[KRX]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Potato

Sad to say, currently, the action/adventure genre in the U.S. IS dying. BUT, this has occured so many times in the past. It comes in waves. It seems to happen every 4-6 years.

Right now the only action cartoons in production are Avengers, TMNT, Korra, Hulk, Max Steele, Star Wars and Ben 10 (off the top of my head) and some of these won't get renewed. Batman and Spiderman are pretty much done and in post production. There aren't any new action shows in the pipeline or pre-production (other than Star Wars and next Transformers (back to 2D)), so we're gonna be heading into an action dry spell within 2 years.

Studios are currently just not interested in pursuing action genres due to lack of toy sales. They all say the same thing... "We're currently only looking for comedy shows"
Oh well. After Korra, I might have to settle on Bubble Guppies or Dora the explorer.

We're not dubbing Transformers Go!, are we?

That aside, I don't think toy sales are the only reason that studios aren't looking for action shows. I was pondering the downgraded quality of Cartoon Network one day when it hit me—it was trying to be more like the Internet. If one were strong enough to endure an episode of The Amazing World of Gumball, they would find numerous similarities between it and an Internet video: poor animation, no over-arching plot, incredibly surreal humor, and an overall lackluster quality. Say what you will about Spongebob Squarepants, they at least try to be professional. As I continued pondering this, I realized something else—the Internet was trying to be more like TV. Series like Job Hunters and Halo: Forward Unto Dawn began popping up, being of a quality that raised the standard. Heck, even Nostalgia Critic is filmed in a studio. However, those are just rarities, and the Internet video is still typically a low-intellect form of visual stimuli ment to satiate a short attention-spanned individual awaiting the next tweet. I believe thatt studios are beginning to realize that there is a market there, which is why action/adventure is in decline. Low-brow comedy requires less thought than a high-stakes adventure, so more people would watch the former than the latter.

An example of this would be Pacific Rim. Here we have a movie directed by a man with an impressive repertoire that promises lots of action and adventure, but people are more interested in Grown Ups 2.