I think there is a hollywood trap right now, investors want safe returns, so big franchise names have been thought to be the safest return you can invest in.

A creative wants to make a story they can call their own.

Rock meets Hard Place, so the creatives - in order to get funding to create - co-opt existing franchises in their pitch, and if it gets accepted, they want to tear down the previous lore so they can make it their own.

So we end up in a loop where franchisees often get abused in the new creative works.

Like the Joker movie gamespot

When he pitched the idea for Joker to Warner Bros., the studio went back and forth. “And I go, ‘We’re gonna sneak a real movie in under the guise of [a comic book movie],’” the director continued. That apparently did the trick.

Of course, that’s a controversial statement, as it implies that comic book and superhero movies aren’t what Phillips considers “real movies.” The director took a moment during his story to clarify: “I don’t mean that like disparagingly to comic book movies–those are real movies,” he said. But he went on to double down a moment later.

“All of a sudden kids who wouldn’t care or go to this movie if it was called ‘Arthur’ are going to go sit in this movie and be exposed to something entirely different than Avengers: Endgame,” he continued. “I love those movies. [Robert Downey Jr.] is my boy. But they just watched a real movie, in a way.”