A decade ago Fox optioned a Wired magazine story about cyber warfare and commissioned “Enemy of the State” screenwriter David Marconi to create an original movie treatment called “WW3.com.”
But it didn’t stay original. By the time it was released, the project had become part of Bruce Willis' John McClane franchise, 2007’s “Live Free or Die Hard.”
It's still a familiar scenario in Hollywood. But more so than other major studios, Twentieth Century Fox now stands out as a place where sequels, remakes and reboots dominate the production calendar.
These days the studio's penchant for sticking with familiar territory has executives and talent complaining of creative stagnation at one of Hollywood’s most important movie-production hubs.
See slideshow: "Originals vs. Rehashes, Studio by Studio."
“Fox is more into brand management than generating creative content,” noted one producer of a tentpole franchise at another major studio. “Their goal is to provide themselves with iterations they feel that they can publish every 18 months and recoup profits from them from all their methods of exploitation.”
With seven of the Fox’s next 15 films through 2011 either sequels or adaptations of well-known titles like the December release “Gulliver’s Travels," the studio has established itself in the creative community as among the most risk-averse of the majors.
(Disney and Paramount currently have similar ratios. But the management team at Disney has been upended in the past year, so a fair assessment needs more time. Paramount could justifiably be accused of the same dynamic - or lack thereof - with the added worry that the studio has reduced its production overall. Meanwhile, Sony and Universal have by far the most original productions on their slate.) 
Fox does have original concepts on order. Among those coming in 2011 are the animated feature “Rio,” Selena Gomez rom-com “Monte Carlo” and Jonah Hill comedy “The Sitter.”
But after Fox Filmed Entertainment co-chairman Jim Gianopulos recently presented the studio’s upcoming slate to a major Hollywood talent agency, one a partner at a leading talent agency said he was taken aback at a recent studio briefing by a line-up that included a third appearance by Martin Lawrence in his “Big Momma” latex suit, a second “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” a fourth “X-Men” installment, a third “Alvin and the Chipmunks” movie, a seventh “Planet of the Apes” film and yet another “Die Hard.”
All that, and a fourth “Ice Age” and a seventh “Alien” installment are also coming down the pike.
TheWrap interviewed more than a dozen producers and executives, and because of the sensitivity of the subject, none agreed to speak on the record.
“I went down that same list,” noted a lit agent for a rival firm who covers Fox. “It was remake, remake, sequel, sequel. It was very short on original ideas.”
He added: “Fox is at the end of the spectrum in that it makes the least interesting movies.”
