Is Western Science Fiction dying?

[Steve G]

Perhaps the commontary of the current state of sci-fi is the best video Paul Chato has aired; the Redshirting of men on Star Trek and other Sci-Fi. This is a good watch with humour.

[jebbo]

I have to say that I find this thread odd as I personally know 4 active (and 1 who hasn't written for a decade) UK Sci-Fi / Fantasy authors ... sure, some are rubbish, but others are multiple Hugo / BSFA winners.

So written (rather than video) seems pretty alive and well to me.

--- Tony

[sanman]

Should AI be turned into a mainstay or center-piece in future storytelling?
Some cautious sober reflection is required.

On the one hand, we can think AUC (Area Under Curve), on the other hand we can think S2N (Signal-to-Noise)

If you're going to primarily rely on audiences to sift the wheat from the chaff, while producing lots of chaff, then you may end up creating a lot of audience fatigue in the process.

[JulesVerneATV]

Top 2025 Movies at the Worldwide Box Office
https://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-records/worldwide/all-movies/cumulative/released-in-2025

1    Ne Zha 2 (哪吒之魔童闹海)    
2    A Minecraft Movie    
3    Tang Tan 1900 (唐探1900)    
4    Captain America: Brave New World    
5    Sinners    
6    Thunderbolts*    
7    Disney’s Snow White    
8    Creation of the Gods II: Demonic Confrontation
9    Dog Man    
10    Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy    
11    Mickey 17    
12    Boonie Bears: Future Reborn (熊出没·重启未来)…        
13    A Working Man
14    The Amateur    
15    Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants
16    The Accountant 2    
17    The King of Kings    
18    The Monkey    
19    Den of Thieves 2: Pantera    
20    One of Them Days    
21    Operation Hadal (蛟龙行动)    
22    Final Destination: Bloodlines    
23    Until Dawn    
24    Flight Risk    
25    Black Bag    
26    Volshebnik Izumrudnogo goroda
27    Companion    
28    Wolf Man    
29    Novocaine    
30    Heart Eyes

[sanman]

Perhaps the commontary of the current state of sci-fi is the best video Paul Chato has aired; the Redshirting of men on Star Trek and other Sci-Fi. This is a good watch with humour.

I had posted his latest video, but the one you posted is perhaps more artfully worded, offering comments that are both insightful and witty. It's good that he continues to be that way...




... in spite of all those boots to the head

[JulesVerneATV]

so maybe another quick look at budgets, they do it well and control spending with US indie movies and overseas movie makers
and because the Hollywood is now business model that the President 'Ordered' to be saved and maybe makes no sense these days..it has become a political thing now on both sides to save the Big LA studios...and from both left and right we have criticism of this save the big studios policy.

Indie and Overseas movies?

Godzilla Minus One from year 2003 which made a lot of money globally Budget $10–15 million
the original Final destination a horror Budget $23 million, the horror film can be even cheaper
Mad Max Budget $200,000 or 0.2 Million
Five Nights at Freddy's film 2023 Budget 20 Million
Rocky Budget $1 million
Night of the Living Dead Budget $114,000
Locke a 2013 psychological drama road film

There was also a time when the market wasn't so bad if you had any kind of movie that did ok the studio would market merchandise and you would recover money from a poor box office with t-shirts and toys and DVD sales and Disney Rides and sales of baseball caps

Today's budgets

The Electric State year 2025 Budget cost $320
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning part2 Production Budget 400 Million or $400,000,000    
Eternals 2021 movie $275 Million
Star Wars: The Last Jedi  year 2017 Budget $300
Snow White remake 2025 movie $300 Million
Batman v Superman year 2016 Budget $270
The Flash...supposed to reboot WB DC with some multi verse dimension, Budget $220 million actor arrested
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania 2023 Budget $330...one of the lead actors arrested
The Marvels 2023 Budget $300+ Million

How is their business model making any sense?

[sanman]

so maybe another quick look at budgets, they do it well and control spending with US indie movies and overseas movie makers
and because the Hollywood is now business model that the President 'Ordered' to be saved and maybe makes no sense these days..it has become a political thing now on both sides to save the Big LA studios...and from both left and right we have criticism of this save the big studios policy.

Indie and Overseas movies?

