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Johnny Knoxville has announced that the fifth Jackass movie, Best and Last, will mark the end of the franchise, with trailers showing a victory lap to celebrate 25 years of broken bones, genital injuries and many stupidities you should not try at home. There are new features, as well as interviews with actors aging gracefully into their 50s, but what’s most impressive is the amount of archival content. And the actors are not hidden in the questions to be heavy in the previous movies.
In other words, it’s the movie equivalent of a blockbuster hit with a few new songs thrown in to entice fans to part with their cash. Or a video show on a US sitcom that is based on old material, created so that busy writers can reach the number of episodes ordered by the network. But in the age of YouTube and streaming, when you can see a bunch of Jackass remakes with the same images, it’s asking a lot of viewers to leave their homes and part with their money to watch it.
Attendee comments on fan shows on Letterboxd shows a greater reliance on old films than new ones, and with filming starting in February 2026 (just over a month after the film was announced), a cynic would say that little has been put together to ensure a theatrical release. In November 2025Paramount has announced that it will expand its 2026 slate to at least 15 movies, which means it needs to accelerate some things to reach that goal. And since CEO David Ellison said in May that his merger with Warner Bros. could lead 30-film slate minimum per yearthis is not the last time we will see a fast-paced film like this fly.
This integrated video is not a Hollywood shortcut to increase productivity, however. Before the rise of VHS and BlockbusterWith thousands of titles available for home viewing, the only option moviegoers had to watch old titles was to wait for them to be rerun on one of the available television channels, or for theatrical reruns. So That’s Fun! compilation films, in which the stars of MGM’s most famous musicals – from Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire to Frank Sinatra and Liza Minnelli – show the scenes from the studio’s backroom.
Billed as United Artists’ most successful film of 1974, That’s Entertainment! boasting a few previously unseen commercials, as well as attempts by other studios to emulate its look and feel. But a decade later, with video rentals and lower budgets creeping into overtime, compilations like 1984’s Terror in the Aisles became obsolete. Despite being presented by genre legends Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen as an instruction manual on how to make a horror film, the game’s mixtape not only broke the deadlock on every iconic moment it changed, but became redundant as new technology made old titles available.
In 1994, the third It’s fun! was created to mark the 70th anniversary of MGM although, by that time, the producers knew that they could not rely on the archives, and relied on musical numbers, flashbacks and outtakes. It’s a very rewarding experience for Old Hollywood fans because of this, critic Roger Ebert was surprised it didn’t. “Beat the bottom of the barrel” and instead explored why many of these images were critically analysed.
With so much of the studio’s archives now available at the click of a button, the box office must be less popular than it was in its days, but it’s still entering multiplexes without much fanfare. If you are a parent of a young child who wants to be comfortable with trips to the cinema, then you have an early morning trip to see a few episodes of Bluey or Sorry Pig filmed together on a large screen, apparently designed to accustom children to emptying their bladders for longer than an hour. It may take a few viewings before they’re ready to stay in Odyssey, though.
Classic TV shows are often served up with anime synopses, which summarize the main points of a TV show that might be relevant to the next episode of the big show for many fans. Between The ultimate success of the Demon Slayer moviesfor example, the compilation of 2024 To the Hashira Training served as a feature-length show with a preview of the first episode of the next season included. Without much fanfare, it still managed to reach $50m worldwide; which would pale in comparison to the following year’s staggering $793m Pictures of Infinity Castle was made, but such success in what was essentially a remake of a classic may have reminded Hollywood of an easy way to make a quick buck from devoted fans.
The film dropped 82% in its second weekend at the US box office, word of which is money that has spread online – the only protection against the removal of cheap content in the future. Jackass, however, is a genre that is known for top names in many groups of different ages, not just anime-loving gen Z. Its opening weekend box office may still be enough to ensure that we get more titles in this way going forward, regardless of the fact that it faces the same fate when it comes to word-of-mouth after the first few days.
Which isn’t to say that the Jackass team is sarcastic, on the contrary – a few entertainers have always been willing to put their lives (and privates) on the line for our entertainment. But after what appears to be a definitive farewell with 2022’s Jackass Forever, the team’s “last movie” in the series won’t avoid the lingering notion that they were rushed together to fulfill the studio’s output.
