Raising money for a "reboot," or something that can be sold as similar to previous blockbusters, is a whole lot easier than raising the money for something fresh.
A big multiplex theater isn't much different than a fast food restaurant. Even smaller urban "art" theaters are mass market, Red Lobster compared to Long John Silvers.
As the cost of digital movie equipment comes down (1080p, 2K, 4K...) it may be as disruptive to the movie business as digital was to the music business. There are people who don't go out to the movies, they wait for the video disk. They are satisfied with home HDTV.
It doesn't cost a fortune to publish a book any more, it doesn't cost a fortune to publish music, and it's possible to make a high quality movie with a very low budget. It's mostly about the time and energy and talents of the artists.
The finance and marketing people control the gateways to the "mass market." Everyone else is doomed to muddle through life as any other artist does.
My parents are artists, I have two siblings who have Hollywood screen credits as small part characters (biker, cowboy, girl on beach, cheerleader, that sort of thing...) but they got tired of that rough lifestyle. My wife's an artist, my kids are artists, but nobody has made a full time career of art in our immediate family except one of my wife's sisters.
I like many sorts of movies one never sees in the cinemas, I'd rather go to a local restaurant than a chain, I buy art directly from the artists or musicians, I read books that will never be on the New York Times best seller list. I tend to exist outside the mass market. I'm not a complete snot about that. We read all the Harry Potter books in our house and watched all the movies. Good for J.K. Rowling. It's wonderful to see art both celebrated and very well rewarded.
I find the ratio of gems to crap is about the same in small art as it is in big expensive mass market art.
As Theodore Sturgeon said, 90% of everything is crud.
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