The five biggest box office bombs in movie history
Audiences must have a better sense of smell than Hollywood studios, because it’s often the case that prospective customers can smell the bombs coming despite the misplaced confidence of the people footing the bill.
When companies are funnelling hundreds of millions of dollars into boardgame adaptation Battleship, yet another Terminator sequel, a remake of Ben-Hur nobody asked for, and whatever the hell Tom Hooper’s Cats was supposed to be, it boggles the mind that nobody asks who these films are being made for.
Anyone with two eyes and half a brain can tell from a mile off that there’s only going to be one outcome, and it’s not the kind that leaves the executives rubbing their hands in glee from the comfort of the boardroom.
On the odd occasion, a blockbuster can flop so hard that it ends up finding a place in the history books, an unfortunate turn of events that’s seen the following five go down as unwanted all-timers.
Five biggest box office failures:
5. Mortal Engines (Christian Rivers, 2018)
Damning proof that being involved with The Lord of the Rings trilogy doesn’t carry anywhere near the weight that it used to, Mortal Engines could only sit idly by as it went down in a ball of disastrous box office flames.
The feature-length directorial debut of Christian Rivers – who’d worked in the art and visual effects department of every Peter Jackson movie since Braindead – couldn’t have gone much worse, despite Jackson reuniting with Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens to script and produce the literary adaptation.
Arriving a decade too late to the craze of snapping up every fantasy series that appealed to a young audience, a miserly $83million in ticket sales ensured that by the time the dust had settled, Mortal Engines ended up losing an estimated $175m.
4. The Lone Ranger (Gore Verbinski, 2013)
Under no circumstances should any western ever carry a price tag of a quarter of a billion dollars, but Disney seemed confident that Gore Verbinski could replicate the Pirates of the Caribbean formula in a different locale.
The Lone Ranger carried the same director, writers, producer, and star of the swashbuckling saga, but audiences were nowhere near as interested. It’s not a great movie, but the first and last action sequences are genuinely stunning feats of cinematic imagination. It’s just a shame the rest of it was so dull.
It was one of those movies that carried the stench of a bomb around it long before arriving in cinemas, which turned out to be an accurate assessment once the numbers were crunched and The Lone Ranger saw the Mouse House haemorrhage as much as $190m.
3. Strange World (Don Hall, 2022)
Believe it or not, animation used to be fairly cost-effective compared to live-action, but as budgets continue to balloon, the risk becomes greater for any movie that isn’t nailed on as a sure-fire success.
Disney, animation, sci-fi, and family adventures don’t tend to mix all that well when placed into the same melting pot as the infamous Mars Needs Moms had already shown, with audiences completely and utterly disinterested in seeing what mishaps the Clade family were getting themselves into.
Failing to even recoup even half of its production costs during a listless run on the big screen, Strange World is the single biggest flop in the history of animated cinema after it wound up an eye-watering $197m in the red.
2. John Carter (Andrew Stanton, 2012)
Pixar veteran Andrew Stanton’s live-action directorial debut may well have been doomed from the start for one key reason that’s conspired to give rise to an alarming number of hefty commercial duds.
One of the easiest ways to guarantee any movie won’t thrive at the multiplex is by setting it on Mars, and even though the planet was left out of the title, John Carter ended up experiencing a similar fate to many Martian tales before it.
It’s a decent enough intergalactic escapade that’s cultivated a solid fandom in the years since, but nowhere near enough of them showed up to buy a ticket when the expensive epic poured $200m of Mickey’s money down the drain.
1. The Marvels (Nia DaCosta, 2023)
Several cracks had appeared in the previously impenetrable armour of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the years leading up to the release of the Brie Larson-led sequel, but this was the moment it was shattered.
The Marvels scored the MCU’s worst-ever opening weekend, became its lowest-grossing instalment ever, and emerged on the other side of a turgid experience as the studio’s first-ever bomb of gargantuan proportions.
Once marketing and distribution costs were factored in, the body-swapping superhero caper lost a reported $237m for Disney and Marvel Studios, edging the comic book bubble one step closer to bursting point in the process.
