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Legendary screenwriter and author William Goldman once wrote, pertaining to Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything.” For as much research, analysis, and money goes into the pre-production, filming, and marketing of movies, studios ultimately have no idea what’s going to hit and what’s going to flop. Some of the greatest box office triumphs came from movies that appeared to be dead on arrival, filled with grave uncertainty and doubt within their respective studios, only to win over the public and find an audience.
In the end, moviegoing is a natural phenomenon that can’t be calculated. However, in certain cases, as with these 10 movies below, we saw these bombs from miles away. From behind-the-scenes drama to poor marketing, these films were destined to become a punchline in the trade publications.
10
‘Monkeybone’ (2001)
Henry Selick is one of our most imaginative animation visionaries living today. 30 years since its release, he is still rudely ignored as the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, which is often erroneously credited to screenwriter Tim Burton. However, if there’s one film that the Coraline director would wish that everyone would forget about, it would be his 2001 flop, Monkeybone, a confounding cinematic experience that was seemingly made for no one.
Grossing a meager $7 million on a $75 million budget, Monkeybone was Selick’s foray into new territory, as it blends live action filmmaking with his trademark stop-motion animation. Starring Brendan Fraser as a cartoonist who falls into a coma and is transported to another universe that threatens to supply the world with nightmares, the making of Monkeybone soured Selick from ever making another live-action feature, as he has since condemned the final product released to the public. The bizarre tonal register, uncanny visual aesthetic, random humor, and bonkers story were immediate turnoffs for casual audiences. The audacious animation style was a costly endeavor for 20th Century Fox, and there was simply no way of selling the film’s idea on a poster or trailer. Monkeybone, lampooned by critics, represents the harsh reality of taking a big artistic swing that whiffs.
9
‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ (2019)
Not only is Terminator 2: Judgment Day a perfect object, its conclusion wraps the story up from 1984’s The Terminator so tightly that a sequel was never in demand. However, Hollywood has to Hollywood, and audiences were sporadically fed sequels to James Cameron‘s classics, none of which were wholly satisfying. Still, they kept performing fairly well at the box office. By the time Terminator: Dark Fate arrived in 2019, audiences were not going to be fooled again, leading to a financial failure that may have terminated the franchise altogether.
In a cruel twist of fate, the surprisingly inventive and engaging Terminator: Dark Fate, the series’ apex since Terminator 2, was the one that failed for its studio, Paramount, with its $261 million worldwide gross falling short of its whopping $185 million budget. While not the most devastating flop, Tim Miller‘s retconning of the events following T2, botched in the uninspiring Rise of the Machines, Salvation, and Genisys, immediately lacked any audience and critical enthusiasm. Even with James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger back on board as producer and star, respectively, and Linda Hamilton reprising her role as Sarah Connor, Dark Fate was a victim of the world not wanting to be fooled for a fourth time. With the scope and budget continuously ballooning, it was clear that Terminator needed a factory reset rather than chasing after the glory of its first two entries.
8
‘Dolittle’ (2020)
Say what you want about modern moviegoing tendencies, but audiences aren’t dumb. Just because the world loved Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn’t mean they’re going to sign up for anything he stars in, especially when his Avengers: Endgame follow-up looked as silly and nonsensical as Dolittle. Released during the brief window in 2020 before things went awry amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the new adaptation of the animal whisperer, originally played by Rex Harrison and Eddie Murphy, carried a weighty price tag for something that was set up for failure.
On the surface, Dolittle‘s box office performance of $251 million worldwide gross is impressive, but when compared to its $175 million budget, these gaudy numbers were hardly worthy of celebration for Universal. Anyone who was following the news of its production, directed by Stephen Gaghan, knew that a stinker was in order, as the film underwent three weeks of reshoots by multiple directors after poor test screenings. Downey’s spontaneity and improvisation were great for Iron Man, but his freewheeling creative process led to a disastrous production. The chaos of the set is felt on the screen—a disorganized and rudderless mess of a movie. By giving a reheated performance, filled with his usual snarky quips, Downey proved he was desperate for Christopher Nolan to upend his screen persona in Oppenheimer.
