Summer is practically here and with it will come three months of blockbuster movies.

Unfortunately, most of these films will not be original ideas: they will be attached to a pre-existing franchise. Hollywood is taking it too far by pumping out films within established franchises.

The franchise trend has got to go. Big Hollywood relies entirely on well-established franchises to bring crowds to the theaters.

Whether it’s the recent fifth installment of “The Pirates of the Caribbean” or the upcoming fifth “Transformers” movie, my question is, when will it end? Sadly, no time soon.

I have been a movie-lover for as long as I can remember.

I grew up watching franchises like “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” and “The Mummy,” and have loved them all. But lately, I am no longer as excited to go to movie theaters to see the latest films in this series. It’s become the same old story year after year.

It’s not just me though, franchise ratings have gone down with each new movie. Sequels to the “Pirates of the Caribbean” for example have seen a steady decline in ratings since its the first film was released in 2003.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, “Dead Man’s Chest” received a 54 percent rating, “World’s End” 45 percent, “Stranger Tides” 32 percent, and the latest installment received a god-awful 29 percent.

This isn’t the only franchise that has been continuously dismantled with each new addition. “Transformers” hasn’t had a good movie ever.

The first film of that series was its highest-rated, at 54 percent. This franchise should have ended just as the villain Megatron did in the first film, at the bottom of the ocean.

One of the biggest franchises getting a ginormous push is “Star Wars.”

The long-celebrated galaxy far, far away has received a major revival since its mediocre prequels released in 1999 to 2005. Disney and Lucasfilm currently have plans for “Star Wars” films all the way until the year 2020.

Within the next year we will see two “Star Wars” films released within five months of each other. “Episode 8: The Last Jedi” is scheduled for Dec. 15, 2017, followed by the Han Solo stand-alone film on May 25, 2018.

As a die-hard “Star Wars” fan, this worries me.

I’ve finally gotten what I want: the expansion of the film franchise I love, but at what cost? A film releasing each year may oversaturate its market and its community.
Hollywood has fallen into a consistent repetition of releasing movies one right after another. In the film industry, this is called the “tentpole” theory.

Big corporations put up big films with tons of promotions to make up for the minimal profits of their previous releases.

Such films that have fallen into this theory are “Star Trek: Beyond,” “Jason Bourne,” and the female-led “Ghostbusters” film. Each one came out within a week of each other.

This resulted in astounding second-weekend drops for each film. “Star Trek” fell by 58 percent, “Jason Bourne” plummeted by 61 percent in attendance, and the atrocious “Ghostbusters” remake fell sharply by 54 percent.

Not only is Hollywood massively oversaturating their franchise markets, but nothing could shine a spotlight on the fact that they are out of ideas more than remaking classic films.

The famous Halloween series is seeing a comeback with yet another remake being released in October of this year.

Hollywood is even going through television series by remaking the killer clown classic, “IT”.

Big entertainment companies are rummaging through their archives and bringing back films that were big successes in their days.

Disney is a big culprit of this by bringing audiences “live-action” remakes of their cartoon films and calling them brand new.

This hole that Hollywood is digging itself in needs to stop and it needs to stop right now.

They must learn from their mistakes, like the pitiful “Fantastic Four” remake which was set for a sequel but was scrapped after it’s horrible return on investment.

As an audience, we must take a stand and say no. The most powerful and only way to make Hollywood care again is to simply stop going to the movies.