They don't make them like Grosse Pointe Blank anymore. And by "them," I mean mid-budget original films for adults that are smart, funny, violent, romantic, and utterly unconcerned with franchise potential.

The 1997 comedy about a hitman attending his high school reunion while dodging both his conscience and rival assassins is having a moment on social media, with film fans lamenting the death of the exact kind of movie it represents: modestly budgeted ($15 million), star-driven (John Cusack, Minnie Driver), and willing to trust audiences with tonal complexity.

You know, the kind of film that studios used to make dozens of every year and now make approximately zero of.

Here's what happened: the mid-budget film died, murdered by risk-averse studio executives who decided the only safe bets were $200 million superhero spectacles or $5 million horror films. Everything in between—the romantic comedies, the heist films, the quirky dramedies, the genre mashups—got squeezed out.

Grosse Pointe Blank wouldn't get made today because it's too weird to be a safe bet and too expensive to be a gamble. Cusack playing a morally conflicted assassin having an existential crisis at a high school reunion while Dan Aykroyd tries to recruit him into a union? That pitch meeting would last exactly 90 seconds before someone said "so is this a sequel to something?"

The film worked because it trusted its premise and its cast. Cusack, who co-wrote the script, understood that the humor came from taking the absurd premise seriously. Driver played the romantic lead as a real person, not a manic pixie dream girl. The soundtrack was wall-to-wall '80s new wave because that's what people at a 10-year reunion in 1997 would listen to. Every choice served character and tone.

Compare that to modern studio comedies, which are either micro-budget genre exercises or bloated star vehicles designed to justify streaming subscriptions. The $30-50 million sweet spot where you could afford recognizable actors, competent directors, and actual production value? Gone.

Streaming services were supposed to fill this gap. , , —they all promised to be the new home for mid-budget adult storytelling. And occasionally they deliver (, ). But mostly they want their own franchises too.