Godzilla Minus One from year 2003 which made a lot of money globally Budget $10–15 million
the original Final destination a horror Budget $23 million, the horror film can be even cheaper
Mad Max Budget $200,000 or 0.2 Million
Five Nights at Freddy's film 2023 Budget 20 Million
Rocky Budget $1 million
Night of the Living Dead Budget $114,000
Locke a 2013 psychological drama road film

There was also a time when the market wasn't so bad if you had any kind of movie that did ok the studio would market merchandise and you would recover money from a poor box office with t-shirts and toys and DVD sales and Disney Rides and sales of baseball caps

Today's budgets

The Electric State year 2025 Budget cost $320
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning part2 Production Budget 400 Million or $400,000,000    
Eternals 2021 movie $275 Million
Star Wars: The Last Jedi  year 2017 Budget $300
Snow White remake 2025 movie $300 Million
Batman v Superman year 2016 Budget $270
The Flash...supposed to reboot WB DC with some multi verse dimension, Budget $220 million actor arrested
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania 2023 Budget $330...one of the lead actors arrested
The Marvels 2023 Budget $300+ Million

Godzilla Minus One, meet Jurassic World Rebirth - hahaha!
Sigh. 

How is their business model making any sense?

The gaps in it and the obsolescence are hard to ignore.
Maybe it can be reconstituted with the help of frog DNA and AI  _{(coz AI is good for everything)}

[JulesVerneATV]

I read "Dune" in 1965 when it was published. so 60 years, not 30 years. For me, any mechanism that can move matter between points in space faster than light can travel between those points is FTL travel, and all such mechanisms are fantasy.

The prohibitions in the OC Bible are IMO also fantasy. They require that all branches of the future society refrain from developing and using AI. It only takes one individual violate the prohibitions.

a lot of the honesty of old art and attempts at originality seems gone

StarWars is without doubt more 'Fantasy' influenced than Science, it feels like a Western Cowboy type 'Frontier' film, its almost like a cut and past of a bunch of scifi and war movies and samurai movies that somehow amalgam into this new scifi fantastical universe, but with very little actual 'science', it has bits of movie 'The Dam Busters' a 1955 film, it feels like a Flash Gordon Cartoon it also feels like Kurosawa the Samurai duelists and it feels like King Arthur. Dune is very much a Western product but I feel it has a flavor of that 'East meets West' maybe a commentary on the crossroads of the Middle East, his own Buddhist philosophy, many believed he took inspiration from real world history wondered if Dune intended as commentary of the Middle East?
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/280438/is-dune-intended-as-an-allegory-of-the-middle-east
Brian Herbert for a while took over the brand, he was an editor of the books, he would write Dune books with  with Kevin J. Anderson and Dreamer of Dune The Biography of Frank Herbert. You could argue that after the failure of attempt of commercial success from David Lynch and the Scifi-Channel tv show or 'Syfy' it has slowly become a mainstream brand and cashcow.

at the time Star Wars was very original but it has since become a big repeating cashcow a media franchise like the Disney Marvels and Warner Bros DC movies, Jurassic Park movies, James Bonds, the Twilights, the Terminators, the Alien Xenomorphs, Transformers, the Xmens, the Supermans. It is a business and one idea they have is to have an entertainment product and ship it as a 'brand'. The Fast & Furious franchise young adult street racers or teens with some crime story racing cars, there is 11 movies of  Fast & Furious now?


and in the Fantasy Genre the Japanese started winning?
they do LOTR and Dungeons and Dragons better than Western entertainment companies

 
a social media channel 'Weird Place'



Why Japanese Fantasy has Dungeons... and sometimes Dragons

[lamontagne]

Top 2025 Movies at the Worldwide Box Office
https://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-records/worldwide/all-movies/cumulative/released-in-2025

1    Ne Zha 2 (哪吒之魔童闹海)    
2    A Minecraft Movie    
3    Tang Tan 1900 (唐探1900)    
4    Captain America: Brave New World    
5    Sinners    
6    Thunderbolts*    
7    Disney’s Snow White    
8    Creation of the Gods II: Demonic Confrontation
9    Dog Man    
10    Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy    
11    Mickey 17    
12    Boonie Bears: Future Reborn (熊出没·重启未来)…        
13    A Working Man
14    The Amateur    
15    Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants
16    The Accountant 2    
17    The King of Kings    
18    The Monkey    
19    Den of Thieves 2: Pantera    
20    One of Them Days    
21    Operation Hadal (蛟龙行动)    
22    Final Destination: Bloodlines    
23    Until Dawn    
24    Flight Risk    
25    Black Bag    
26    Volshebnik Izumrudnogo goroda
27    Companion    
28    Wolf Man    
29    Novocaine    
30    Heart Eyes

