Over the past few years, global audiences may have noticed a familiar pattern. Whether it’s Disney’s live-action remakes, Marvel franchise expansions, or sprawling Game of Thrones spin-offs, follow-ons and familiar worlds are now dominating the entertainment landscape.
While Hollywood’s fixation on sequels, remakes, and franchises is often framed as a failure of imagination, it’s also a risk management strategy. Familiar intellectual property offers a degree of certainty in an industry still scarred by the pandemic, labor strikes, and box office volatility.
“Post-COVID, everybody started getting safer,” said Peter Burt (pictured), president of entertainment at Intact Insurance Specialty Solutions. “It was such a hit to Hollywood during the box office years that followed. You keep hearing studio executives talking about tentpole reliability and IP leverage.”
That leverage increasingly means sequels, remakes and spin-offs built on pre-sold intellectual property. On television, the success of Game of Thrones begat House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. In film, literary franchises such as Harry Potter continue to spawn reboots and series adaptations.
From an underwriting standpoint, repeat intellectual property and repeat production teams create something that resembles renewal business in an otherwise non-recurring line.
“When I get a referral from my team and they’re like, ‘Hey, we’re on season six of this, we’ve had five seasons of no loss, we’re on the same team,’ it’s a pretty easy approval to work on that project,” Burt said. “If we’ve seen a bad loss history on a project, we’re not necessarily keen to insure the sequel.”
For brokers, that consistency translates into smoother placements and more predictable negotiations. Loss history tied to a production team, director, or stunt coordinator carries weight. A sequel with the same crew and five loss-free seasons offers data points that an original screenplay simply cannot.
But the sequel strategy is not without its own exposures.
As franchises gain traction, budgets often balloon. Take Dune: Part Two, anchored by bankable stars such as Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya. Burt pointed out that cast insurance – which covers the costs of production shutdowns if an actor dies, is injured or falls ill – becomes materially more significant as reliance on a handful of high-paid leads intensifies.
“As budgets climb from $50 million to $150 million, or north of $200 million, the stakes intensify,” he said. “If there’s a production shutdown, sometimes you’ll have daily costs of $600,000 or more.”
As a result, limits that once sat comfortably below $100 million now brush up against $150 million or more, forcing brokers to assemble multi-carrier “towers” to spread exposure. No one’s going to put up more than $150 million from any one carrier, typically,” Burt said.
While the largest historical cast loss involved a death on a film, the industry has not yet seen a single cast claim exceed $100 million. That loss history provides some comfort, but the upward pressure on budgets is pushing insurers into unfamiliar territory.
If sci-fi tentpoles represent one pole of the risk spectrum for production houses, low-budget horror sits at the other. Even when such films underperform, Burt said, their modest budgets often make it easier for them to recoup costs.
Horror’s everlasting appeal was recently exemplified by Iron Lung, a $3-million horror film produced by YouTuber Markiplier, which generated $21 million in its opening weekend.
“From our perspective, horror performs pretty well,” Burt said. “(Romance) performs really well. Those genres never really go away.”
By contrast, science fiction, which is capital-intensive and effects-heavy, presents a narrower profitability margin. Additionally, star power has diluted. The era when attaching Ben Affleck, Will Smith or Tom Cruise guaranteed a $100-million global haul has faded.
Burt said insurers now focus more intensely on the track record of the production team, stunt co-ordinators and risk controls than on marquee names alone.
Ultimately, Hollywood’s sequel mania reflects the same forces driving insurance markets: volatility breeds conservatism.
But Burt warned that while franchises may look safer on paper, ballooning budgets, weather volatility, cross-border logistics, and evolving technology are reshaping the entertainment risk landscape.
“Tried and tested IP will be the leader,” Burt said. “You’ve got to stay pretty close to these risks because you’re dealing with creatives, and creatives will have a dream the night before and want to change it the next day. Our job is to rein that in and make sure everything’s safe.”
