Last weekend, Deadpool katana-chopped out of second-tier superhero-movie idyll to surpass all pre-release tracking estimates with a $152.2 million four-day gross. Along the way, it basically re-wrote the playbook for R-rated comic-book adaptations opening in February (the movie-release equivalent to Siberia) while, almost as an afterthought, slapping the Blue Steel from *Zoolander 2’*s face at the box office. The “merc with a mouth”—a man in burgundy tights whom few outside San Diego Comic-Con had ever paused to consider prior to this month—out-earned Ben Stiller’s cultishly venerated, cameo-saturated fashion lampoon by a nearly 10-to-1 ratio.

Zoolander 2 is far from the first sequel to put in a poor performance in recent months, and the hand-wringing in Hollywood has begun. “It’s harder to open a sequel than an original film these days,” says a high-ranking studio boss who insisted on anonymity because—naturally—the studio employing the executive is set to release a string of sequels. “I think audiences want fresh.”

Exhibit A: the slumping box-office returns for a series of high-profile sequels. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 2 is the lowest-grossing title in Jennifer Lawrence’s four-film franchise; Ted 2 made only $81 million versus *Ted’*s $218 million blockbuster breakout; The Divergent Series: Insurgent earned $20 million less domestically than 2014’s Divergent; Magic Mike XXL made about half the financial haul of Magic Mike in the U.S.; Ride Along 2 has thus far netted $84 million in receipts versus the original’s $134 million take; The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials grossed $36 million less worldwide than The Maze Runner; Spectre came up more than $200 million short of 2012’s previous Bond installment, Skyfall; and then there’s Terminator: Genisys and this ignoble stat: 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day sold four times as many tickets, when accounting for inflation.

“These days, when people hear about a sequel, they’re like, ‘I’ll just watch that on a plane or wait for Netflix,’” the executive says. “The excitement level isn’t what it used to be.”

There are notable exceptions, of course. At last count, Star Wars: The Force Awakens had officially tallied $978 bajillion at the box office (well, O.K., actually just over $2 billion). Jurassic World broke records in its opening weekend to become far and away the most lucrative installment of Steven Spielberg’s 23-year-old dino franchise. And Mad Max: Fury Road not only road-hogged $376 million worldwide, it became an unexpected critical darling with a best-picture Oscar nomination to boot.

But across the board, the lackluster performance of so many sequels subverts everything we have come to know about what flies in the modern studio era. For at least a decade now, a certain conventional wisdom has dictated what reaches the multiplex; a certain primacy has been given to films that arrive pre-digested in the cultural consciousness. Reboots of reboots reign: interlocking cinematic universes are the new coin of the realm and legacy intellectual properties of dubious merit—MacGyver, Baywatch, hello!—are green-lit with staggering budgets, to the overwhelming exclusion of titles featuring untested characters and original plotlines.

Nowadays, however, that calculus is changing. “We’ve gotten to the point where you can’t fool anyone anymore,” says a veteran marketing executive with longstanding studio ties. “Social media, early trailer breaks, and TV spots spotlight all of a film’s weaknesses. That and the trend of showing an entire film in the trailer. The public just turns off early to what’s an inherently jaded remake attempt. I mean, how the hell did Anchorman 2 and Zoolander 2 get made?”