1    Ne Zha 2 (哪吒之魔童闹海)    Eastern Fantasy
2    A Minecraft Movie    Western Science fiction
3    Tang Tan 1900 (唐探1900)    Eastern detective
4    Captain America: Brave New World    Western Superhero Science fiction
5    Sinners    Eastern detective, drama
6    Thunderbolts*     Western Superhero, Science fiction
7    Disney’s Snow White    Eastern fantasy
8    Creation of the Gods II: Demonic Confrontation  Eastern Fantasy
9    Dog Man    Western Superhero
10    Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy    Western drama
11    Mickey 17    Eastern science fiction
12    Boonie Bears: Future Reborn (熊出没·重启未来)…        Eastern science fiction superhero
13    A Working Man Western action
14    The Amateur    Western thriller
15    Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants
16    The Accountant 2    Western thriller
17    The King of Kings    Western drama
18    The Monkey    Western horror
19    Den of Thieves 2: Pantera    Western thriller
20    One of Them Days    Western comedy
21    Operation Hadal (蛟龙行动)    Eastern thriller
22    Final Destination: Bloodlines    Eastern horror
23    Until Dawn    Western horror
24    Flight Risk    Eastern thriller
25    Black Bag    Eastern thriller
26    Volshebnik Izumrudnogo goroda  Eastern fantasy? 
27    Companion    Western science fiction
28    Wolf Man    Eastern horror
29    Novocaine    Eastern comedy
30    Heart Eyes Eastern horror comedy

Great list, thanks!  From the list, what seems to be dead is western comedy and realistic drama, Bridget Jones is the first one at no.10.  The most classic Science fiction would be no.11, Mickey 17. So  Science fiction is high up on the list, and superhero films, that are a crossover between SF and fantasy, are way up there at the top.  Very few are aimed at adults.

I was fascinated by 26, a Sovietic rip-off of the wizard of Oz.
So, from this, Western science fiction hardly seems dead.  Genre movies have, it seems, taken over the cultural landscape.

[sanman]

Great list, thanks!  From the list, what seems to be dead is western comedy and realistic drama, Bridget Jones is the first one at no.10.  The most classic Science fiction would be no.11, Mickey 17. So  Science fiction is high up on the list, and superhero films, that are a crossover between SF and fantasy, are way up there at the top.  Very few are aimed at adults.

I was fascinated by 26, a Sovietic rip-off of the wizard of Oz.
So, from this, Western science fiction hardly seems dead.  Genre movies have, it seems, taken over the cultural landscape.

If I give you a list of Top 30 fast food chains, this won't necessarily tell you how healthy their menu offering is, or even what state of health of their franchise is in.

[lamontagne]

Great list, thanks!  From the list, what seems to be dead is western comedy and realistic drama, Bridget Jones is the first one at no.10.  The most classic Science fiction would be no.11, Mickey 17. So  Science fiction is high up on the list, and superhero films, that are a crossover between SF and fantasy, are way up there at the top.  Very few are aimed at adults.

I was fascinated by 26, a Sovietic rip-off of the wizard of Oz.
So, from this, Western science fiction hardly seems dead.  Genre movies have, it seems, taken over the cultural landscape.

If I give you a list of Top 30 fast food chains, this won't necessarily tell you how healthy their menu offering is, or even what state of health of their franchise is in.

That seems like a false analogy between healthy food and the health on an industry, or of a genre.  A list of the top 30 food chains, if they were all owner by China, and served chinese menus, would tell me something on the health of the western fast food industry.  If burgers win out world wide, that does says something about cultural influence, as well as something about the attraction of processed foods and the power of meat over vegetables.

