Entertainment

“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.”