10 comeback movies that failed miserably

‘Back in Action’ (Seth Gordon, 2025)

We’ll start this ignominious list with the most recent example of an attempted comeback torpedoed almost instantly by a lacklustre film. Cameron Diaz, once a beloved Hollywood leading lady with countless hits under her belt, retired from moviemaking after 2014’s Annie remake. She stayed away from the business for more than a decade, before finally returning with a Netflix action-comedy winkingly-titled Back in Action.

This movie boasted a great cast, with the likes of Jamie Foxx, Andrew Scott, Glenn Close, and Kyle Chandler backing up Diaz. It was directed by Seth Gordon, who had made semi-watchable movies before, like Horrible Bosses and Identity Thief. Naturally, when it hit Netflix, the streaming giant spouted a lot of fluff about it breaking streaming records. All signs point to a fun time at the movies (or on the sofa), right?

Well, no, not really. Back in Action simply wound up being the latest in a long line of lame Netflix ‘mockbusters’ that feel like they’re erasing themselves from memory even as you’re watching them. It was a sad anticlimax for Diaz, an actor with genuine star power and charisma. Hopefully, she’ll have better luck with her follow-up movie, Outcome, a black comedy directed by Jonah Hill.

‘The Last Stand’ (Kim Jee-woon, 2013)

In 2013, the ‘Austrian Oak’ Arnold Schwarzenegger made an explosive return to the screen after almost a decade being sidetracked by Governating all over the state of California. Fans were excited to see what the most iconic action star of all time had in store for them, and anticipation steadily grew for The Last Stand prior to its January release. Schwarzenegger hadn’t made a movie since 2003’s Terminator: Rise of the Machines, so this had to be good, right?

Obviously, considering its appearance on this list, The Last Stand wasn’t a particularly good comeback vehicle for Schwarzenegger. It promised B-movie murder and mayhem in the vein of John Carpenter’s ’80s classics, and delivered that to an extent. However, its tone was all over the place, and it wasn’t the least bit surprising that director Kim Jee-woon (I Saw the Devil) never made another Hollywood picture again.

Ultimately, though, the thing that scuppered The Last Stand most severely was that few people seemed to care about it. Perhaps Schwarzenegger’s time had come and gone, because in the decade since its release, he’s made a lot more movies, but none have had anywhere near the cultural cache of his ’80s/’90s heyday.

‘The Love Guru’ (Marco Schnabel, 2008)

Before 2008’s The Love Guru, audiences hadn’t seen Mike Myers in live-action since 2003’s View From the Top – and very few people saw that movie, anyway. Sure, he’d voiced Shrek and a couple of times and donned makeup and prosthetics to play The Cat in the Hat, but viewers hadn’t seen him create a classic Myers character like Austin Powers or Wayne Campbell for quite some time.

From its first trailer, though, people had a sinking feeling about The Love Guru, a comedy about the “number two guru in the world” after Deepak Chopra. The film was controversial in its depiction of Hinduism, and Myers’ cartoonish portrayal of Guru Pitka rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

Ultimately, The Love Guru was as desperately unfunny as it was offensive, and audiences chose to stay away. It was a commercial disaster that won three Golden Raspberry Awards and derailed Myers’ career permanently, instead of handing him a comeback to the big time.

‘Basic Instinct 2’ (Michael Caton-Jones, 2006)

In 2016, Basic Instinct 2 director Michael Caton-Jones bluntly admitted, “I was completely broke and had to take anything that came in. Basic Instinct 2 was this poisoned chalice that had been passed around, and eventually it arrived at my door.” We think you’ll agree that a quote like that doesn’t bode well for the quality of a film, and Basic Instinct 2 was indeed a dreadful, deeply unsexy movie.

In that mid-’00s period, Sharon Stone’s career was on the ropes following the critical and commercial debacle that was 2004’s Catwoman, which was already intended as a comeback of sorts. You see, she hadn’t been part of a commercially successful movie since 1995’s Casino, and when Catwoman was resoundingly rejected, she turned to her most iconic role: the icepick-wielding temptress Catherine Trammell from Basic Instinct.

By the time Basic Instinct limped into cinemas in 2006, though, Stone was 47 years old, and wasn’t partnered with an A-list star like Michael Douglas. Instead, she was saddled with British TV lump David Morrissey and, bizarrely, ex-Nottingham Forest and Liverpool striker Stan Collymore. Yes, really. Unsurprisingly, the movie made little more than half its budget back – and thoroughly embarrassed everyone involved.

‘Honey Boy’ (Alma Har’el, 2019)

In 2019, Shia LaBeouf was the talk of Hollywood again thanks to Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy. After several years of public controversies and personal problems that saw him enter a rehab facility, where he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, he returned with this semi-autobiographical tale that he’d written in rehab about his relationship with his father. The movie was rapturously received by critics, as was The Peanut Butter Falcon, LaBeouf’s other comeback role of that year.

Over the next couple of years, though, LaBeouf fell back into old habits. He made some questionable movie choices (The Tax Collector, Padre Pio) and found himself in hot water when ex-girlfriend FKA Twigs accused him of domestic abuse. His comeback wound up blowing up in his face almost as quickly as it had come about, and now he’s Hollywood persona non grata again.

