why the movie industry keeps making sequels
My cousin is a big time movie snob. He loves rating movies new and old on IMDb and telling me all of their cinematic flaws. One critique I hear more often from him is “This movie does not need a sequel! It would be better as a standalone.” And honestly on some occasions, I tend to agree with him. Why are so many sequels made?
This article will pull from data on the top 100 movies from the years 2000–2009 to try to answer this question.
The data presented in Figure 1 below shows the production budget of a sequel versus a standalone. It can be seen that on average it cost more to make a sequel than a standalone. With this information alone it would be unexpected that sequels are as common as they are.

Looking at how much these movies make, Figure 2 reveals that the median box office revenue for a sequel is actually greater than the entire third quartile of standalone movies. While there are definitely standalone movies that make hundreds of million more dollars than some sequels, on average, more sequels make more money than standalones.

I find that high revenue a bit odd when we take into account the scores these sequels are getting. As seen in figure 3, sequels, on average, score lower than standalone movies. I think this is why my cousin hates sequels, because he knows that they are mostly being made because the movie industry knows that they will make good money in the box office. Sequels are safer than standalone movies, not necessarily better.
