That's one of the reasons why we have so many poor movies (the other reason is that making movies is hard). If your only consideration is making money, you'll produce whatever crap is cheapest to make that still makes reliable income. This is why e.g. consumer market is full of barely-working near-disposable products which existence is a pure waste of natural resources.
Seriously. There's no rule that says that the most profitable product is also the best for the user. In fact, it's almost always the opposite, and A/B-testing things to death leads to the former type of product.
Studios want what's "proven". It's why they will gladly feed in ML data to get shitty focus group type movies. They will then pour huge amounts of money in to try and get back even more.
That's one of the reasons why we have so many poor movies (the other reason is that making movies is hard). If your only consideration is making money, you'll produce whatever crap is cheapest to make that still makes reliable income. This is why e.g. consumer market is full of barely-working near-disposable products which existence is a pure waste of natural resources.
Seriously. There's no rule that says that the most profitable product is also the best for the user. In fact, it's almost always the opposite, and A/B-testing things to death leads to the former type of product.