It may be impossible for most people to think about gambling with hundreds of millions of dollars. But that’s what Hollywood does every month when they release movies made for tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, and marketed for tens, if not hundreds of millions more.
Sometimes, those gambles pay off, and we get movies that rake in over $1 billion at the global box office, and other times, well, not so much. If you gamble with hundreds of millions, you can lose hundreds of millions. Or at least one hundred million (adjusted for inflation), as each of the below films did upon release.
1. The 13th Warrior (1999)
Six years after the cinematic adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park wowed the world, this historical epic based on another Crichton novel failed to wow anyone. The 10th-century period piece follows Iraqi poet Ahmad ibn Fadlan (Antonio Banderas) as he travels as an ambassador with Vikings and becomes involved in an adventure similar to Beowulf’s. While the idea is interesting, and the film was helmed by Predator and Die Hard director John McTiernan, it failed to catch much attention.
2. The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)
Box office bombs aren’t always bad movies, but sometimes it’s clear that the critical pan of a film hurts its chances of significant return on investment. That’s undoubtedly the case for The Adventures of Pluto Nash. The big-budget science fiction comedy that sees Eddie Murphy’s eponymous Pluto Nash take on the space mafia. The concept is simple enough to be fun, but the execution was severely lacking despite a budget of $100 million.
3. The Alamo (2004)
The Alamo (2004) is one of several remakes that failed to meet the success of their predecessor. The 1960 John Wayne film isn’t even one of his most celebrated, but it was successful enough for a studio to greenlight this 2004 version. While the film’s ensemble cast, including Dennis Quaid and Billy Bob Thornton, may have been enough to interest some filmgoers, the lengthy runtime and lackluster reviews kept The Alamo (2004) from rousing much interest.
4. Lolita (1997)
Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s most famous novel was a moderate success in 1962. Still, it failed to adapt the source material well in theory, which left room for another adaptation to be more faithful to the controversial novel. Adrian Lyne’s 1997 adaptation certainly includes more plot points from the book and is more explicit, but its portrayal of the central relationship is more romantic and flirtatious. That approach may have made audiences skeptical of the film’s subject matter even more wary of spending money on it, leading it to become a flop.
5. 47 Ronin (2013)
Given the track record of American remakes of foreign films, you’d think studios would know better than to greenlight a fantastical reimagining of a historical story that had already been turned into several movies in Japan. But they went ahead and gave this story of samurai seeking revenge for their master a budget of over $175 million and learned a hard lesson when it made just over $151 million.
6. Battleship (2012)
The world of intellectual property (IP) is sometimes silly and leads to movies based on board games like Battleship. Unlike the game, which features two warring sets of, well, battleships, the movie centers on an aquatic alien attack, presumably to avoid any real-world political implications. It’s a somewhat baffling but good enough premise for an action movie, and the film did alright, raking in over $300 million worldwide. That wasn’t enough to recoup the over $200 million budget and marketing costs.
7. John Carter (2012)
Andrew Stanton wrote and directed two of the best and most successful animated films of the 21st century, Wall-E and Finding Nemo. His first outing into live-action failed to live up to his animated movies. Based on A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter could have been the start of a major science fiction franchise following the eponymous character’s adventures. The film’s relatively unknown source material and a poor marketing campaign made it crash and burn, leading Stanton back to animation.
8. The Lone Ranger (2013)
Looking at it now, there are a lot of reasons people wouldn’t want to watch The Lone Ranger, a film starring two alleged abusers with one in redface. While the allegations hadn’t surfaced at the time of the film’s release in 2013, it seems that the majority of audiences at the time were already not on board with a white actor playing an indigenous person. It also didn’t help that the movie’s source material failed to stir up much excitement, and the film failed to recoup its massive production and marketing budget.
9. Mortal Engines (2018)
Based on the young adult novel of the same name by Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines offered audiences a look at a steampunk future where cities are giant moving machines. It’s an intriguing concept and was well-executed visually by director Christian Rivers, who’d previously worked on visual effects for film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings.
Critics dinged the film for its flimsy and unoriginal narrative, and the book didn’t have enough fans to ensure that the adaptation would be successful, leaving the undeniably striking movie far below box office expectations.
10. Cutthroat Island (1995)
There are box office bombs, and then there’s Cutthroat Island. The movie held the Guinness World Record for largest box office loss for almost two decades (before losing it to John Carter in 2012) and caused production company Carolco Pictures to shut down. The leading duo of Matthew Modine and Geena Davis couldn’t save the movie, which tracks their pirate characters as they search for pieces of a treasure map, from its chaotic script that went through several rewrites during production.
11. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)
The early 2000s were an exciting time for animation, as 3D grew in popularity, and several films mixed two and three-dimensional elements while targeting boys with more action-oriented stories. But many of those films failed at the box office for various reasons. Among those is Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, based on the mythological sailor of the same name.
The film’s eye-popping animation and A-list voice cast, including Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Michelle Pfeiffer, couldn’t get enough people to see it and became the final Dreamworks animated film to use any traditional hand-drawn animation.
12. Treasure Planet (2002)
The year before Sinbad, famed animation directors John Musker and Ron Clements adapted Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island into a science fiction adventure. The film is a cult classic and was a great success among animation fans then, but less of a box office success. Treasure Planet made over $100 million at the box office, but that couldn’t clear the film’s historic budget of $140 million, the highest for any animated movie at the time.
13. Titan A.E. (2000)
One of the earliest and most ambitious combinations of two and three-dimensional animation, Titan A.E. tells the story of a young man thrust into a sci-fi adventure for the fate of humanity. It’s pretty classic stuff, and the visuals are, at the very least, intriguing for fans of creative animation. The story proved too traditional, with critics arguing that it felt like too much of a retread of other, better movies and failed to motivate audiences into the theater.
14. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within attempted to create the most photorealistic computer-animated picture the world had ever seen on the flip side of films combining traditional and computer animation. They might have succeeded in their goal to create something new. Audiences were turned off by the uncanny valley nature of the human characters in the sci-fi story about a dystopian Earth conquered by aliens.
15. Mars Needs Moms (2011)
A decade after Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within introduced the uncanny valley to major animated films, Mars Needs Moms offered us one of the deepest dives in that valley. The characters in the movie fall awkwardly between caricature art and overly human computer animation, leading to an unnerving look that didn’t help this sci-fi comedy about Martians abducting Earth’s mothers.
16. Peter Pan (2003)
Celebrated romantic comedy director P.J. Hogan’s 2003 live-action adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan was well-reviewed in 2003. It seemed like a perfect mix of fantasy and family films. But that mix may be what got it into box office trouble as it was released just one week after The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and the same day as Cheaper by the Dozen, which likely siphoned its fantasy and family audiences, respectively.
17. Pan (2015)
Twelve years after Hogan’s adaptation of the famous novel, award-winning filmmaker Joe Wright took a different approach to the material and created a prequel story that gave backstories to several elements of the Peter Pan universe that didn’t need backstories. Like the 2003 film, Pan failed to make back its significant budget. Unlike the 2003 film, almost no one likes this live-action foray into Neverland.
18. Sahara (2005)
Based on the novel of the same name by beloved adventure novelist Clive Cussler, Sahara fell prey to a series of issues. Most relevant here is that its budget, initially $80 million, ballooned up to $160 by the end of production. The film, which tracks Matthew McConaughey’s Dirk Pitt on a treasure hunt in the Saharan desert, was a moderate success but failed to recoup its unwieldy budget.
19. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Hollywood needs to learn to plan franchises before they start. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was meant to start a six-film series, but after failing to recoup its budget at the global box office, that plan was quickly scrapped. It’s another lesson that great, and even previously cinematically successful, source material doesn’t always ensure that audiences will show up.
20. Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
The Legacy sequel has a fascinating history in Hollywood. Martin Scorsese made one in the 80s, and some, like Mad Max: Fury Road, have been hailed as modern classics. But for every success, there’s a failure. And sometimes, they’re a bit of both. Terminator: Dark Fate met with a relatively warm reception from critics and fans who appreciated the return of Linda Hamilton to the franchise after, and it did alright at the global box office but didn’t do nearly well enough to be a money-making success.
21. A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
Based on a beloved children’s novel, directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ava DuVernay, and featuring an all-star cast including Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Chris Pine, Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time couldn’t convince enough viewers to go on its journey through space and time. The film’s box office failure was disappointing for fans of the book and the series that it begins, as well as the many who celebrated it as the first time a black woman directed a film with a budget of $100 million.
22. Speed Racer (2008)
The Wachowski sisters changed the world in 1999 with The Matrix. But they’ve failed to garner that kind of positive attention and significant financial success for anything they’ve done since, including the sequels to their most famous film. Their first non-Matrix film, Speed Racer, a live-action adaptation of the manga by Tatsuo Yoshida, seemed to overwhelm audiences with its onslaught of bright colors and fast-paced action, leaving the film in the box office dust.
23. Jupiter Ascending (2015)
The Wachowskis’ box office bad luck didn’t stop with Speed Racer. Their follow-up, Cloud Atlas, didn’t do too well, and their final feature film together, Jupiter Ascending, was too strange to get anyone who wasn’t already a fan to see the movie. Jupiter Ascending combines fairy tale and space opera elements to tell the story of a beautiful young woman swept off her feet into a fantastical world of intergalactic intrigue and adventure. It’s bold storytelling, bolstered by the Wachowskis’ always bold filmmaking, but it wasn’t enough to bring in audiences.
