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DeathWolf1982

Box office flops

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1 hour ago, ImproversGaming said:

I had a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biggest_box-office_bombs and these are the ones I have watched multiple time (like 4 times each):

 

Here's mine:

 

Below

It wasn't even given a proper theatrical run, but I'd consider it one of my all-time favorites. Sometimes I ask myself what incompetent morons decide when to shitcan a movie before it opens and for what reasons.

 

1 hour ago, ImproversGaming said:

Titan A.E.

I'm still waiting for a BluRay. :(

 

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6 hours ago, Bauul said:

For a bit of added context, generally whatever a movie's budget was can be realistically doubled to account for marketing spend.

 

So a movie that had a budget of $100m realistically cost its studio $200m in total. So that's why a movie that made, for example, $150m at the box office on a $100m budget is considered a commercial failure. 

 

(Quick caveat: this isn't a hard and fast rule, in fact a studio's yearly marketing budget is generally set out in advance, and then divided up between the movies it chooses to release. It's not locked per movie, and different movies will warrant different amounts of expenditure, but I've been told that "roughly double" is usually a broad benchmark).

 

As far as I understand it, isn't this usually evened out a fair bit by the fact that studios tend to under report income that films generate to pay lower taxes? The old Hollywood Accounting thing.

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and some 80's horror remakes from 00's and 10's and 20's

 

-A nightmare on elm street (2010)- what a shit fest this remake is, Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy Krueger sucked

 

-Child's play (2019)- at least this movie's average, i did like the chucky being a killer AI robot, but the characters like Karen Barclay sucked and Shane.

 

-Friday the 13th (2009)- Another average remake i like, Even Jason's mask is cool! the one thing i hate is the unlikable characters.

 

-The rob zombie Halloween's- Well H1 (2007) was horrible, and H2 (2009) was even more worse-

 

And there's more box office flops i missed such as the 1993 Super Mario Bros movie.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Doomkid said:

As far as I understand it, isn't this usually evened out a fair bit by the fact that studios tend to under report income that films generate to pay lower taxes? The old Hollywood Accounting thing.

 

Yes it is.

 

In the end, unless you're the person high up at the studio crunching the numbers, you don't really know an exact REAL number of profit or loss. According to 'the numbers' Harry Potter lost money. The reason the 'double the budget to be profitable' thing is a good rule of thumb is that it takes into account a bunch of different things, including marketing costs and also what theaters keep vs. earnings sent to the studios (and these numbers can be different depending on which country those earnings come from, as often studios will take more money per ticket in the United States than in China, for example).

And then the whole thing of movie budgets being accurately reported is a whole DIFFERENT can of worms...

 

Slightly off topic, it is interesting to look at the list of top grossing movies adjusted for inflation. Of course, some of these numbers are also estimated and don't have exact figures. There are around 10 movies that would have made over a billion domestically in current dollars.

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/top_lifetime_gross_adjusted/?adjust_gross_to=2019

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One should also note that a movie can be a box office flop but then still break even later when being sold for TV broadcast (Cleopatra) or home video (Waterworld).

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19 hours ago, DannyMan said:

Zyzzyx Road (2006), this one earned 30 USD in box office.

Wasn't that on purpose?

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Steven King's The Night Flyer had a budget of $1 000 000, managing to scrape together $124 000 at the box office, and it's largely forgotten about. Real shame, because Miguel Ferrer plays the world's best asshole in that movie. Really overlooked, probably one of King's best, and I really do mean that in earnest.

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Lone Ranger? The demographic that watched that was already shrinking and they seriously thought it was worth the trouble of...I just don't understand why films like this, Fat Albert, and Leave it to Beaver from '98 get greenlit when the potential audience was always goi9ng to be limited.

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It is like Disney's current fixation with producing completely unnecessary live-action remakes of its classic animated films.

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52 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

It is like Disney's current fixation with producing completely unnecessary live-action remakes of its classic animated films.

The Lion King remake made 

$1.663 billion, so I don't think they see it as "unnecessary" over at Disney. Apparently fans didn't think it was too unnecessary either, considering how much money it made.

 

Spoiler

Can I go one day without seeing "Disney bad!!!!"? We know.

 

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A good flop from this year is Moonfall by well known disaster movie director Ronald Emmerich. It grossed a mere $59 million compared to a budget of $138 million.

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On 7/30/2022 at 6:57 AM, Captain Keen said:

 

Yes it is.

 

In the end, unless you're the person high up at the studio crunching the numbers, you don't really know an exact REAL number of profit or loss. According to 'the numbers' Harry Potter lost money. The reason the 'double the budget to be profitable' thing is a good rule of thumb is that it takes into account a bunch of different things, including marketing costs and also what theaters keep vs. earnings sent to the studios (and these numbers can be different depending on which country those earnings come from, as often studios will take more money per ticket in the United States than in China, for example).

 

You need at least triple the cost to break even, but this depends on the marketing budget. Roughly 50% go to the theatre, so you need to earn double the production + marketing costs to break even during theatrical exhibition. Of course, these days secondary markets are already factored in the calculations, otherwise the 3x factor wouldn't even be enough.

