“It’s really hard out there for an original movie,” he said, urging everyone who liked the Universal Pictures release to “scream it from the rooftops” and on social media.
“Drop” opened this weekend to an estimated $7.5 million domestically, one of two new movies based on fresh ideas that fizzled at the box office. The other was Disney’s “The Amateur,” a spy thriller adapted from a little-known 1981 book, which opened to an estimated $15 million.
After years of gripes from average moviegoers and Hollywood insiders alike about the seemingly nonstop barrage of sequels, spin offs and adaptations of comic books and toys, the film industry placed more bets on original ideas.
The results have been ugly.
Nearly every movie released by a major studio in the past year based on an original script or a little-known book has been a box-office disappointment. Before this weekend’s flops were Warner Bros. Discovery’s “Mickey 17” and “The Alto Knights,” Paramount’s “Novocaine,” Apple’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” Amazon’s “Red One,” and the independently financed “Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1” and “Megalopolis.”
I've never heard of "Drop". Culture has changed a lot in the last 20 years and how we learn about new movies is largely being fed the list of movies we are going to hear about by an algorithm. Granted, I'm specifically avoiding that kind of thing, but for most people they are going to hear about it on Tiktok or Youtube or Shiznab or Fwuhungo or wherever the kids these days hang out. - Shakes fist at clouds - And simply "cranking out original movies" isn't good enough anyway. Are they good movies? Because people will talk about them if they are good. And sometimes even being good isn't enough if the current social climate just isn't into what the movie is doing. Movies at their very best are art, and a lot of the best ones flopped at the box office, only to be rediscovered years later. idk where I'm going with this.. just rambling and also I still have no interest in slop or infinite sequels.
I think part of it is a lot of people age out of movies like Clerks rather young. Don't get me wrong, I loved Kevin Smith movies, but am I going to sit down and watch Chasing Amy at 45?
Dogma, sure ... And, incidentally, how much did Rocky Horror make in first run? Cult classics don't tend to be beloved until well after release. If you're looking to goose your Q2 figures, originals are not the way to do it. The payoff comes far later.