Why some franchises go downhill while others stay great

Warning: This post contains spoilers for a number of popular science fiction and fantasy entertainment franchises. You know, I was writing a post about some substantive econ stuff, and halfway through I realized that my original thesis wasn’t really supported by the data. So, being a writer of great laziness intellectual honesty, I decided to table that post and write about something fun and lighthearted instead. And I happened to just watch the first episode of the new season of HBO’s Game of Thrones spinoff series House of the Dragon, so I thought I’d write about franchises. I am certainly no expert in creating high-quality big-budget entertainment franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, Game of Thrones, and so on. But I am an opinionated consumer of them, and as far as I can tell that’s all you really need in order to write about the topic. The fundamental fact of entertainment franchises these days is that pretty much everything is a sequel, a remake, or an adaptation. Adam Mastroian

Warning: This post contains spoilers for a number of popular science fiction and fantasy entertainment franchises. You know, I was writing a post about some substantive econ stuff, and halfway through I realized that my original thesis wasn’t really supported by the data. So, being a writer of great laziness intellectual honesty, I decided to table that post and write about something fun and lighthearted instead. And I happened to just watch the first episode of the new season of HBO’s Game of Thrones spinoff series House of the Dragon, so I thought I’d write about franchises. I am certainly n