The rule of capitalist media: bigger budgets require bigger pressure to secure the investment as a success by steering towards what worked in the past.

If there was a limit on the size of a production’s budget then the overall amount of money in the market would still be present but distributed across many more films. This would mean more talent is required across the industry and lead to some really wonderful unconventional movies.

Why risk putting money in something new that hasn’t been thoroughly market tested so that it’s guaranteed to appeal to the widest possible audience, when you can just churn out sequels to existing properties that won’t really offer anything new let alone challenging, and be sure that the studio executives will be getting new yachts again this year?

I’ve been making a point to see original movies in theater this year. Not a ton of standouts but Monkey Man was the most fun I’ve had at an action movie since the original John Wick.

Anyone else have favorites to recommend?

This looks like a matrix structure you could encode iteratively in Octave. Good job. :D