 

On 7/31/2022 at 11:45 AM, BomberBlur07 said:

A good flop from this year is Moonfall by well known disaster movie director Ronald Emmerich. It grossed a mere $59 million compared to a budget of $138 million.

 

More like $44m

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt5834426/?ref_=bo_se_r_1

 

Ouch...

 

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A better question for this thread would be, what is your favorite movie that flopped upon its original release?

 

I was going to say either John Carpenter's They Live! or The Thing, but according to Wikipedia at least, they did manage to make their money back, albeit barely. Similarly, Ghostbusters 2016 did alright, so I guess none of these movies really count as flops.

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Going over the list, some contributions that I went to see in cinema:

  • 13th warrior
  • Tenet (the covid pandemic may have had a huge influence, wasn't a bad movie)
  • Sahara (read some of the books years ago)

A lot of other titles I either saw in streaming (Netflix) or rental, which was a thing some 15 years ago . . .

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It is really jarring that Hollywood would consider movies that do break even to be disappointments. I mean, I get it, movies are a for-profit venture, but still, it is such an absurd standard to expect every movie to make record profits.

 

I guess it explains the whole "cinematic universe" craze, where every movie, every series has to be an extended trailer for the next one.

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On 7/30/2022 at 12:37 PM, ChopBlock223 said:

Steven King's The Night Flyer had a budget of $1 000 000, managing to scrape together $124 000 at the box office, and it's largely forgotten about. Real shame, because Miguel Ferrer plays the world's best asshole in that movie. Really overlooked, probably one of King's best, and I really do mean that in earnest.

Love the short story and the movie! I also really like The Langoliers.

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1 hour ago, Rudolph said:

I guess it explains the whole "cinematic universe" craze, where every movie, every series has to be an extended trailer for the next one.

 

It's the perfect nearly risk-free business model for bean counters. Until the day comes where it stops working. And that day will always come. Even for Marvel. It may take many more years but it's inevitable that some day it will run out of steam if they keep using the same formula over and over again.

 

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52 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

It's the perfect nearly risk-free business model for bean counters.

Not quite, as so far, it only seems to have worked for Marvel/Disney and maybe Star Trek.

 

The same cannot be said about the DCEU and the Dark Universe (remember that?).

Edited by Rudolph

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I know. It failed for the Dark Universe because they never managed to establish the franchise in the first place, and the DCEU had such an uneven start that its reputation was damaged enough to not become a reliable household name. I know he has many fans, but Zack Snyder was not the right person to hire for such an undertaking.

 

For Marvel it worked because they didn't start big. The MCU was only formally established when things were already going well and the bean counters started to take control, seeing endless riches.

 

Here's the problem: Starting a franchise is still risky business. It only becomes a cash cow if it is already established and working like a well-oiled machine. The latter is also important, see "Solo" for what happens even with a big household name like Star Wars when there's reports of trouble. Here we got the typical "Me, too!" moments of people who didn't want to invest first into some actual substance before reaping the rewards.


Marvel got this organized perfectly, there's virtually never any negative reports about their productions, so no negative buzz. They know perfectly what to do to not alienate their core fans and how to play the reviewers.

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4 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

Marvel got this organized perfectly, there's virtually never any negative reports about their productions, so no negative buzz. They know perfectly what to do to not alienate their core fans and how to play the reviewers.

For the most part, you are right, although I do remember Iron Fist not doing well at all. Sure, it was eventually cancelled... alongside other shows that were actually well received, such as Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Daredevil and The Punisher. Now, I know it was really just because Disney wanted to leave Netflix and start its own streaming platform, but I mean, dang... I remember Jessica Jones being all the rage only half a decade ago and now, no one seems to be talking about it anymore. Disney is reportedly bringing Daredevil back and I hear Kingpin appeared in Hawkeye, but no word on the rest as far as I am aware.

 

The same goes with Agents of SHIELD, although I read that it got cancelled only two years ago, surprisingly enough. I would have not expected that one to last as long as it did, especially given how toxic of a person Joss Whedon has proven himself to be. 

Edited by Rudolph

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I'm pretty sure some really well regarded films like Willow and Labyrinth were considered major flops at the time. Both are regarded cult classics now though and guess they even eventually made money on VHS then DVD, Blu-ray, TV and streaming.

 

Cinematic failure may be a red flag that a movies no good but many other factors like marketing and the economy play at least a big of a part. I don't always agree with critics either, only way to judge is watch it yourself. Han Solo was considered a flop and like I said don't follow critics but some friends were unimpressed. I personally liked it better than any of 7-9 episodes (though not a much a Rouge One, that's become my series favorite).

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Indeed, too often, people conflate financial success and artistic merit. As I lamented earlier, a movie can make its money back and still be considered a failure, somehow. I mean, I can understand the sentiment when a movie goes way over budget (e.g. Cleopatra, Waterworld), but surely, movies like John Carpenter's could not have been that expensive to make.

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