Then, in 2022, LaBeouf admitted that his entire comeback was predicated on some very extensive creative liberties. He confessed that Honey Boy’s depiction of his father wasn’t accurate in the least, as he wasn’t abusive, like LaBeouf claimed in the film. He admitted to calling his dad after the premiere to take “accountability for all of that,” and lamented how he “knew very clearly” that he “couldn’t take it back.”

‘Coming 2 America’ (Craig Brewer, 2021)

If you ever want to torture your worst enemy, you could do worse than subjecting them to every Eddie Murphy movie released between 2007 and 2019. Egregious disasters like Norbit, Meet Dave, Imagine That, A Thousand Words, and Mr Church had effectively put an end to Murphy’s status as a popular movie star, and he needed to re-think things.

When the star returned with Dolemite Is My Name in 2019, though, it was hailed as the triumphant comeback of one of the finest comedic voices of his generation. Suddenly, people remembered why they loved Murphy so much and revelled in seeing him in that most rare of things: a good movie. Then, when it was announced that Murphy would seize upon this success with a sequel to one of his most beloved films, everything seemed right with the world.

To the dismay of fans everywhere, though, Coming 2 America was so woeful that one reviewer called it “startling in its utter incompetence.” Murphy then doubled down on dreck with the uber-forgettable streaming ‘comedies’ You People and Candy Cane Lane, and that all-important comeback was truly dead in the water.

‘Iron Man 2’ (Jon Favreau, 2010)

Mickey Rourke has had a couple of spectacular flameouts and Phoenix-like comebacks in his career. The notoriously difficult customer spent most of the ’90s fighting with studio heads and his own demons, not to mention the eight legitimate boxing matches he contested between 1991 and 1994. It seemed like he had burned all his bridges many times over, but in the mid-’00s, he reminded everyone of his talents in movies like Man on Fire and Sin City.

This comeback culminated in 2008’s The Wrestler, a wonderfully elegiac paeon to pro-wrestling and the messed-up guys who ply their trade within that cutthroat business. Rourke notched an Oscar nomination for the movie and suddenly became hot property again. Soon, he was on comic book supervillain duties in Iron Man 2 as the Russian heavy Whiplash, and it seemed like his rise would only continue.

Instead, Rourke hated working on the Marvel superhero movie, complaining that the studio wanted him to play a one-dimensional villain and that most of his work wound up on the cutting room floor. “If they want to make mindless comic book movies, then I don’t want to be a part of that,” Rourke groused in 2011. “You know, I didn’t work for three months on the accent and all the adjustments and go to Russia just so I could end up on the floor.” And just like that, the comeback was done.

‘What Happens Later’ (Meg Ryan, 2023)

In 2023, after eight long years away from the silver screen, Meg Ryan returned with What Happens Later. Not only was this her return to acting, but it was also her second directorial effort, and it functioned as her first rom-com since 2001’s Kate & Leopold. Could the former queen of rom-coms show any young pretenders to the genre what a true rom-com was, and in the process, regain her crown?

Nope. What Happens Later came and went without much fuss, finishing in a chastening ninth place at the box office on its opening weekend. Reviews were middling, and it appeared that fans weren’t as interested in a Ryan comeback as the studio may have hoped.

Heck, even Ryan herself admitted that she wouldn’t be in a hurry to direct and star in another rom-com anytime soon. “Yeah, I don’t really want to do it again,” she confessed. “Other than it being the quickest way to be really tired of yourself for, like, a year…I don’t know why I did it. Honestly, I can’t believe we did it. But we did!”

‘Edge of Darkness’ (Martin Campbell, 2010)

In 2010, Mel Gibson took on his first lead role in a major Hollywood production since 2002’s Signs. All the signs were there that Edge of Darkness was a safe bet. It was a remake of a classic ’80s BBC show that was being directed by Martin Campbell, who also helmed the original series, and it promised audiences a return to the hard-edged Gibson of Lethal Weapon and Ransom.

Instead of sealing his comeback to the top of Hollywood, though, Edge of Darkness sputtered at the box office and wasn’t particularly well-reviewed. It was easy to conclude that cinephiles simply weren’t ready to accept Gibson back into the fold after his exploits in the mid-’00s, which included his sexist, antisemitic tirade against a police officer.

In truth, in the 15 years since Edge of Darkness, Gibson hasn’t gotten much closer to a return to his A-list status. After a false start when his 2016 war epic Hacksaw Ridge improbably won two Academy Awards, he settled back into Hollywood exile. These days, he mostly cranks out direct-to-streaming movies with interchangeable titles and premises that no one could possibly want to watch.

‘Peter Five Eight’ (Michael Zaiko Hall, 2024)

In 2024, the unthinkable happened: Kevin Spacey starred in the lead role in a movie. The disgraced actor hadn’t worked in Hollywood since 2018’s Billionaire Boys Club thanks to a laundry list of legal troubles stemming from countless sexual assault allegations levelled against him.

Naturally, the film Spacey finally starred in didn’t emanate from one of the major Hollywood studios, instead being financed independently. However, it was still troubling that someone would pay the man to lead any film, even the tiniest indie. Would Peter Five Eight, a neo-noir about an assassin with a dodgy hairpiece, prove to be Spacey’s route back into Hollywood, where he once reigned supreme?

Of course, the answer is no. Peter Five Eight was resolutely ignored upon release, with mercifully few mainstream outlets giving it much coverage at all. It’s not even clear if it was released in any US cinemas, although it did somehow make a paltry $62,091 internationally. Whatever the case, 62 grand does not a comeback make.