After film school I got a job with the now defunct DEG (DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group) run by the DeLaurentiis family. I sat in on all the movie studio's creative development staff meetings and I also met many writers and producers including highly creative people like Sam Raimi and Robert Tappert. The studio was desperate for new quality stories but also overwhelmed by the fear of making mistakes (and judging by the number of flops DEG made they were right to be afraid). But they did take a chance on new stories like Manhunter, which was based on Thomas Harris's novel Red Dragon (the screenplay first had the working title of Red Dragon before it was changed) which later was incarnated as Silence Of The Lambs after DEG folded. Blue Velvet, Dune, and the horror cult film Pumpkinhead were other examples of DEG films I saw being put together which were gambles. The thing is that there would be no remakes if not for an original gamble. And believe it or not, the studios must have creative people whose number one concern is not making money, but making good pictures that will excite the public. Of course the bean counters get their say and people like Dino's oldest daughter Raffaella DeLaurentiis who was the studio President had a lot of pressure on her to make movies that people wanted to see and that made money, too, which often pulled her in two directions. I saw her twice a week at these staff meetings and saw what she was going through. Dino DeLaurentiis was very good friends with Stephen King and made films out of several of his novels like Firestarter, The Dead Zone, Cat's Eye, Silver Bullet, and Maximum Overdrive. I read several treatments of new projects submitted by Stephen King to the studio to suggest they be made into films, most of which weren't very good and I know that the number one concern was finding good material.
This was back in the 1980s. It's true that the studios are run with the goal of making money. But in my experience, which was primarily focused on finding new scripts or ideas and working with a lot of young writers, they were desperate for original stories that could generate interest in the public. They were there to make movies, not just to turn a profit by selling widgets. Lately, however, there seems to be an explosion of remakes, and of remakes of remakes. Without the original gamble on a previously undeveloped novel or screenplay, there would be nothing to remake.
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