Actress Dakota Johnson wants to see studios make more original movies.
The “Materialists” star addressed the lack of creativity in Hollywood during a recent episode of First We Feast’s YouTube series “Hot Ones,” published June 12.
“It’s hard when creative decisions are made by people who don’t even really watch movies or, like, know anything about them, and that tends to be what’s occurring a lot.”
Instead of advancing original screenplays, Johnson, 35, said the movie industry tends to favor adaptations and revivals of past films to capitalize on their success.
“When something does well, studios want to keep that going, so they remake the same things,” the actress said.
“But humans don’t want that. They want fresh, they want to feel new things, experience new things, see new things ... I guess it’s all just a bit of a mess right now, isn’t it?”
“Films are made by a filmmaker and a team of artists around them. You cannot make art based on numbers and algorithms,” she said. “My feeling has been for a long time that audiences are extremely smart, and executives have started to believe that they’re not.”
Johnson’s breakout role came in 2015, playing Anastasia Steele in “Fifty Shades of Grey,” a film adaptation of British author E. L. James’ 2011 novel of the same name.
Three years later, she portrayed a ballet dancer in Luca Guadagnino’s supernatural horror reboot of Dario Argento’s 1977 seminal film, “Suspiria,” taking home the Independent Spirit Awards’ prestigious Robert Altman Award in 2019 for her performance as part of an ensemble.
That same year, Johnson launched her own production firm, TeaTime Pictures, which she co-founded with former Netflix executive Ro Donnelly. The company, which scored a first-look television deal with Platform One Media, co-produced the 2025 film “Splitsville,” starring Johnson.
