Movie studios analyze the market to figure out which movies they should bet big on, but sometimes the market throws up some surprises, and sure-fire hits turn into box office bombs. Movies with great casts, big franchise recognition and exciting ideas can still end up falling short of expectations. In the most extreme cases, this can have knock-on effects which force studios to scrap other movies or shut down entirely.
Even huge franchises like Star Wars and the MCU aren’t immune to the odd box office bomb. These are often among the most costly flops, since they have such big budgets and marketing costs. Some box office bombs can salvage their reputations, but money talks in the movie industry. One big misfire can cause financial chaos for the studios involved, even if it looked as if the odds were in their favor.
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20 Biggest Box Office Bombs Of All Time
From Pixar flops to Western catastrophes to CGI messes and franchises that never took off, these are the 20 biggest box office failures of all time.
10 Cats (2019)
Box Office: $75.5 million
Cats has been a popular musical ever since it premiered in London’s West End in 1981, so a star-studded movie adaptation with Les Misérables director Tom Hooper seemed destined for box-office success. However, as soon as fans saw the first images and the trailer, all hope of a big hit was squashed. Cats was being ridiculed long before it even hit theaters, with its creepy visuals turning audiences away.
As soon as fans saw the first images and the trailer, all hope of a big hit was squashed.
The cast of Cats includes A-list actors such as Judi Dench and Ian McKellen, but even Taylor Swift’s star power was not enough to salvage the movie. Cats had the potential to be the next big Hollywood musical, but it ended up being a big swing and a miss, failing to recoup its budget and going down in infamy as one of the worst movies of all time. A great cast and a popular musical somehow turned into a historic bomb.
9 Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Box Office: $393.2 million
For almost any other movie, Solo: A Star Wars Story‘s box office returns would constitute a success, but the movie’s immense budget and marketing costs mean that it still turned out to be a flop. The Star Wars franchise has been a consistent money-maker for decades. This is why Disney could reasonably have expected Solo to rake in a billion dollars, just like every movie in the sequel trilogy and 2016’s Rogue One.
Solo
‘s commercial failure forced the franchise to rethink the plan for moving forward, and several
Star Wars
movies were immediately shelved.
Solo‘s commercial failure forced the franchise to rethink the plan for moving forward, and several Star Wars movies were immediately shelved. If Solo had been a success, there could have been a Boba Fett movie, a Jabba the Hutt movie and many more spinoffs and prequels. As things stand, there hasn’t been a Star Wars spinoff movie since Solo. The Mandalorian and Grogu will end this streak, but this is seen as a safe bet after three seasons of the Disney+ show.
8 The Last Duel (2021)
Box Office: $30.6 million
The Last Duel had a top-tier director, an original idea and some A-list stars, but it still became a huge flop. With a budget of $100 million, The Last Duel was a financial disaster. Part of this can be attributed to the lingering effects of the pandemic, but this doesn’t come close to explaining how The Last Duel underperformed so drastically. Pundits have blamed the movie’s runtime and its obscure subject.
The Last Duel
had a top-tier director, an original idea and some A-list stars, but it still became a huge flop.
The Last Duel is based on a true story, but not one that a majority of people would have heard of. The fact that it’s a historical drama could also have affected its box-office receipts, since this isn’t the most fashionable genre in the current landscape of cinema. Despite these issues, The Last Duel was still expected to do much better than it did. The fact that the movie became a streaming hit proves that there was an audience for it after all.
7 The Fall Of The Roman Empire (1964)
Box Office: $4.8 million
While The Last Duel came out in an era when historical dramas were unfashionable, the same cannot be said for The Fall of the Roman Empire. The 1950s and 1960s were a golden age for sword-and-sandal epics such as Ben-Hur and El Cid. The Fall of the Roman Empire looked set to capitalize on this trend. It was one of the most expensive movies ever made at the time, with lavish sets and an all-star cast.
This financial disaster contributed to the Oscar-nominated producer Samuel Bronston filing for bankruptcy.
The Fall of the Roman Empire should have been too big to fail, but it fell well short of its $16 million budget. This financial disaster contributed to the Oscar-nominated producer Samuel Bronston filing for bankruptcy, and his career never fully recovered. Although it had the look and feel of other big-screen epics, The Fall of the Roman Empire was savaged by critics for its weak script.
6 The Mummy (2017)
Box Office: $410 million
Even a star as big as Tom Cruise isn’t impervious to the odd box office misfire. With such a high budget and marketing costs, it was estimated at the time of release that The Mummy needed to make $450 million just to break even. Cruise was forced to accept a rare box office loss, even though Universal had high hopes for The Mummy before release. The negative reviews ultimately killed its chances.
