Wealth & Money Quote by Tobe Hooper

“Law students have taken over Hollywood” lands as a horror director’s deadpan jump-scare: the industry isn’t run by dreamers or even hustlers anymore, but by people trained to reduce risk, maximize leverage, and treat creativity like a liability. Hooper isn’t literally ranting about JDs on studio lots; he’s naming a mindset. The lawyerly worldview he’s skewering is procedural, precedent-obsessed, allergic to uncertainty. That’s why his next line clicks: “To them it’s all about making money.” Not because filmmakers are saints, but because the balance of power has shifted from artists to corporate decision-makers who speak in spreadsheets and IP portfolios.

The subtext is grievance, but also diagnosis. “They know people want to see what they’ve seen before” isn’t just contempt for audiences; it’s a bleak recognition of how marketing departments manufacture demand. Familiarity is sold as comfort, and the system rewards the safest possible bet: the brand you can pre-sell globally. For a director who made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a film that felt like a dare, that logic reads like cultural embalming.

Hooper’s final pivot is the sharpest: “remakes are places to showcase the new stars of tomorrow.” That’s not a defense of remakes, it’s an autopsy of their function. Reboots become talent pipelines and promotional vehicles, less about reimagining a story than laundering novelty through an existing title. The “new” is allowed in, but only under a familiar mask.