7
‘Lightyear’ (2022)
“This is the origin story of the human Buzz Lightyear that the toy is based on,” wrote Chris Evans in a Twitter post that lives in infamy. Emblematic of the glut of IP in cinema, Pixar stooped low for a blatant cash grab in Lightyear, the inexplicable spin-off of the Toy Story franchise centered around the fake person who spawned the fake toy, Buzz Lightyear, here voiced by Evans instead of Tim Allen. The fact that Evans needed to clarify its synopsis was a telltale sign that a bomb was set for launch in 2022.
Grossing $218 million worldwide is relatively low for Pixar sequel standards, and this number is even more egregious when pitted against its whopping $200 million budget. Lightyear‘s existence is indicative of Disney’s obsession with milking their own properties without a clever angle. The film, directed by Angus MacLane, was truly something nobody asked for. Any ardent fan of the Toy Story series will tell you that interest in how the Buzz toy was created within the universe was little to none. Expanding on the Buzz lore taints the purity and charm of the series, making Lightyear woefully disjointed within this beloved franchise. Disney and Pixar are already making a killing off Toy Story sequels, which sees its fifth installment in 2026. This head-scratching spin-off was born out of sheer greed.
6
‘Borderlands’ (2024)
Video game movies are all the rage these days. In fact, they may have even surpassed superhero movies as the most coveted IP by studios in the wake of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Minecraft. Still, rights to a beloved game aren’t enough to trick audiences into thinking you have the next blockbuster—take, for example, Borderlands, a total wipeout at the box office in 2024 that everyone saw coming from a mile away.
There’s no way of spinning the film’s financial performance, as its $32 million gross on a $115 million budget is a flop of the highest order. Quick research into the making and release of Borderlands, starring an overqualified Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jack Black, raised countless red flags. Development hell often indicates an impending bomb, and the writing was on the wall for Borderlands, which was announced in 2015, filmed in 2021, and underwent reshoots in 2023. Director Eli Roth, whose R-rated vision was sanded down for a PG-13 rating, was replaced by Tim Miller during reshoots. Even though two directors worked on it, Borderlands is bereft of any artistic direction. The film is a watered-down Guardians of the Galaxy wannabe with inert action and comedy. Borderlands feels trapped in 2015, with its smarmy dialogue and punk sensibilities being incredibly dated a decade later.
5
‘The Flash’ (2023)
By the time The Flash was released in theaters in 2023, the term “superhero fatigue” had reached the lexicon. This phenomenon was the only thing that could account for the string of underachieving comic book adaptations dating back to the year prior. In hindsight, we may have been overthinking it all, as sometimes, a movie is just an outright stinker, like Warner Bros’ failed attempt at orchestrating a colossal event for the disjointed DC saga.
Despite WB’s efforts to sell The Flash as the cinematic event of the year, its $271 million worldwide gross fell short of its hefty $200 million price tag. The last thing audiences wanted amid our collective superhero fatigue was a bloated film like The Flash, directed by Andy Muschietti and starring Ezra Miller in the titular role, which required casual viewers to be caught up with a handful of previous DC installments. The movie was radioactive from the start due to the behind-the-scenes drama involving Miller’s legal issues and personal scandals. Two particular vices of the superhero genre, third acts riddled with cheap CGI and forced character cameos, reached their nadir in The Flash, leaving theaters in pin-drop silence at the reveal of Nicolas Cage and George Clooney as an alternate Superman and Batman, respectively. This cinematic folly signaled that audiences had evolved, as forcing superhero properties without a fresh take wasn’t enough to create a blockbuster anymore.
4
‘Gigli’ (2003)
They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but tell that to the team behind Gigli, and they’d quickly refute that adage. A movie now synonymous with “flop,” Gigli was such a disaster that it put Martin Brest seemingly in permanent director jail and turned Ben Affleck, who subsequently married his co-star, Jennifer Lopez, into a punchline for the tabloids. This is a quintessential “so bad it’s good” movie, yet even irony couldn’t draw people to theaters in 2003.
While we’re prone to reclaim movies once viewed as disappointments, there is no redeeming Gigli, a shapeless
Grossing a lowly $7 million on a $54 million budget, Gigli, a romantic-comedy set in the criminal underworld featuring two marquee movie stars, should’ve been a slam dunk, but people know a bomb when they see one. The film dropped a staggering 82% percent in gross in its second weekend of release, indicating that word of its creative ineptitude spread quickly. While we’re prone to reclaim movies once viewed as disappointments, there is no redeeming Gigli, a shapeless, poorly acted (notably an unforgivable Justin Bartha performance that was already insensitive in 2003), and lethargic film lacking humor and romance. Brest fell asleep behind the director’s chair, as his flair for high-octane action and comedy, seen in Midnight Run, is nowhere to be found. Gigli even fails as a cult “bad” movie like The Room, as there is little joy or energy in the film’s meandering conversations between the two lead stars-turned-couple.
