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Commonly cited possible reasons for box office failures:
* '''Bad word-of-mouth''': The movie just happened to be simply so bad that people avoided it. Those who enjoy [[So Bad It's Good|cheesy fun]] usually buy it on [[VHS]] / [[DVD]], or simply pirate it later.
* '''[[Dueling Movies|Competition]]''': This is particularly often in effect with [[Summer Blockbuster|summer blockbusters]]. People have a limited amount of brainless action they would watch, and if there's a lot of that available, some titles may be neglected. They also tend to be high-budget, and as such if the movie flops, it costs a ''lot''. There is, however, often a principle similar to [[Award Snub]] in nature: several good movies (with similar target audiences) are released simultaneously, thus one of them performs truly spectacularly, another one flops, but both are considered [[Vindicated
* '''Poor marketing''': Many a bomb became so despite (or due to) being an excellent movie in general. [[Never Trust a Trailer|Incorrect]] or [[Misaimed Marketing|misleading]] information about them (or just plain ''lack'' of marketing) makes audiences rely exclusively on word-of-mouth, which is generally not enough for a movie to successfully perform. The internet has made this situation a bit better, but not that much. These movies almost always achieve [[Cult Classic|cult status]] and can later become profitable on DVD.
* '''Other circumstances''': Sometimes movies flop due to something that's not directly related to the movie itself or the movie industry as a whole. [[Funny Aneurysm Moment|Funny Aneurysm Moments]] and [[Too Soon]], for example, tend to hit [[Disaster Movie|disaster movies]]' sales very hard when bad timing happens (the attacks of September 11th, 2001 in [[New York City]] and Arlington, Virginia, for example, killed a lot of those even though they were obviously filmed prior to the catastrophe).
Note that the figures provided here for budgets and box office returns don't usually tell the whole story. A studio usually only sees about half of a film's box office take, with the rest going to theaters and (often) the actors, director, etc. involved with the production. The budgetary figures provided by the studios, meanwhile, only cover the production costs; distribution and marketing, especially for [[Summer Blockbuster|summer blockbusters]], also eat up substantial amounts of studio money. Unless noted otherwise, it's safe to assume that a film on this list cost a lot more than the studio said it did. Plus, remember to take inflation into account when looking at films made decades in the past; ''[[
Flops tend to become [[Franchise Killer|Franchise Killers]], [[Genre Killer|Genre Killers]], and [[Creator Killer|Creator Killers]], or "spawn" a [[Stillborn Franchise]].
[[Critical Dissonance]] is often at full force here, with critics liking it. [[Vindicated By Video]] often helps (especially with [[Better
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=== Rules of thumb in bombing ===
* Almost all films directed by [[Orson Welles]] were bombs (yes, even the [[Acclaimed Flop|critically-acclaimed]] ''[[
* Most [[Pirate]] movies made in the past few decades were flops. ''[[Cutthroat Island]]'' is one of the most notorious cases, standing as the biggest box-office bomb in history after inflation. ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'' finally broke this trend.
* Disney's ''[[
* Indeed, most non-Disney animated movies during [[The Renaissance Age of Animation|Disney's Renaissance era]], from the late 1980's through the 90's. This includes [[Don Bluth]]'s films in the 1990's, besides ''[[Anastasia]]''.
* Most movie musicals for a decade or so after ''[[The Sound of Music]]''.
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=== Standalone bombs ===
* ''[[
* ''[[The Adventures of Pluto Nash]]'' (2002) -- Budget, $100-120 million. Box office, $7,103,973. Sat on the shelf for ages because everyonew knew it was a catastrophy. [[Eddie Murphy]] himself [[Old Shame|disowned it]].
* ''[[
* ''[[Around the World In 80 Days]]'' (2004) -- Budget, $110 million. Box office, $72,178,895.
* ''[[Astro Boy (
* ''[[Ballistic Ecks vs. Sever]]'' (2002) -- Budget, $70-90 million. Box office, $19,924,033.
* ''Bandslam'' (2009) -- Budget, $20 million. Box office, $12,225,023. A definite case of ''[[Misaimed Marketing]]''.
* ''[[Battlefield Earth (
* ''Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star'' (2011) -- Budget, less than $10 million. Box office, $2,529,395. It was taken out of theaters after only 2 weeks.
* ''[[
* ''[[Catwoman (
* ''[[
** ''Cleopatra'' was considered ''the'' example of failure for a while but the movie actually became profitable for the studio thanks to VHS and DVD sales in the 1990s. It only took 30 years!
* ''[[Conan the Barbarian]]'' (2011) -- Budget, $90 million. Box office, $48,795,021.
* ''Creature'' (2011) -- Budget, $3 million. Box office, $300,000. It was promptly jettisoned from theaters a week later.
* ''[[
* ''The Fall of The Roman Empire'' (1964) -- Budget, $19 million. Box office, $4,750,000. Comparisons with contemporary Roman epic ''Cleopatra'' are inevitable, although ''Fall'' had a substantially less [[Troubled Production]] and was much more well-received by critics. Audiences, however, had lost interest in sword and sandal epics following ''Cleopatra'' (and, unlike ''Cleopatra'', ''Fall'' has largely faded into obscurity since its initial release in 1964).
* ''[[Final Fantasy:
* ''[[The Garbage Pail Kids Movie]]'' (1987) -- Budget, $30 million. Box office, $1,576,615.
* ''[[Gigli]]'' (2003) -- Budget, $54-74 million. Box office, $7,266,209.
