LOS ANGELES – The Fall Guy seemed to have everything.

Megawatt stars. Death-defying stunts. Splendid reviews. An original story – what sequel-weary moviegoers say they want.

Movie studio Universal backed The Fall Guy with a six-month marketing campaign, releasing trailers that chalked up 400 million views and carpet-bombing televised sporting events with advertisements.

It added up to only US$28.5 million (S$38 million) in North American ticket sales from May 3 to 5, the worst start to Hollywood’s all-important summer season since 1995.

The Fall Guy cost Universal at least US$200 million to make and market, and was released in 4,002 theatres in the United States and Canada. It collected an additional US$37 million overseas.

This is why studios do not take risks on new stories.

“The business is so tough, and it’s so hard to break through with new ideas,” said Mr David Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box-office numbers.

“You want to explain to shareholders why you spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a newfangled idea that crashed?”

The Fall Guy, an action comedy, shares a name and some basic DNA with a television drama that ran on American broadcaster ABC from 1981 to 1986. But the movie’s story is entirely new.

Mr Scott Mendelson, a box-office columnist with his own subscription newsletter, said moviegoers complain that Hollywood is not making enough original films, “only to stay home or go elsewhere when they do”.

Ryan Gosling, fresh off Barbie (2023) and a celebrated singing performance at the Academy Awards, plays a down-on-his-luck stuntman who gets caught up in a murder mystery while trying to rekindle a romantic relationship. Emily Blunt plays a movie director. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham and Jason Momoa round out The Fall Guy cast.

It was the first time in 19 years that Hollywood’s summer season – a four-month period that typically accounts for 40 per cent of annual ticket sales – did not start with a superhero or a sequel.

In 2023, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 from Marvel started the summer with US$118 million in opening-weekend ticket sales, going on to take in US$846 million worldwide.

To find a season opener with lower ticket sales than The Fall Guy, you would have to go back to 1995, when French Kiss, a mid-budget romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline, arrived to about US$18 million in today’s dollars. NYTIMES