If the western SF movies are generating revenue, that is always a good step towards survival!  But in the specific case of Mickey 17, perhaps not quite enough revenue.
And does the question even make sense today?  Mickey 17 has a British lead, with a South Corean director with an idea that would have fitted nicely in an Analog serial. A web search tells me it's based on a novel, Mickey 7, by an american writer who actually has published in Analog.  Produced by Warner bros, that seems entirely american.
Is it Western? Is it Eastern, and does it matter in the least?
A Minecraft Movie has made a lot of money, if is clearly western SF, with portals and parallel universes that could have been penned by Heinlein, or fitted nicely in an Ace double.  But with the twist of the link to an existing video game.  Does that make is less SF?  It has american leads, writers and was produced by an american studio, is based on a Swedish video game, and seesm to quality as western.

Have the old distribution channels changed?  Of course.  I can't go into a small concenience store and buy a magazine off the shelf, or a SF novel of the rack.  But I can't buy any novel, or magazine (with rare exceptions) off the shelf anyway.  But that doesn't mean writing is dead, just that things have changed.

[sanman]

Reposting from the Andor thread...

I think Disney streaming is on its way out. Disney is trying to survive by recently adding more streaming outlets, such as ESPN and Hulu, to maintain its revenue. When you see this occurring (watering down content), then they are struggling.

News outlets reported layoffs at Disney's streaming divisions yesterday. Consequently, reductions in streaming have begun. Ahsoka Season II will likely be the last series to stream, and Mandalorian Season 4 has been canceled. No further streaming series is scheduled. Lucasfilm is currently hiring more staff in the animation departments. The assumption is that Disney is reverting to a post-2018 strategy focused solely on movies and animation. It's not just Star Wars that is affected, but Marvel as well.

Using Game of Thrones as a convenient example, its impact on the entertainment landscape was far larger than some fleeting movie. There are economies of scale to be had from amortizing your expenses across a larger multi-episodic serial production. You also build up a loyal audience base, like with soap operas. Hollywood studios like making sequels for that reason, and a larger TV serial is sort of like a bunch of mini sequels. Streaming is also more economically efficient as a distribution platform, and also arguably benefits the wider marketplace and society by forcing better infrastructural upgrades for internet bandwidth. It offers far more convenience, and beats having to pay more money for overpriced theater snacks.

Just like with smallsat launchers, it's possible there's been an over-proliferation of too many, and this would lead to a winnowing of the market, to borrow Beck's phrase. However, the remaining survivors still left standing will be able to reap greater market share for themselves, and it seems obvious that from a viewer experience standpoint, the high-quality streaming TV series is undoubtedly the apex form of entertainment.

As the largest entertainment company by market capitalization, Disney should want to stay in the fight and reap the spoils of victory by showing staying power and outlasting rivals. Instead, they've only fallen prey to their own internal political instincts of scapegoating.  Bad creative decisions were made, causing money to be wasted on bad productions. Because streaming series have larger budgets, that meant the bad creative decisions resulted in more wastage, as compared to bad creative decision-making on movies. The solution is to vet ideas better and with a more critical eye, to avoid the bad creative decisions that can result from their corporatized process. The solution is not to retreat from the newer better platform that offers the viewer a better experience. The viewers will continue to stay loyal to their own interest, which is guided by having a better experience. If Disney throws away the opportunity, then somebody else will come forward to claim it.

(I guess we should be talking about this in the other thread about science fiction dying)

[sanman]

[sanman]

Just saw this and had to post this here, for perspective on past attitudes towards science fiction



(I think I saw every one of those news segments when they first aired, except for the first one intro'd by John Chancellor)

[sanman]

The following is copy-pasted from the Space-Themed AI Art thread for more appropriate topical discussion)

If others hadn't told me it was AI, then I'd have never known

https://youtube.com/watch?v=zSFk6odrkw0

Yes, they are, and they are comparable to a set of AI videos concerning a specific Bigfoot character.

https://www.youtube.com/@AWorldAccordingToAI

...

This is insane. At this rate, what will we even need actors and film production artists for? Imagine the exposure level of their industry to this kind of disruptive change.

I once again mention AUCvS2N   (Area Under Curve vs Signal To Noise)
By AUC, I mean that the total output will increase because of this change lowering the bar to participation/production.
However, with every Tom-Dick-Harry now trying to be George Lucas or Steven Spielberg, then it means a lot of garbage will be produced, so lower Signal-to-Noise.