* ''Glitter'' (2001) -- Budget, $22 million. Box office, $5,271,666. This film's failure, along with that of the accompanying soundtrack album, sent [[
* ''[[The Golden Compass]]'' (2007) -- Budget, $180 million. Box office, $70 million (domestically), [[Germans Love David Hasselhoff|$372,234,864 (internationally)]]. Unfortunately, New Line Cinema had sold off the international distribution rights in order to raise enough money for the film's production, meaning that they only got the domestic gross, and never saw a penny of the international box office. As a result, [[Creator Killer|New Line was absorbed into]] [[Warner Bros]] soon after.
* ''Harts War'' (2002) -- Budget, $70 million. Box office, $33,076,815.
* ''[[
* ''[[Howard the Duck (
* ''How Do You Know'' (2010) -- Budget, $120 million. Box office, $48,668,907.
* ''[[
* ''[[Hudson Hawk]]'' (1991) -- Budget, $65 million. Box office, $17,218,080.
* ''Inchon'' (1982) -- Budget, $46 million. Box office, $5,200,986. In 1995, it made the Guinness Book of World Records as "[[Medal of Dishonor|the biggest money-loser in history]]," later to be surpassed by the aforementioned ''[[Cutthroat Island]]''.
* ''[[The Iron Giant]]'' (1999) -- Budget, $70 million. Box office, $31 million.
* ''[[Ishtar]]'' (1987) -- Budget, $55 million. Box office, $14,375,181. Its failure led to Coca-Cola leaving the film business, selling off [[Columbia Pictures]] to [[Sony]].
* ''[[John Carter (
* ''[[Jonah Hex (
* ''[[Looney Tunes: Back in Action]]'' (2003) -- Budget, $80 million. Box office, $21 million (within the USA), $68 million (worldwide). The movie's financial failure led the WB to think the Looney Tunes don't have the lasting appeal that they hoped, canceling the planned Looney Tunes shorts in production. In light of this fiasco the Looney Tunes will probably never get another theatrical film release.
* ''[[Mars Needs Moms]]'' (2011) -- Budget, $150 million. Box office, $39,549,758. Its failure led to [[Disney]] shutting down ImageMovers Digital, the production company it had formed with [[Robert Zemeckis]] (the film's producer); he would later reopen the studio at [[Universal]].
* ''[[The Meteor Man]]'' -- Budget, $30 million. Box office, $8,023,147, In fact, Robert Townsend's directorial debut, ''Hollywood Shuffle'', was made on a $700K budget and pulled in nearly $6 million, which was a huge success in terms of profit.
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* ''[[Mr. Bug Goes to Town]]'' (1941) --- Budget $713,511. Box office, $214,000. The film received almost no promotion from Paramount in either it's 1941 release, nor it's 1946 re-release as "Hoppity Goes To Town".
* ''[[The Nutcracker in 3D]]'' (2010) -- Budget, $90 million. Box office, $14,678,086, nearly all of which came from the Russian market.
* ''One From The Heart'' (1982) -- Budget, $26 million. Box office, $636,796. This film [[Creator Killer|bankrupted]] [[Francis Ford Coppola]], with most of his work for the next two decades being done [[Money, Dear Boy|to pay off the debts he accrued from making it]]. Like ''[[
* ''[[Outlander (
* ''[[The Postman (
* ''[[Radio Flyer]]'' (1992) -- Budget: $35 million. Box office: $4,651,977.
* ''[[Red Planet (
* ''[[Redacted]]'' (2007) -- Budget was a modest $5 million. Box office was a ''very'' modest $65,000. That's sixty-five ''thousand'' dollars. International revenues added another... $700,000.
* ''[[
* ''[[Sahara]]'' (2005) -- Budget, $241.1 million<ref> $160 million in production costs, plus $81.1 million in distribution and marketing expenses</ref>. Box office, $202,938,255. After a lawsuit put several documents relating to the film's production into the public domain, the ''[[American Newspapers|Los Angeles Times]]'' did [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-movie15apr15,0,6005119.story a report] using the film as a case study in production costs run amok.
* ''[[Showgirls]]'' (1995) -- Budget, $45 million. Box office, $20,350,754.
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* ''Sorcerer'' (1977) -- Budget, $22 million. Box office, $12 million. (It didn't help that everyone on Earth was standing in line to watch ''[[Star Wars]]'' that year.)
* ''[[A Sound of Thunder]]'' (2005) -- Budget, $80 million. Box office, $11,665,465.
* ''[[Speed Racer (
* ''[[Stealth]]'' (2005) -- Budget, $135 million. Box office, $76,932,872.
* ''[[Strange Days]]'' (1995) -- Budget, $42 million. Box office, $7,959,291.
* ''[[Supernova]]'' (2000) -- Budget, $90 million. Box office, $14,828,081.
* ''[[The
* ''Town & Country'' (2001) -- Budget, $90-105 million. Box office, $10,372,291. [[Warren Beatty]]'s last role to date.
* ''[[Treasure Planet]]'' (2002) -- Budget, $140 million, Box office, 109,578,115. This and the failure of ''[[Home
* ''[[Zyzzyx Road]]'' (2006) -- Budget: $2 million. Box office: $30. Yes, thirty bucks. To be fair, the film received only a one-week domestic release (playing one screen in Dallas) to comply with Screen Actors Guild rules. The producer had no intention otherwise of opening it in the U.S. until after it had foreign distribution. (Foreign gross to date: $368,000.)
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