The 10 biggest box office flops
For a company that prides itself on a track record of success and its dominion over several of the most lucrative properties on the planet, Disney has been responsible for an alarming number of the biggest box office bombs in history.
Even titles that can’t be judged entirely fairly after being sent straight to streaming or given a hybrid release at the height of the pandemic have conspired to lose a fortune. Pixar’s Onward and Turning Red, the live-action Mulan remake, and Dwayne Johnson’s Jungle Cruise didn’t get a fair bite at the theatrical cherry, and as a result, they all incurred losses well north of $100million.
The Mouse House has experienced its fair share of catastrophes as it applies to titles given a full run in cinemas, too, with the studio footing the bill for five of the ten biggest money-losers in Hollywood history.
Badly-marketed sci-fi epic John Carter remains at the head of the pack after winding up an estimated $200m in the red, with The Lone Ranger losing a reported $190m the very next year. Even the executives couldn’t sugar-coat it, with then-president Alan Bergman holding his hands up during an earnings call and admitting, “We did lose that much money on those movies.”
Don Hall’s Strange World shattered a string of unwanted records for Disney’s esteemed animation arm on its way to projected losses of $197m following an embarrassing run on the big screen, which in turn saw it usurp Mars Needs Moms to snatch the crown of being the company’s animated sci-fi flop. The dead-eyed dud had proudly held onto that accolade for over a decade, having netted less than $40m in ticket sales in 2011 to rack up a $144m shortfall.
Brad Bird’s ambitious Tomorrowland rounds out Disney’s biggest busts, having sent him scurrying back to The Incredibles by way of a $150m loss, with sci-fi continuing to establish itself as the most fertile genre for colossal commercial catastrophes when you consider Peter Berg’s preposterous Battleship and Roland Emmerich’s Moonfall – unwisely touted as one of the most expensive independent productions in history – ended up losing $150m and $138m respectively.
Fantasy has fared equally miserably, to be fair, with Joe Wright’s risible revisionist fairy tale Pan also part of the $150m club, with accounts revealing that Guy Ritchie’s over-confident attempt at crafting a multi-film Knights of the Round Table universe imploded so spectacularly at the first hurdle King Arthur: Legend of the Sword lost precisely $153.2m for Warner Bros.
Post-apocalyptic literary adaptation Mortal Engines went hard in the marketing to let everyone know Peter Jackson was producing and had co-written the script alongside The Lord of the Rings cohorts Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens, but a write-down of $174.8m couldn’t have made it any clear that nobody cared.
The 10 biggest box office flops:
- Moonfall (Roland Emmerich, 2022)
- Mars Needs Moms (Simon Wells, 2011)
- Pan (Joe Wright, 2015)
- Tomorrowland (Brad Bird, 2015)
- Battleship (Peter Berg, 2012)
- King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (Guy Ritchie, 2017)
- Mortal Engines (Christian Rivers, 2018)
- The Lone Ranger (Gore Verbinski, 2013)
- Strange World (Don Hall, 2022)
- John Carter (Andrew Stanton, 2012)
