But Paramount’s is not the only studio picture that could miss out on a cultural moment.

Hollywood’s biggest movies are slowed by a filmmaking process that takes longer as financial stakes escalate and as the complexities of global production and elaborate visual effects stretch the span between creative impulse and red-carpet premiere.

In much of the rest of the entertainment industry, the metabolism has sped up as digital technology and the opportunities of the Internet have led to new paths of content creation. Web-based television, YouTube, seed money from groups like Kickstarter — all have contributed to a more egalitarian process that favors a faster pace. Even Hollywood can occasionally move quickly when it needs to stay current with the world around it, as the producers of “Zero Dark Thirty” did after the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011.

But this year the release schedules feature at least eight high-budget films that were conceived 5 to 14 years ago. At Warner Brothers, “Man of Steel,” a Superman makeover to be released on June 14, has been working its way through the system for at least seven years. That was time enough for five “Twilight” movies, and for Kristen Stewart’s relationship with Robert Pattinson to cycle in and out of the public eye. “Ender’s Game,” produced by OddLot Entertainment and others for release on Nov. 1, took root at Warner a decade ago. It is based on a science-fiction novel by Orson Scott Card that was first published in 1985.

On the whole, it may not much matter if such popcorn pictures, which are generally geared to a diverse world audience, become detached from the cultural moment in which they were conceived.

“I don’t think there’s tremendous risk that a genre film, whether it be zombie, vampire, alien or superhero, is doomed to failure just because of the long turnaround time,” said James Thompson, who teaches a course on American cultural industries for Duke University’s Duke in Los Angeles program.