They’re not the WORST movies. They just lost the most money. But yes, some of them are pretty bad…
Wait a decade it has been for cinema.
In what seems like a very short amount of time, the benchmark for a movie being a success is now to make a billion dollars at the box office. That is the goal for blockbusters now!
This year alone, Disney is likely have SEVEN billion-dollar makers, but if you look over the last decade, they’ve also been responsible for some of the biggest misses on the big screen.
The decade has seen some genuinely good movies end up being a disappointment for the accountants – Blade Runner 2049 lost $80 million, Deepwater Horizon lost $110 million, Hugo lost around $90 million – but more often than not, it is big, expensive, and BAD movies that end up on these lists.
Below are the facts and figures on the ten biggest box office flops of the 2010s, working from all available released info (some of which is estimated), and the important thing to keep in mind is the production budget, which is different to the promotional budget.
In some cases, film companies will double the production budget on the promotional budget in order to raise awareness. And sometimes that pays off. But sometimes, as you’ll see, not so much.
Now, on with the list!
10. JUPITER ASCENDING (2015)
Production Budget: $175 million
Worldwide Box Office: $184 million
Estimated Losses: $120 million
After the Matrix Trilogy, the Wachowski siblings were pretty much given a blank cheque to make whatever they liked. Then came Speed Racer (losses: $80 millions), then came Cloud Atlas (losses: $75 million), and then this Channing Tatum-as-a-space-werewolf flopped harder than them all. Which is probably why one of the Wachowskis are now going back to make the fourth Matrix movie.
Clip via Warner Bros. UK
9. TERMINATOR: DARK FATE (2019)
Production Budget: $196 million
Worldwide Box Office: $261 million
Estimated Losses: $130 million
The most recent entry on this list (although X-Men: Dark Phoenix juuuuuust missed out), it goes to show that just because you throw all the budget in the world at an established franchise, it won’t be enough to entice cinema goers. In this case, Terminator needs to go back to the original, go back to being small budget and scary. Either that, or just go away for good.
Clip via Paramount Pictures
8. A WRINKLE IN TIME (2018)
Production Budget: $125 million
Worldwide Box Office: $133 million
Estimated Losses: $131 million
Based on one of the most loved books of recent years, with a much-loved director (Ava DuVernay) behind the camera, and an impressive all-star cast (Chris Pine, Michael Pena, Reece Witherspoon, Zack Galifinakis), there was just no getting around how mediocre this turned out. When not even the presence of a 100-foot tall Oprah can save your film, then you know you’re in trouble.
Clip via Walt Disney Studios
7. MARS NEEDS MOMS (2011)
Production Budget: $150 million
Worldwide Box Office: $39 million
Estimated Losses: $144 million
Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of this movie, most people haven’t. With a voice cast consisting of a real who’s who of who’s that?, this became a warning to all other animated movies since. Just because you’re a cartoon, don’t automatically expect parents and their kids to come along willy nilly. In a world with Pixar, everyone needs to up their game.
Clip via Walt Disney Studios
6. PAN (2015)
Production Budget: $150 million
Worldwide Box Office: $128 million
Estimated Losses: $145 million
Sometimes Hollywood thinks that audiences want things, and audiences absolutely do not want those things. We’re talking about updated reboots of Robin Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, or the movie at No.4 on this list. Pan falls square into that list, too. Did you want to a gritty origin story of Peter Pan? No. And neither did anyone else.
Clip via Warner Bros. UK
5. TOMORROWLAND (2015)
Production Budget: $175 million
Worldwide Box Office: $209 million
Estimated Losses: $150 million
Of all the movies on this list, this is the one that seems the least deserving to be here. George Clooney and Hugh Laurie are having a blast in this big-ideas sci-fi action adventure from the director of The Iron Giant and Mission: Impossible – The One With Cruise On The World’s Tallest Building. But the advertising campaign was confusing, and the budget was HUGE. Unfortunately, it is one of the last original live-action big budget movies to come from Disney.
Clip via Walt Disney Studios
4. KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD (2017)
Production Budget: $175 million
Worldwide Box Office: $149 million
Estimated Losses: $153 million
Did you want a sexy, mysterious, Game Of Thrones-y reboot of King Arthur? That doesn’t sound too bad, actually. But Legend Of The Sword was so pre-occupied with setting up what was rumoured to be the first of FIVE movies, that it forgot to tell its own story in the process. Guy Ritchie then remade Aladdin, and everything was okay again. Forgive and forget, we guess.
Clip via Warner Bros. UK
3. MORTAL ENGINES (2018)
Production Budget: $110 million
Worldwide Box Office: $84 million
Estimated Losses: $175 million
Sometimes, ideas are TOO big for the big screen. The story of moving cities that eat smaller cities (yep, that was the plot) and the evil people who run them was simultaneously too much and not enough, with producer Peter Jackson putting his full weight behind the idea, but director Christian Rivers unable to back it up. Likely to be lost forever as the most forgettable box office flop of all time, which is an achievement in itself, we guess.
Clip via Universal Pictures
2. THE LONE RANGER (2013)
Production Budget: $250 million
Worldwide Box Office: $260 million
Estimated Losses: $190 million
Johnny Depp reteamed with director Gore Verbinski (the guy behind the first three Pirates Of The Caribbean movies) for this updating of a classic TV show. It actually wasn’t the worst end product, but it absolutely defies all reason and logic that it cost THIS much to make. Verbinski then went much smaller for his next movie, 2016’s A Cure For Wellness, which also turned out to be a massive flop. And Depp… well… moving on.
Clip via Walt Disney Studios
1. JOHN CARTER (2012)
Production Budget: $263 million
Worldwide Box Office: $284 million
Estimated Losses: $200 million
Not just the biggest flop of the decade, but regarded to be the biggest flop of all time. No other movie on this list caused the head of a studio to step down after it flopped so hard. But that is what happened here. This was going to be Disney’s Star Wars before Disney, y’know, bought Star Wars. A huge space opera with an all-star cast, cutting edge special effects, and a perfect set up for a potentially long running series. Everything was in place for it to go huge. And to the movie’s credit, it is actually pretty enjoyable! But audiences didn’t care. Turns out Star Wars kind of “borrowed” a fair few of John Carter’s plot ideas (the book was released in 1912) before John Carter could get to them himself. And audiences didn’t want another Star Wars, because they already had Star Wars. So when the John Carter sequels were cancelled, Disney bought Star Wars. And the rest was box office history, in a good way.
Clip via Walt Disney Studios
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