Last week, I examined the origin of movie scripts, showing that Original Screenplays still account for over half of all movies — the same figure it was forty years ago.
This prompted a few readers to write in and ask whether there is now a greater prevalence of movie sequels.
I’m glad you asked.
Are movie sequels on the rise?
Turning to the same dataset of all movies released in US cinemas, we can see that sequels have been taking a smaller percentage of the production figures over the past forty years, albeit with a small rise over the past five years or so.
Sequels were twice as frequent in the late 1980s than in the 2010s, if we use production figures as our measure.
