The entertainment industry has reached the terminal stage of intellectual property necrophilia. The latest flurry of announcements proves that the “creative” class has abandoned innovation in favor of mining the graveyard of 1970s cult sci-fi and churning out sequels to films that had perfectly serviceable endings. This isn’t art; it’s a desperate attempt to hedge against a fragmenting global market by selling familiar brand names back to a population too exhausted by real-world volatility to demand something new.

The headline act is a reboot of Blake’s 7. While the original was a gritty, cynical masterpiece of low-budget British sci-fi that mirrored the Cold War anxieties of its time, a modern reboot is destined to be sanitized for “global audiences.” Without a network attached, this project currently exists as a speculative asset, a way for producers to signal “pre-awareness” to streamers who are terrified of original scripts.

The rest of the slate is equally symptomatic of a dying monoculture:

• The Incredibles 3: Holly Hunter’s admission that she begins recording without even knowing the story highlights Pixar’s descent into the sequel-trap. When the script is secondary to the “brand launch window,” the quality becomes an afterthought.
• Panic Carefully: We are seeing the “star-washing” of thin premises. By attaching Julia Roberts and Elizabeth Olsen to a “secret” story, the industry creates a speculative bubble. If the story were actually revolutionary, they wouldn’t need a half-dozen A-listers to justify the budget.
• Exquisite Corpse: Another entry in the “rich people hunting humans” subgenre. It is a profound irony that the wealthiest families in the world fund movies about the wealthiest families in the world being monsters, sold to a middle class that is currently being economically hollowed out. It is rebellion as a consumable product.
• Lobo in Supergirl: Jason Momoa’s transition from Aquaman to Lobo is the ultimate evidence of Hollywood’s “musical chairs” casting. The DCU isn’t building a universe; it’s managing a stable of high-value human assets and moving them around to see which configuration generates the most engagement.

This frantic recycling of culture mirrors the broader economic shifts we see in the real world. Just as the financial elite are preparing for a post-dollar landscape, the media elite are preparing for a post-originality landscape. They are hunkering down with “safe” bets while the foundations of the industry crumble. This cultural stagnation is the direct aesthetic equivalent of The Great Uncoupling: The Quiet Death of the Unipolar Financial Order, where old systems cling to relevance while the actual power moves elsewhere.

Don’t be fooled by the “hype.” These aren’t stories being told because they need to be heard; they are content units being deployed to satisfy the algorithms of a decaying empire. Panic carefully, indeed.