This past weekend at the box office was pretty rough, and the screenwriter of American Ultra is wondering if that's a sign that original movies are dying.
As we previously reported, this weekend's new releases Sinister 2, Hitman: Agent 47 and American Ultra all tanked at the box office this weekend, grossing $10.6 million, $8.2 million and $5.5 million respectively.
The only one of those new movies that wasn't based on a preexisting property was American Ultra, yet that came behind Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation in its fourth week and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. in its second week. Four out of the top five movies were either sequels or based a TV show or video game.
Does that mean it's getting more difficult to put out something totally new? Max Landis, the screenwriter of American Ultra, sure thinks so. Landis fired off a series of tweets in response to the film becoming a box office bomb.
He writes, "Why? American Ultra had good ads, big stars, a fun idea, and honestly, it's a good movie...certainly better, in the internet's opinion, than other things released the same day. If you saw it, you probably didn't hate it...so I'm left with an odd thing here, which is that American Ultra lost to a sequel, a sequel reboot, a biopic, a sequel and a reboot."
Landis went on to ask, "Is trying to make original movies in a big way just not a valid career path anymore for anyone but Tarantino and Nolan? That's the question: Am I wrong? Are original ideas over? I wanted to pose this to the public, because I feel, put lightly, confused."
So is he wrong? Landis does have a valid point in that of the top 10 highest grossing movies of 2015, eight are either sequels or based on a preexisting property. The only completely original films have been Home and Inside Out. On the other hand, American Ultra's marketing just wasn't very good, not really getting across to general audiences what the film's tone was. Perhaps in this case, the poor performance is because it was an original property that simply wasn't advertised well.
photo via ACE/INFphoto.com
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