Universal planned an entire Dark Universe starting with
The Mummy.
Universal planned an entire Dark Universe starting with The Mummy, breathing new life into classic movie monsters such as Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula and the Invisible Man. This whole concept was scrapped after The Mummy‘s poor performance. Few box office bombs have ever been so consequential, as The Mummy was expected to spawn a long-running franchise.
5 Indiana Jones & The Dial Of Destiny (2023)
Box Office: $384 million
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was envisioned as the last hurrah for a cinematic icon, and Disney expected to improve upon the £786.6 million return of 2008’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. With Harrison Ford back for one last grand adventure and Logan director James Mangold on board, The Dial of Destiny was expected to do considerably better than it did. It ended up being one of the costliest bombs ever.
Disney expected to improve upon the £786.6 million return of 2008’s
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
The Dial of Destiny is one of the most expensive movies ever made, partly owing to the CGI de-aging used in Ford’s first scene. It needed to put up huge numbers to break even, but mixed reviews didn’t help its case. The best Indiana Jones movie is a toss-up between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, depending on personal taste. The Dial of Destiny doesn’t even belong in the discussion.
4 Lightyear (2022)
Box Office: $226.4 million
Pixar movies regularly cost around $200 million to make, which is a lot for animated movies. However, the studio consistently justifies these numbers with huge box office receipts. Lightyear had a big budget, but there were high hopes that another movie in the Toy Story franchise would be just as successful as the others. For context, 2019’s Toy Story 4 made over a billion dollars.
Lightyear
had a big budget, but there were high hopes that another movie in the
Toy Story
franchise would be just as successful as the others.
Unfortunately for Pixar, Lightyear failed in spite of having everything it needed to be a big hit. Estimates suggest that it cost the studio over $100 million when factoring in marketing costs. Lightyear was seen as a sure thing, but it doesn’t have enough of what makes the Toy Story franchise. Other characters such as Woody are completely absent, and Tim Allen isn’t even the one voicing Buzz. Lightyear might have been more successful if it were reimagined as an original sci-fi movie without any mention of Toy Story.
3 The Marvels (2023)
Box Office: $206.1 million
The MCU has been dominating at the box office for many years now, and almost all the franchise’s movies end up making huge amounts of money. 2023’s The Marvels was a rare box office flop, leading to renewed discussions of so-called “superhero fatigue”. There has been no shortage of theories put forward about why exactly The Marvels became the MCU’s lowest-grossing movie.
The Marvels
was a rare box office flop, leading to renewed discussions of so-called “superhero fatigue”.
Disney CEO Bob Iger contributed the movie’s failure to a lack of studio oversight, but this reason has been hotly debated, with some claiming that Iger meant it as a slight on director Nia DaCosta. Other possible reasons for The Marvels‘ historic failure include the fact that the movie requires deeper knowledge than other MCU movies to enjoy, that it has a lack of recognizable top-tier heroes, or that some fans were turned off by the all-female team of heroes. Whatever the reason is, other MCU movies with mediocre reviews have performed much better.
2 First Man (2018)
Box Office: $105.7 million
First Man had all the ingredients of a big hit. Director Damien Chazelle was coming off the back of La La Land‘s success with the A-list profile of Ryan Gosling as his star, and they were teaming up on a biopic about Neil Armstrong. For whatever reason, all the star power and the allure of a famous story proved to be insufficient. First Man struggled at the box office, especially when considering its sky-high aspirations.
First Man
seemed poised to capitalize on the trend of astronaut movies in the 2010s.
First Man seemed poised to capitalize on the trend of astronaut movies in the 2010s. Gravity, Interstellar and Hidden Figures all became huge financial hits, but First Man may have missed the boat. A year later, Brad Pitt’s Ad Astra became another high-profile bomb, suggesting that astronaut movies were fading out of style just as quickly as they had come in. First Man received positive reviews, but they weren’t enough.
1 The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Box Office: $110 million
The biggest problem facing The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was that it was an adaptation of a TV show from the 1960s that had been largely forgotten about. However, the marketing didn’t lean into this angle, focusing instead on Guy Ritchie’s stylish period thriller, with a charming cast led by Henry Cavill at the height of his Superman fame. Some positive reviews weren’t enough to prevent The Man From U.N.C.L.E. from falling well short of expectations.
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
could have started an entire franchise if it had been more successful at the box office.
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. has been reappraised since its release. With plenty of fans on streaming platforms and a rehabilitated critical consensus, people are finally recognizing the quality of the retro spy thriller. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. could have started an entire franchise if it had been more successful at the box office, but with a budget of $75 million, Warner Bros. expected much more.
