Learning the wrong lesson: Audiences liked our original films? Let's make sequels to every single one of them!

2012 has been a banner year for, among other things, somewhat original, non-franchised *movies* often targeted at adults.  As I've written before (essay) the stories worth writing after summer 2012 weren't so much about the would-be tent-poles that flopped but the non-tentpoles that were pretty big hits over the first three quarters of the year.  Safe House, The Vow, Magic Mike, Ted, Think Like A Man, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and The Moonrise Kingdom all proved to be superb investments, with Magic Mike becoming probably the most profitable movie of the year (it cost $7 million and grossed $154 million and counting worldwide).  So the obvious lesson should be that there is indeed a worthwhile audience for original films that aren't intended to be the first in an epic fantasy trilogy.  The obvious lesson should be that audiences *do* crave some original material mixed in with their superhero spectaculars.  But instead of studios seeing the writing on the wall and taking the money that they might have spent on the next Battleship and investing it instead in a handful of smaller, non-property affiliated star vehicles somewhat aimed at adults, they have decided is that what audiences now want is sequels to pretty much every single film listed above.  Moviegoers said "Yes!" to originality, so Hollywood now chooses to respond with "Okay, sequels it is!".