3
‘Battlefield Earth’ (2000)
John Travolta‘s career arc is quite the adventure. After his breakthrough in the 1970s, he soon lost his reverence and viability in the public eye by the early ’90s, only to have Quentin Tarantino revive him with Pulp Fiction. His unexpected comeback restored his A-list credibility, but his self-destructive nature came back to haunt him with the sci-fi disasterpiece, Battlefield Earth, one of the most ridiculed and loathed films in recent history.
General audience curiosity in this strange-looking mess wasn’t enough to make up for costs, as the 2000 film directed by Roger Christian grossed $29 million on a $73 million budget. A movie practically designed to dominate the Golden Raspberries, Battlefield Earth wants us to take this story of alien invasion and enslaved human uprising seriously, but everything about it, from the obnoxiously flashy visual language to the garish makeup and costume design, is a laughingstock. Of course, everyone had their guns out for this film due to Travolta’s ties to Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, who wrote the film’s source material. The trailers alone made viewers long for Tarantino to give this gifted actor a worthy part. You could do a lot worse than spend a night mocking Battlefield Earth‘s ridiculous script and story logic, but the people were unwilling to pay the price of admission in theaters.
2
‘Madame Web’ (2024)
Not everyone can be the Marvel Cinematic Universe—just ask Sony’s extended Spider-Man universe. They may have the rights to certain Marvel Comics characters, but they don’t have the vision and standard of quality shepherded by Kevin Feige. Following the lackluster whiffs in Venom and Morbius, Sony’s attempts at retaining control of Spider-Man while Tom Holland thrived in the MCU reached their nadir with Madame Web, this generation’s signature bad movie that is still worthy of dissection.
Superhero fatigue or not, Madame Web, which only grossed $100 million on an $80 million budget, was a flop the moment its first trailer dropped, featuring the notorious line “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.” Dakota Johnson is captivating in romantic comedies or indie dramas, but as a superhero, she’s completely out of her league. A peak example of “gas-leak cinema,” something is just off throughout all of Madame Web, from the stilted acting and choppy ADR to the lackadaisical pace and frictionless stakes. S.J. Clarkson‘s film is begging Spider-Man to swing in and save the day, as, without the marquee character’s presence, this origin story is completely aimless. Sony pushed their luck with Madame Web, who learned the hard way that audiences in 2024 were not automatically lulled by the Marvel Comics logo.
1
‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ (2024)
Just because a movie performed well, even one billion dollars well, doesn’t mean we demand a sequel. Joker was always designed to be a one-off, stand-alone film starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Todd Phillips. Five years after dominating the box office and winning multiple Academy Awards, Warner Bros. egregiously overstayed their welcome with Joker: Folie à Deux, a towering box office bomb and source of sheer audience outrage that will be nearly impossible to top.
Warner Bros’ 2025 triumph was a needed comeback after the calamitous performance of their 2024 Joker sequel, which grossed $207 million on a $190 million budget, a seismic drop-off from its previous installment. On paper, Phillips using his cachet to turn a Joker sequel into a dark musical crossed with a prison and courtroom drama is intriguing, and it’s a brilliant counter to the formulaic nature of comic book movies. However, ideas only get you so far, as Joker: Folie à Deux, also starring a wasted Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, is woefully executed. Every scene is punishingly dour without the sophistication of a weighty drama, and the musical numbers play as distractions rather than artistic statements. For such a major blockbuster, the film is inexplicably condensed in scope, merely serving as a recap of what happened in the 2019 movie. Laboriously paced and insultingly one-note, Folie à Deux let everyone know ahead of time that this would be a folly with its title. After the exhausting discourse and controversy surrounding Joker, people were ready to move on from Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) and his anarchic ways.
- Release Date
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October 4, 2024
- Runtime
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138 minutes
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https://collider.com/box-office-bombs-surprised-no-one/
Thomas Butt
Almontather Rassoul
