Why Hollywood Stopped Making New Comedies, According To Judd Apatow

We really didn't know how good we had it back in the early 2000s. Compared to today's streaming-dominated media landscape and the garbage AI future that awaits, the early-aughts were a blissful time when movies still felt like movies and great comedies were being shown in theaters around the world. There's no question the king of these 2000s era comedies was Judd Apatow, who not only wrote and directed several of the best films from that time but seemed to have a hand in pretty much anything funny that hit theaters. Now, studios have all but abandoned big comedies, and Apatow has some insights into why that might be.

In a 2025 interview with The Hollywood Reporter for the 20th anniversary of "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," Apatow was asked about recent IP-based comedy hits such as "The Naked Gun" and "Freakier Friday" and whether he thought "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" could be made today. "I think it's possible," he said, "It might be a slightly bumpier road, but I think the studios would love comedies to do very well." That might seem slightly more positive than you were expecting, but Apatow went on to note just how big of a risk comedies represent for studios:

"The hard part is when you make comedies, you are taking chances. You can't just make them based on old IP. You can't rely on just casting someone who's been in a lot of hit movies. The best comedies come from out of nowhere, and they are often based on unique and wild concepts. Most of them don't even sound like they would work on paper."

The director also remembered how "for years" studios resisted making the Will Ferrell classic "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" and the delightfully vulgar coming-of-age comedy "Superbad," both of which Apatow produced. "It requires someone to take a risk to have that giant breakthrough comedy," he added.

Judd Apatow's most recent comments follow those he made back in 2017, when he was asked about Hollywood's then-relatively-recent aversion to comedy. Speaking to Vulture, Apatow opined that studios weren't making comedies any more due to strikes and writers moving into TV. "After the last writers' strike, it felt like the studios decided not to develop movies," he said. "They used to buy a lot of scripts [...]  Now it seems like they'd rather things come in packaged: a script, a cast, a director. As a result, a lot of great comedy writers are going to television instead of sitting at home and trying to write a script for a film, write the way I was."

Apatow's last feature as director was the Netflix film "The Bubble," about a group of actors shooting a movie during the COVID-19 pandemic, which earned a measly 20% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Otherwise he's focused on documentary films such as "George Carlin's American Dream" and "Bob and Don: A Love Story," and also returned to stand-up comedy in 2017 with Netflix special "Judd Apatow: The Return." While he still produces the occasional comedy film, the last being 2023's "Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain" the golden age of the Apatow-shepherded comedy is truly over. 

But that's not to say comedies won't make a return. Hollywood goes in cycles, and we're currently witnessing the end of the superhero age as audiences tire of comic book fare. In response, studios have, as Apatow pointed out, doubled down on IP, turning to video games and a Harry Potter reboot series to maintain our attention in a world where TikTok is happily sapping the youth's attention. But, as the director said, all it takes is for the right executive to take a chance. While that's an increasingly unlikely scenario in 2025, it just needs to happen once to the right person. Whoever the next Judd Apatow turns out to be, it hopefully won't be long before they're given that chance to bring comedies back to theaters.