Despite ‘The Odyssey,’ Hollywood Still Has an Original Blockbuster Problem

Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is Hollywood’s latest attempt to launch an original blockbuster-scale property. It was a strong bet given its pedigree, solid quality and manageable $115 million production budget. Yet, with only $237 million at the worldwide box office as of this writing, it is expected to lose money. The torch has officially been passed to Christopher Nolan. Despite being a near-three-hour R-rated historical epic, The Odyssey nearly matched Superman‘s opening weekend with $123.5 million. Yet Nolan’s paradigm-shaking moneymaking with big-budget newness is virtually impossible to replicate. Disclosure Day joins a growing list of expensive original and new-to-screen bets that struggle to turn a profit, launch new franchises, or break out globally. 

In both 2024 and 2025, 13 of the year’s 15 highest domestic grossers were either sequels, prequels, spinoffs or reboots. As of this writing, eight of this year’s 15 biggest films are also franchise entries. This isn’t remotely surprising. We’ve arguably been living in the age of intellectual property (IP) since 2008. What’s more surprising is where new breakout IP tends to originate from.

The challenges of originality 

Hollywood can and does create successful original and new-to-screen properties. (We are going to define new-to-screen as movies that are not tied to established franchises, even if they are adapted from books or games.) But these winners mostly emerge from horror, thriller and general lower-budget genre filmmaking rather than expensive blockbuster originals. While IP remains vital, there is a growing appetite for freshness. The challenge is that originality appears far easier to monetize at $10 million-$40 million budgets rather than at $100 million-$200 million. Spending big on something new doesn’t seem to be working lately.

That is not to say that originality is dead. Weapons ($38 million budget), Smile ($17 million), M3EGAN ($12 million), Longlegs ($10 million), Obsession ($750,000), Backrooms ($10 million)—all of these recent movies delivered impressive attention-grabbing ROIs. But they did so largely because of their modest budgets. Adding up all of their worldwide grosses still doesn’t match the ticket sales of Inside Out 2 ($1.69 billion). 

Post COVID, only a small handful of non-Christopher Nolan, big-budget, new IP titles have financially delivered at or above expectations: Free Guy ($331.5 million at the worldwide box office versus a $100 million-$125 million budget), Elemental ($496.4 million vs. $200 million), Sinners ($371.3 million vs. $90 million-$100 million), F1 ($634 million vs. $200 million-$300 million) and Project Hail Mary ($684 million vs. $200 million) lead the pack. Even then, Elemental needed a super leggy run to overcome a weak opening, and Free Guy isn’t exactly a financial barn burner. Otherwise, 2018’s A Quiet Place ($17 million budget) and 2014’s John Wick ($20 million-$30 million budget) are the last live-action original franchise starters of note, yet neither has delivered an entry that topped $450 million globally.

The list of high-priced, bottom-line-ruining new disappointments in recent years is twice as long and spans every studio: Disney (Amsterdam, Strange World), Apple (Argylle, Fly Me to the Moon), Amazon (Masters of the Universe), Warner Bros. (Supergirl), Lionsgate (Megalopolis), etc. Despite nine-figure budgets across the board, none have surpassed $200 million at the worldwide box office as of this writing (and I cut several so this article wouldn’t devolve into an assembly line list). And it’s not just the big-budget arena that proves so difficult for new concepts. Sheep Detectives, The Breadwinner, Power Ballad, Is God Is, and I Heart Boosters were all met in theaters this year by an apathetic audience. As analyst Entertainment Strategy Guy recently wrote: “We’ve had years before that were about or better than 2026 in launching new franchises.”

The hit rate becomes dramatically less reliable—and far more damaging—as budgets rise. 2021’s Dune may be the last big-budget live-action franchise launcher, though it wasn’t technically original/new-to-screen since it was previously adapted in the 1980s. Meanwhile, 2009’s Avatar may be the last successful big-budget franchise launcher that wasn’t directly tied to a pre-existing brand. It’s been a long and arduous road of expensive trial and error since, especially as Hollywood spent a decade unsuccessfully chasing Marvel’s shared cinematic universe model. 

Why small-budget titles are more likely to become hits

So why are new hits and franchises mostly sprouting from smaller-scale titles? Basic economics. Lower-budget originals can succeed with narrower audiences. Their path to profitability is shorter. Expensive originals require broad appeal and big-ticket sales, and therefore familiarity increasingly matters as budgets approach blockbuster scale. Books, games, historical figures and other source material provide a bridge between originality and familiarity, reducing the risk and uncertainty of unexplored territory. It helps partially explain the successes of Barbie, A Minecraft Movie, Five Nights at Freddy’s and more. The latter two video game adaptations proved to be hits with younger moviegoers, giving the $150 million budgeted Minecraft Movie a rare big-budget new-ish win. 

Taking a step further, familiarity is even more crucial to slightly older moviegoers. There are an estimated 42 million U.S. moviegoers aged 35 plus who are likely to attend opening weekend based on nostalgia, according to Greenlight Analytics, where I work as Director of Insights and Content Strategy. Pre-existing connections cut down on studio marketing challenges and provide audiences with more certainty in a subjective industry. Older, more infrequent moviegoers were the driving force behind the shattering success of Top Gun: Maverick ($1.5 billion worldwide box office), while multi-generational appeal across 20 years of Marvel storytelling helped Spider-Man: No Way Home set franchise highs ($1.9 billion). 

The issue may not be the demand for original stories, but convincing audiences to leave home and spend $15 to $20 on an unfamiliar story. On streaming platforms, for example,  audiences still consume large amounts of new-to-screen content. Wicked, Back in Action, and The Electric State were three of the 10 most-watched general audience movies on streaming last year, per Nielsen. Wicked, KPop Demon Hunters, Back in Action, The Wild Robot and Nonnas also landed among Luminate’s top 10, while Back in Action, Sinners and A Complete Unknown all made it onto Samba TV’s most-watched year-end list. Streaming has become the low-risk, low-cost arena for unfamiliar stories. One click away is an easier ask than a trip to the theaters. 

Hollywood hasn’t stopped creating new IP or delivering new stories. It may simply have become far more expensive and risky to create it at a blockbuster scale. Disclosure Day becomes the latest test of whether the industry can still consistently launch the next big thing at blockbuster levels without relying on pre-existing audience familiarity, or if new IP/franchises will continue to mostly evolve out of lower-budget fare. Given the economics, expect the next generation of Hollywood franchises to sprout more from the fertile ground of $20 million gambles rather than $200 million studio extravaganzas.