Contemporary cinema is infused with recycling and repetition. From video game tie-ins to McHappy Meal toys, the new horizontally integrated Hollywood continues to create ways of engaging the spectator within a network of remembering and re-enacting scenarios that are designed to recycle a film's narrative and repeat the spectatorial experience as far as possible. In accordance with these commercial practices, sequential filmmaking has developed in recent years into several formats that internalise forms of repetition and continuation within narrative structures, such as sequels, remakes, series, trilogies and adaptations.

The most profitable of these structures is the film sequel. A regular attraction in cinemas around the globe since the early twentieth century, the sequel has developed into a major intertextual framework with carefully controlled predictive elements to guarantee audience turnouts. In the twenty-first century, the sequel is a frequent box-office earner, reaping $683 million in the US across two sequels in the summer of 2004, and over $1 billion worldwide from a single sequel in 2006. Now creeping into world cinemas and independent film festivals, the sequel is also a burgeoning element of the video game industry, and often corresponds with technological efforts to improve the spectatorial experience and interactivity, such as online video games, DVD ‘behind the scenes’ specials and ‘deleted scenes’, and revamped theme park attractions. Yet despite its prevalence throughout many quarters of film culture, the sequel is largely denounced – or ignored – by media commentaries.