We're going to need more curation and vetting of content produced, because most ordinary people won't want to wade thru piles of junk just to find the gems worth watching.

[Joris]

I think scifi does better if it has more time to tell its story, which is why it does so well with tv-shows and videogames where it's not forced to put everything in two hours. Movies also tend to be high-budget endeavours which means studios like to play safe and fund prequels, sequels, remakes, and adaptions. This means you won't get many new original stories out of hollywood, compared to other media.

Without going into a list of recomendations for really good new original scifi stories such as Pantheon, For All Mankind, or Severance, I think it's better to think about what scifi is and what influences it had. The new top-gun movie started out with Tom Cruise in a hypersonic scramjet, that is very scifi and there was no need for it in the story. A lot of recent superhero movies feature a lot of scifi despite their source material being devoid of it.

I also think that it's hard to come to an exact consensus about what is scifi and what is fantasy, but I challenge anyone to come with a definition where the Star Wars movies are scifi and not fantasy. I think a lot of thoughts about scifi dying are just people liking something that was popular when they were young and then being nostalgic about it or its genre. All those types of movies are still being made, they just don't feel as good now because they are the same quality and you're just not as nostalgic about them.

Perhaps the commontary of the current state of sci-fi

The state of 'a' scifi maybe, but zooming in on one iteration of one single franchise because it was essentially the only one on TV in a time when there was only room for one such show does not even attempt to be an unbiased take.

I think a more accurate observation w.r.t. scifi shows is that they stopped being nonepisodic, in my opinion this makes them better TV-shows, although it does make them different and people don't always like fundamental change to something they liked before. In the past you were usually relegated to watching what was on TV, which means tv-shows couldn't rely on their viewers having seen everything that came before. This meant that stories couldn't really progress as much and it gave them a sitcom-feel to it, where nothing they did mattered and they always ended up with the same main characters in the same situation.

The encounter with a dyson-sphere in TNG that was forgotten after the credits for example. That's a truly giant artefact of a society far more advanced than theirs and it just doesn't matter, the next episode is about the crew struggling with their sleep. It feels like watching an episode of Frasier where the characters watch the news about how it was discovered that Charon is an alien megastructure and it can be reactivated for interstellar travel, and the only impact is that Frasier decides to try out a new dish that he's allergic too because all of humanity might die and the only thing that has changed next episode is that Frasier has learned that he can in fact eat shrimp.

[sanman]

I think a more accurate observation w.r.t. scifi shows is that they stopped being nonepisodic, in my opinion this makes them better TV-shows, although it does make them different and people don't always like fundamental change to something they liked before. In the past you were usually relegated to watching what was on TV, which means tv-shows couldn't rely on their viewers having seen everything that came before. This meant that stories couldn't really progress as much and it gave them a sitcom-feel to it, where nothing they did mattered and they always ended up with the same main characters in the same situation.

Yeah, that's the case with all TV fiction series, and not just sci-fi. The episodic way allow  the episodes to be kept more compartmentalized, as compared to a continuity.

The encounter with a dyson-sphere in TNG that was forgotten after the credits for example. That's a truly giant artefact of a society far more advanced than theirs and it just doesn't matter, the next episode is about the crew struggling with their sleep. It feels like watching an episode of Frasier where the characters watch the news about how it was discovered that Charon is an alien megastructure and it can be reactivated for interstellar travel, and the only impact is that Frasier decides to try out a new dish that he's allergic too because all of humanity might die and the only thing that has changed next episode is that Frasier has learned that he can in fact eat shrimp.

Or like that episode where they help to break in the Voyager with Janeway?



(j/k, that was a comedy skit staged for an awards show, if it wasn't obvious)

[Apollo22]

Which Rama would be best ?

Dennis Villeneuve Rama ?
Christopher Nolan Rama ?
Alfonso Cuaron Rama ?

I ask because I loved Gravity, Interstellar and Arrival all the same.

[JulesVerneATV]

revisionist?

always on the fringe, a 1982 American science fiction 'Tron' action adventure film



banned from the Oscars, TRON Was Disqualified Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan, Barnard Hughes




'Frankly it blew my mind Tron 1982'
https://retrocomputingforum.com/t/frankly-it-blew-my-mind-tron-1982/2704

Ares New Trailer


citing the extensive CGI use as essentially cheating.

