Nov 152011
Relevant to nuthin’, here’s a link to a Wikipedia entry on the biggest box office bombs ever. They are listed with their losses adjusted to 2011 equivalents… and boy howdy, there’s some real doozies in there.
List of biggest box office bombs
The top eleven:
| Film | Year | Total cost (production + marketing) (USD) | Worldwide theater gross (USD) | Net losses (USD) | Net losses inflation adjusted (2011 USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cutthroat Island | 1995 | 115,000,000 | 18,517,322 | 96,482,678 | 139,028,052 |
| The Alamo | 2004 | 145,000,000[1] | 25,820,000[1] | 119,180,000 | 138,583,355 |
| The Adventures of Pluto Nash | 2002 | 120,000,000 | 7,103,973[2] | 112,896,027[2] | 137,830,376 |
| Sahara | 2005 | 241,000,000[3] | 119,269,486 | 121,730,514 | 136,926,012 |
| Mars Needs Moms | 2011 | 175,000,000[4] | 38,992,758 | 136,007,242 | 136,007,242 |
| The 13th Warrior | 1999 | 160,000,000 | 61,698,899 | 98,301,101 | 129,558,133 |
| Town & Country | 2001 | 105,000,000[5] | 10,372,291 | 94,627,709 | 117,423,330 |
| Speed Racer | 2008 | 200,000,000[6] | 93,945,766 | 106,054,254 | 108,259,603 |
| Heaven’s Gate | 1980 | 44,000,000* | 3,484,331 | 40,515,669 | 107,987,063 |
| Stealth | 2005 | 170,800,000 | 76,932,872 | 93,867,128 | 105,584,468 |
| Green Lantern | 2011 | 325,000,000[7] | 219,851,172 | 105,148,828 | 105,148,828 |
OUCH. Some of these surprised the hell out of me… I didn’t know that “The 13th Warrior” and “Stealth” were bombs, certainly not in the hundred-million-dollar range.
8 Responses to “Box Office Bombs”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Waitaminnit … No Waterworld?!
(I see The Postman is #20. I takled with David Brin about the movie a couple of times, and he said that the script Costner used was the eighth version … and if you think that one was bad, you should have seen the other seven!)
>Waitaminnit … No Waterworld?!
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=waterworld.htm
Production Budget: $175 million
Domestic: $88,246,220 33.4%
+ Foreign: $175,972,000 66.6%
——————————————————————————–
= Worldwide: $264,218,220
Waterworld was a financial success. It was just a *really* expensive financial success.
Well, that settles it, then. There is no God.
Hollywood accounting is (in)famously corrupt. Some amazingly profitable movies have “netted” nothing.
One article, among many:
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1990-01-15/news/9001125160_1_gross-profit-net-profits-net-points
The only real surprise is 13th Warrior. It was a pretty decent film. The only explanation I can think of is that it cost way more than it needed to.
> The only explanation I can think of is that it cost way more than it needed to.
That, and I don’t recall it being advertised very well.
Sometimes movie studios torpedo their own products. Look at “Idiocracy.”
you forgot the 2011 movie “Creature”
cost $3,000,000 (estimated) box office $508,714 US dollar
That’s small taters… a loss of only $2.5 million or so. Doesn’t even come close.
I suspect there are a *vast* number of movies that have lost a few million. It’s something special that loses a hundred million.
Still, add up the top hundred bombs, and they still don’t come close to the sort of financial disaster that the US FedGuv cranks out damn near weekly.