https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/29/branded-worlds-how-technology-recentralized-entertainment/

I love Hollywood box-office numbers because they provide a hard statistical view of cultural currents. Did you know, for instance, that there had never been a weekend when 8 of the top 10 movies in America were sequels — until this month? Or that, while almost 400 movies were released in the first half of 2018, nearly 40% of their total accumulated revenue came from just four releases, all of which were superhero sequels?

This is not what was supposed to happen. Ten years ago people thought that visual storytelling would be democratized; that new cameras, new editing suites, cheap streaming, and BitTorrent would combine to render high-cost obsolete-infrastructure Hollywood irrelevant. A worldwide cohort of genius independent filmmakers would use this new generation of accessible tools to slowly supplant Hollywood studios and producers as the drivers of visual and narrative culture.