Computers are in common use for visual effects today but back then they said TRON was a 'cheat' and so Disqualified,  but it also used practical effects the glowing effects on the character suits were created through practical tactics in post-production, hundreds of real life hand painters were hired, it was E.T. Also , Blade Runner  and Poltergeist, with E.T. winning a most film fans agree that Tron deserved to be in the mix.

Loss or Flops or Box Office Bombs

Snow White remake Loss of $115
Joker 2 Folie à Deux Lost $144
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny    $145
Wish $125
Devotion $100
Strange World $200
The Marvels $225
The Flash    $160
Space Jam A New Legacy $120
The Matrix Resurrections $150

[JulesVerneATV]

The comicbook hero stuff and DrWhos and StarTreks and StarWars stuff seems kind of dying now.
Here are Some observations an opinion of mine on what I have seen on art, film, book, comicbook, fantasy, science plus fiction and game trends, it used to be all Hollywood but as world went global Hollywood is now less dominant.

Hollywood has been the dominant force for movies all around the world. For decades Hollywood has been the winner, there has been no force like it these past decades. It might be debatable if this is a good thing or bad thing, for example it would cost small 'indie' studios their artistic ideas and small independent film projects if Hollywood was too dominant against small US film makers. California was where it was done, the Studio Tours around LA not around New York, Texas, Florida, it was LA that was the number-1 force and foreign films from Europe, Japan, Latin America, the Soviet Union, China, South Korea, Australia stuggled. Yes some foreign films on a rare time would do ok, foreign movie maybe were able to compete somewhat with Hollywood and maybe even beat them on a rare occasion but if you look at the Top 10 around the world it was all major Hollywood studios. For a while Canada started to offer a cheaper film location, suddenly a lot of movies and tv shows started to look like a location at Vancouver British Colombia Canada they did it better than LA and were offering better tax breaks. The 1960s was when news media started to take notice of 'the Flop' or box office bomb, very large Estimated loss, crazy production budgets and not enough money coming back to the studio. During the era of VHS and DVDs studios were able to recover money, they sold mugs, T-shirts, Disney rides, games and comicbooks, plastic toys and a new baseball cap...DVDs and merchandise became a big thing. Cate Blanchett the latest one to speak out, Hollywood is not the centre of film world, says Cate Blanchett in swipe at Trump film tariffs, both people on the right and left are critical of the sanctions plan to save Hollywood. The DVD market seems to have died but it is also slowly coming back as governments and media companies decide to censor art for 'offense' of artistic thought, it would seem people are once again collecting physical copies which perverts a studio or government from banning a movie.

In the past Hollywood movies would typically keep their budgets under control, they could depend on US cinema seats alone, they didn't really need anyone from Latin America or Asia or Europe to watch their films as their budgets were low enough to depend on 'Domestic Earnings' any international takings were seen as a bonus. However somewhere over the years budgets got so outrageous Hollywood film needed its foreign international takings to keep its profits alive, at the same time foreign films were not that competitive against Hollywood. Yes there have been big films from HongKong or Spain or France or Germany or Australia or China but typically they have not been able to make it into the Top10, there have been Francophile art followers, or people who are big fans of Japan the games the 'Anime' but that has typically been sub culture within 'The West' the French or Japan or Spanish or Asia or Overseas film was a specialized niche fandom vs Hollywood, Asia or 'Europe' was a sub-culture underground cult following of sorts.

