It’s no secret that remakes, reboots, sequels, and endless franchises rule the box office. Just about any film based on a popular IP attracts fans and moviegoers of all sorts, and they constantly bring in the big bucks for the studios. Because they regularly perform well, more of these remakes and sequels are made so these studios can earn even more money.
With this being the case, it has a lot of folks begging for original movies to be made. They have fatigue over the gratuitous remakes, rereleases, and revisits, which is extremely understandable. However, the strange thing they seem to not realize is that original movies are being made.
The problem is that, even though original movies are being made like they’ve been asking for, they’re not going to see them. Just looking at this year, Hoppers and Forgotten Island are two original animated films, one from Pixar and one from DreamWorks, that were praised by critics and moviegoers who did see them, yet both lost money at the box office. The End of Oak Street, starring big names like Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, also lost money despite being a fun and exciting original sci-fi adventure. Mickey 17 was a unique sci-fi flick starring one of today’s biggest actors and was made by Bong Joon-ho fresh off of his Oscar win for Best Director, yet it didn’t sell a lot of tickets. Digger is being called a career best for the performance of one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, but is also being dubbed one of the biggest bombs in movie history.
This list can go on and on and on. Movies that aren’t remakes or sequels or a part of some grand cinematic universe are still being made and are in theaters quite often, yet most people aren’t going to see them. Sure, there are exceptions like Obsession hitting it big, but success stories for original movies are few and far between.
Instead, people are opting to go to the theater for the massive franchise blockbusters and familiar IPs. Avengers: Endgame was re-released again, this time with a couple of extra scenes tagged onto the ending, and it found significantly more success than original movies that were in theaters at the same time. Some of the most successful movies of the last couple of years include Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Toy Story 5, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Zootopia 2, the remake of Lilo and Stitch, and the remake of How to Train Your Dragon. All of these are sequels, remakes, and a part of major pre-existing franchises.
People are speaking with their wallets, and they’re telling major movie studios that they ultimately prefer the less original options. Something that I keep seeing mentioned is that poor marketing is the reason for all this. They blame that studios aren’t posting about it enough or putting their trailers out there.
This honestly isn’t the case with most of these movies that are bombing at the box office. When Forgotten Island was coming to theaters, advertisements for it were all over social media. The trailer came before plenty of movies that were in theaters earlier in 2026. It was marketed quite well. This argument is just plain incorrect.
It is worth noting, though, that these folks may not be seeing said marketing still. With the way social media and algorithms work, they could just not be getting shown trailers and advertisements for certain movies on their side of social media. This is why you have to take the initiative sometimes. If you want to know when original movies are coming out and follow their progression until their release, you can cater your social media to that. Follow movie studios, interact with their posts, make posts about which movies you’re excited for. That way, you should always see the marketing for movies and don’t have that as your excuse.
Alternatively, you can always just go on your local movie theater’s website and see what they have playing. If there is an original movie playing, pay to go see it at the theater. It’s the only way to support original movies at the theater, and therefore the only way to support the creation of original movies.
If you’re someone who begs for original movies and complains about them not being made, but don’t support them when they are made, you’re a huge part of the problem. Figure out what’s playing, when it’s playing, and go see it. If you don’t, then you’re just making these complaints for clout.
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