And once again this season on Broadway is dominated by screen-to-stage adaptations like “Rocky,” “The Bridges of Madison County,” “Bullets Over Broadway” and “Big Fish,” all of which have varying degrees of studio involvement. The musical “Aladdin” is coming this winter, adapted in-house by Disney, which has the biggest screen-to-stage hit of all : “The Lion King,” with its worldwide gross of $5.4 billion.

If the Hollywood frenzy raises questions about originality — has theater become just a derivative cog in brand machinery? — the stage adaptations may simply be too financially rewarding for the studios and Broadway to cut back. And adaptations can be artistically creative: The new musical “American Psycho” (based on a book that became a film) is about a serial killer, while this year’s Tony Award winner for best musical, “Kinky Boots,” is based on a little-known British movie and has the first Broadway score by the pop superstar Cyndi Lauper.

But what does it take for a movie to become a blockbuster musical?

That’s the puzzle that Hollywood executives are trying to crack as they mine their movie catalogs to squeeze more profits from them, a hands-on strategy that represents a significant shift, after decades in which studios passively signed away film rights to theater producers who did most of the work. What Hollywood is finding is that there are no easy formulas: No “Wicked 2” or other sequels; no surefire star vehicles (Nathan Lane’s departure killed the “Addams Family” musical on Broadway); and no superhero action fluff that is easy to stage (hello, Spider-Man). In other words, don’t expect to see the biggest moneymakers go to Broadway anytime soon, studio executives say — no “Avatar: The Musical,” no singing Wookies.

“We’re looking through our 4,000 movies for the stories with the strongest emotional resonance, for stories that feel like they want to be sung onstage,” said Lia Vollack, who oversees theater for Sony and is also president of the company’s worldwide music division. “And I wouldn’t rule out any genre — though a horror musical could be challenging, and superheroes really do rely on certain types of visuals that are pretty cinematic.”

What the studios are confronting is the tricky alchemy of stage adaptation: finding films and books that have the DNA that might spawn a musical, then matching them with artists who have a vision for delivering quality onstage and quantity at the box office.