People are playing games more and people now reading less in 'The West', France, Australia etc sales are down and people don't  seem to read physical books anymore. Are they listening to audio books maybe or watching social media videos? It is possible some types of good books and books of madness religiosity and superstitions and the politics of stupidity and political crazy will always sell. Scifi such as Larry Niven might always sell, The War of the Worlds H. G. Wells, Philip K Dick, but also sales of terrible stupidity like Karl Marx The Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf, the Quran or Koran, books that may have inspired others to kill thousands or even millions, the market on teen books have become a thing, the Twilight, Harry Potter or comicbook type thing. These days 50,500 copies of a book in some country is considered a hit, people today are simply reading less even though the populations have increased. It's possible classics will always sell, The Alchemist Portuguese O Alquimista, the scifi horror Frankenstein, the comicbooks re-printed again and again Xmens Phoenix Saga, Frank Miller The Dark Knight Returns, Alan Moore's Watchmen, ‘Cerebus,’ Dave Sim, the Japanese 'Manga' Princess Mononoke Astroboy Demon Slayer Spirited Away types stories. There are books that will probably continue to sell again and again each year, old Greek writings, the Dune series of books, an old Chinese book of poetry, Fables and Children's books, Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Name of the Rose Il Nome della Rosa, Kokoro by Natsume Soseki, The Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit,  the Norwegian story of Morgan Kane, Poland's story The Witcher, Cosmos by Carl Sagan, South korea philosophical art mathematically books that they insit are their own unique philosophy and science and education Hong Sung-dae, nothing to do with Japan or China or Western culture, no plagiarism. To sell big in the past you typically had to sell millions of copies to be noticed on any best seller list but not anymore. Books within the public domain might continue selling, people might want physical copies in case a government or entertainment publisher finds thoughts of offense in these books...some of these books you might class as 'world culture' not really Eastern or Western.

Although Japan has dominated the cartoon business in Asia opthers are arriving now with the best manhwa, Manhua, Chinese manga and 'webtoons' the werid dystopia like scifi horror thriller SKorea tv show Squid Games made it into pop culture with Kamala Harris talking about it, cites 'Squid Games' as example of 'cultural ties.
For a while Japan was completely dominant in the video game industry, the video game industry now outsells the movie industry and the music industry combined. Around 2001-2002 the US game companies started to make a comeback the Xbox home video game console to take on the giants of Asia.

are lessons now learned? or is stuff still ready to flop?

Gamer Community Problems?

Ubisoft is a French video game publisher

The Assassin's Creed Shadows team has a message for our Japanese community.
https://x.com/assassinscreed/status/1815674592444187116

Prime Minister Ishiba hit out at the Feudal Japan-set game

 the PM addressed concerns over Assassin’s Creed Shadows, especially on the part of the game that enables players to destroy shrines. He was not pleased with the portrayal of his country’s culture and reprimanded the creators
https://fandomwire.com/we-will-not-tolerate-ubisofts-lawsuit-threats-wont-work-as-japans-pm-issues-a-stern-warning-over-assassins-creed-shadows/


‘Ironheart’ Is Marvel’s Gamble on a Minor MCU Hero. It Doesn’t Pay Off
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/ironheart-review-marvel-disney-1235368587/


Bryce Dallas Howard Says ‘I’ve Never Been Shocked’ by Flops Like ‘Argylle’ and ‘Lady in the Water’: ‘You Can Always See It Coming While You’re Making It’
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/bryce-dallas-howard-argylle-lady-in-the-water-flops-1236427993/

reboots, re-imaginings and remakes ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’

Jurassic World Rebirth's Box Office Tracking Suggests Some Major Questions For The Franchise
www.slashfilm.com/1896522/jurassic-world-rebirth-box-office-tracking/


not scifi but the 'Wick' franchise seems dead, 'Lord of the Rings' Amazon tv remake cancelled, Wheel of Time cancelled

Ubisoft Responds to Assassin's Creed Shadows Criticism, Apologises to Japanese Players
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2024/07/ubisoft-responds-to-assassins-creed-shadows-criticism-apologises-to-japanese-players

before the Paparazzi days the stars had minders, people who made sure they got home ok even after drinking too much alcohol or smoking strange stuff and photographers were kept away, it allowed the glitz and fake glamor to continue. Then everything started getting leaked, cameras everywhere, their silly political opinions, left vs right and then right vs left a nasty outbrust or a Weinstein scandal which alienates audiences and costs money, the net and mobile cell phones with audio mics and pictures put their behavior on the web. The studio itself can turn on its own actors Rachel Zegler's ‘hateful’ comments caused Snow White's bomb, Warner Bros DC and Marvel Disney after dominating the field now admitting they are doing in wrong, even tv cashcows struggle HBO's The Last Of Us had a video game property but that also fails .

‘Lilo & Stitch’ Beats ‘Ballerina’ at Box Office as ‘John Wick’ Spinoff Debuts to $25 Million
https://variety.com/2025/film/box-office/john-wick-ballerina-box-office-opening-weekend-lilo-stitch-rules-1236422459/