It's obvious IP's will never go away. Some of the favorite or well-liked years, even in fan's eyes, have been with heavy IP usage. It's more of how do they handle it for future years.
1. They will be out of big name IP's soon. Conjuring, an outright Alien house, maybe Poltergeist or Paranormal Activity? I'm also obligated to remind everyone Hellraiser
. Other than that, not much left.
I've seen
@JungleSkip suggest Game IP's as the next logical step and I agree, but even still - that well isn't deep.
2. The headaches the IP/studio/marketing can cause. It may not be wise to make the event as IP heavy where changes have to be made last minute or well into development that can severely impact the planning of the event - whether it be for marketing or creative.
3. The success of 25 & 26 shows they don't need to overly rely on the IP, just utilize it wisely. Grow from there, especially as the well dries up. 3-4 IP's for houses, with 1-2 being the BIG names. Even if they are repeats that bear repeating. You can do more with Freddy, Jason X could be fun, they always have interpretations of the Classic Monsters. Obviously, I'd hope there would be some time that elapses.
I could give two craps if the complexities of these IPs results in the odd house that gets scrapped or, god forbid, a delay in an announcement. I'm just glad they usually get it right ... FAR MORE OFTEN THAN NOT.
They don't get it right.
Silent Hill was an AWiL replacement and that was bad. Purge was a Scream replacement and that was bad. 23's scarezones were supposed to be varied but we got the Walking Dead-everywhere theme - and that was bad.
We'll see how the changes effect this year, but so far it seems like 3 things were affected by IP/Studio interference.