There was a time when news that a beloved show or movie was coming back felt like a gift.
These days my first reaction is closer to a sigh, because it feels like Hollywood is rummaging through the same drawer, hoping to find something it hasn’t already used.
The latest example is Glee.
On Sept. 24, creator Ryan Murphy said he had finished writing a script for a potential reboot of the musical drama, which aired on Fox from 2009 to 2015, and that he had been quietly talking with former cast members about returning.
Then there’s The Cheetah Girls: Next Gen, Disney’s fourth film in the franchise, with Raven-Symoné and Adrienne Bailon returning alongside a new generation of performers. Production recently wrapped in South Africa.
On paper, I get it. Both come with a devoted fan base, recognizable characters and years of nostalgia already baked in.
But here’s what keeps nagging at me: nostalgia can’t recreate what made the originals meaningful. And too often, Hollywood acts like being familiar and being original is the same thing.
Why does Hollywood keep doing this?
Honestly, the financial logic is hard to argue with.
An established franchise comes with built-in awareness.
We already know the characters, the premise and whether we want more of them.
Box Office Mojo’s 2025 domestic data shows that several of the year’s top earners were sequels, adaptations or reimaginings, including Zootopia 2, Lilo & Stitch, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Jurassic World: Rebirth and How to Train Your Dragon.
None of them is exactly a fresh idea.
Studios have even more reason to play it safe after the pandemic, the 2023 strikes and the upcoming acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The Guardian has documented Hollywood’s growing reliance on remakes, reboots and sequels, tying it to financial risk and the commercial value of nostalgia.
When you put it that way, who could blame them?
Except the safe bet isn’t always safe.
Disney is the perfect example.
The live-action Lilo & Stitch was one of 2025’s biggest hits. But the live-action Snow White, which took the studio back to its very first animated feature, opened to just $43 million in the United States against a budget above $250 million. That’s a worse start than Dumbo had. Not exactly a comparison you want.
Then there’s Freakier Friday, which I’d call the polite version of the problem. It brought back Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis and opened bigger than the 2003 original. But it finished with about $153 million worldwide, a little less than the original's roughly $161 million.
So one film flopped. The other couldn’t quite top the movie it followed.
So much for a sure thing.
So, why does nostalgia feel so good?
Here’s the part I find most interesting.
Half the appeal of a reboot is the chance to briefly become the person you were when you first watched it.
For me, that’s Mercedes and Santana’s iconic performance of “River Deep, Mountain High” on Glee. And for the Cheetah Girls, it’s wanting to wear everything cheetah print. Everything.
So a Glee reboot can remind us of an era when TV musicals dominated pop culture.
A Cheetah Girls revival can summon Disney Channel afternoons, choreographed routines and songs that became part of childhood. That feeling is powerful because it’s personal.
It works on movie audiences too.
Maybe you remember the first time you saw a favourite film in a theatre, on a rented tape or on the living-room couch with family. A sequel or remake promises to take you back to that moment, which is exactly why the pitch is so easy to make.
But think about what you’re actually getting. A memory is something we already own. So a studio that sells it back without adding anything new is asking us to pay for a feeling we already have.
The question every reboot has to answer
That’s why I keep coming back to one question: “Why does this story need to exist again?”
Bringing back familiar faces or recreating recognizable scenes doesn’t answer it.
The original Glee was a product of its moment, blending musical numbers, teen drama, humour and conversations about identity. I don’t believe a new version can simply rerun that formula and expect the same response.
Here’s the thing about Glee, though. Much of what made it good, in my view, was its humour. And let’s be honest: that show was out of pocket.
It got away with jokes and storylines that I can’t imagine a network signing off on today. That was a big part of the fun. It never felt like it was trying to be careful.
And no one embodied it better than Sue Sylvester, the cheerleading coach played by Jane Lynch, whose biting one-liners and outrageous schemes kept the show’s earnest musical numbers from tipping into sentimentality.
That style of comedy belonged to a different cultural moment. I find it hard to imagine a character like Sue landing the same way in today’s society, where audiences scrutinize punchlines more closely and studios are warier of what they put on screen. A reboot would have to soften the humour that defined the original, which risks dulling its edge, or keep it and risk a backlash. Neither choice brings back what viewers loved the first time.
I will give The Cheetah Girls some credit, because it at least seems to understand the assignment. Next Gen is built around a new group of girls, with the original stars serving as a bridge between past and present.
So, what actually works?
Some revivals get this right.
Netflix’s A Different World reboot has been framed as a continuation that links the original series’ legacy to contemporary issues and a new generation of characters. The Guardian noted that it keeps elements of the original while addressing modern realities.
That’s the standard I’d hold every revival to: not recreating a memory, but continuing a conversation.
The same approach has paid off on the big screen with Creed, the 2015 Rocky spinoff. Director Ryan Coogler handed the franchise to a new hero, Apollo Creed’s son Adonis. Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa stayed on in a quieter supporting role as a reluctant trainer. The Boston Globe’s review credited that shift with giving a weary series a welcome new life.
Notice what both of them did. They stopped asking us to relive the past and gave us someone new to follow. And that’s what encourages me most. Audiences clearly aren’t allergic to fresh ideas.
The original film Sinners was a 2025 success, and Box Office Mojo lists it among the year’s major domestic releases, in the middle of an otherwise franchise-heavy field.
To be clear, I’m not saying Hollywood should stop making sequels, remakes or reboots. Some stories have more to explore, and a new creative team can find possibilities in an old premise that earlier versions missed.
My problem is when the existence of an audience becomes the only reason to make the thing.
Nostalgia can get us to press play. It can fill theatres, spark social-media chatter and send old soundtracks climbing the charts.
But on its own, it can’t create compelling characters, meaningful conflict or a reason to care.
Hollywood doesn’t have to choose between nostalgia and originality. It can treat the past as a foundation rather than a ceiling and the best use of that old drawer is to find something new inside it.
Because the next generation of viewers deserves stories that become their own childhood memories, not just recycled versions of ours.