LOS ANGELES — Warner Bros. Pictures announced Tuesday it has officially greenlit an 'Ocean's 11' prequel starring Wagner Moura, Margot Robbie, and Bradley Cooper, a move industry analysts are calling a 'brave and necessary step towards the complete intellectual property reclamation of all past cinematic endeavors.' The film, set to explore the formative years of a criminal enterprise whose original 2001 iteration was itself a remake of a 1960 caper, signals Hollywood's full embrace of creative bankruptcy as its primary operating principle.
“Look, we ran the algorithms,” stated Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav in an internal memo obtained by Hambry. “The data unequivocally showed that audiences respond best to things they’ve already seen, just slightly different. Originality? That’s a rounding error on a balance sheet, frankly. We tried it once. It was called ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ and it won an Oscar. But did it make ‘Barbie’ money? Did it have an established fanbase from the jump? No. So, prequels it is, indefinitely.”
Sources close to the production indicated that future 'Ocean's' installments could include an 'Ocean's 11: The Origin of the Number 11' limited series, detailing the painstaking internal corporate debate over how many members a heist team should optimally contain. “It’s about leveraging brand equity,” explained Dr. Brenda Firth, Director of Aspirational Nostalgia Studies at the Institute for Pre-Existing Intellectual Property Valuation. “Why build a new house when you can just add a slightly different wing to one everyone already knows? It’s environmentally friendly, in a way. Less waste of creative energy. We simply don’t have the resources to invent new concepts when perfectly good, pre-vetted concepts are lying around waiting to be re-told, re-imagined, and pre-qual-ified.”
A studio spokesperson confirmed that the current 'Ocean’s 11' prequel will itself be followed by a direct sequel, then a soft reboot, then a television series, before an inevitable animated spin-off chronicling the early lives of the vault security systems. The move guarantees predictable box office returns until the heat death of the universe.
The studio is reportedly fast-tracking negotiations for an 'Ocean's 11' prequel to the prequel, chronicling the first time a studio executive uttered the words, 'What if we just did 'Ocean's 11' again?'
