinoff. Take Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021). Following Paul Feig’s 2016 reboot, the late Ivan Reitman proposed making a direct sequel to the first two films — both of which he directed — and having key actors including Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Sigourney Weaver reprise their roles (they made cameos in Feig’s film, but as different characters). The new movie, directed by son Jason Reitman, earned nearly $200 million, a tidy sum considering the COVID-19 crisis.

On the opposite spectrum are cautionary tales: Lucasfilm’s origin spinoff film Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), starring Alden Ehrenreich as a young Hans Solo, fell flat. (The original Han Solo, Harrison Ford, was heralded as a conquering hero May 26 at Star Wars Celebration when turning up to promote Lucasfilm’s Indiana Jones 5. He’ll be on the verge of 81 when it comes out in June 2023.) And sources say 20th Century Fox’s Independence Day: Resurgence (2016), a sequel to the 1996 blockbuster, should have been scrapped once Will Smith made it clear he wanted no part of the follow-up, even while other legacy characters returned.

And sometimes, even having legacy characters doesn’t mean a film will work. The Matrix: Resurrections, headlining Keanu Reeves and other original stars, was quickly forgotten when opening late last year. Warns Ireland: “You still have to tell a great story. You still have to give [audiences] something new and different. You have to build something.”

A version of this story first appeared in the June 1 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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