24. West Side Story (2021)
As the Wachowskis show, previous success at the box office doesn’t mean much. Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story was widely considered one of the best films of 2021. The critical praise, Spielberg’s big name, and devoted musical theater fans couldn’t convince the majority of audiences to come to the theater for the movie musical.
25. Heaven’s Gate (1980)
Heaven’s Gate remains one of the most infamous films ever made for its impact on American cinema history. Written and directed by Michael Cimino, who led The Deer Hunter to financial and awards success just two years earlier, Heaven’s Gate pushed studios to retake control from the auteurs of the late 1960s and ’70s, leading to more IP-driven fare in the 1980s and since. The film, which exists in various cuts and tells the story of battling land barons in late 19th century Wyoming, has been almost equally lambasted and celebrated since its release.
26. Stealth (2005)
After directing two successful and franchise-launching action films with The Fast and the Furious and XXX, it seemed like Rob Cohen was on a roll. Stealth stopped that roll right in its tracks. Stealth centers on three pilots creating and then attempting to control an aircraft-flying artificial intelligence, and borrowed too obviously from other, better movies like Top Gun and 2001: A Space Odyssey to garner any interest from critics or audiences.
27. How Do You Know (2010)
While most box office bombs are wannabe blockbusters with epic historical battles or expensive fantastical visual effects, romantic comedies aren’t to be left out. How Do You Know is a charming enough romantic comedy with a likable cast, including Reese Witherspoon and Paul Rudd, but it probably didn’t need to cost $120 million, and it certainly didn’t make that back.
Writer and director James L. Brooks, whose resume includes developing The Simpsons and directing Terms of Endearment, turned away from feature filmmaking after the film failed to rustle up more than half its budget at the box office.
28. Town and Country (2001)
How Do You Know wasn’t the first romantic comedy to bomb at the box office. Nine years earlier, Town and Country broke the $100 million barrier for rom-coms with an ensemble cast including Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and more good-looking A-listers who, in theory, would bring in audiences. The film’s negative reviews kept it from bringing in many people, and it made back only about a tenth of its budget.
29. Gigli (2003)
Perhaps the most famous rom-com bomb, Gigli, was the talk of the town when it arrived in 2003 because of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s off-screen romance. The talk did nothing to bring people into the theater. The film was panned then and is still largely considered one of the worst movies ever made.
30. Father’s Day (1997)
Movie stars, whether good-looking romantic leads or hilarious comedians, may help bring in audiences, but they certainly don’t ensure a film’s success. Father’s Day paired up beloved funnymen Robin Williams and Billy Crystal in a movie that shows them tracking down the son of a woman they’re both seeing. But their combined star power couldn’t get anyone to care.
31. Supernova (2000)
Three years after Event Horizon delivered a thrilling, if not financially successful, take on “Hellraiser in space,” Supernova delivered the same premise to an even worse critical and financial response. Developed and partially directed by famed genre director Walter Hill but significantly changed by the studio, who brought in Francis Ford Coppola to re-edit the film at one point, Supernova failed in every way.
32. Strange World (2022)
Disney’s Strange World was well-reviewed and combined elements from various science fiction adventure stories, including Journey to the Center of the Earth and Fantastic Voyage. None of that brought audiences into theaters. However, it made the film the number-one film on Disney+ for several days after its streaming debut.
33. Around the World in 80 Days (2004)
A bold reimagining of the classic novel of the same name by Jules Verne or a cheap cash-in on a recognizable name and simple premise? The 2004 adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days included many anachronisms and narrative differences from its source material that led most critics and the vast majority of audiences to avoid the film, which cost more than $100 million.
34. The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
The oldest film on this list, The Fall of the Roman Empire, was one of several major historical epics that lost major cash for the producing studios in the early 1960s. Based on the multi-volume The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon, the three-hour spectacle failed to win over critics or audiences and signed the death knell of the massive-scale historical films.
35. Windtalkers (2002)
John Woo is an action filmmaking legend, from his early films in Hong Kong to his Hollywood masterpiece Face/Off, but he’s also had his fair share of misses. Windtalkers, which centers on two Navajo code talkers and their handlers during World War II, is one of Woo’s most thrilling films. However, critics and audiences were put off by Woo’s overly earnest and dramatic handling of the characters.
36. Ishtar (1987)
Elaine May is one of the most influential and celebrated comedians and filmmakers of the 20th century. While her 1987 film Ishtar is now considered a masterpiece by some, it failed to make much of an impact upon release. The film, along with May’s script and direction, boasts stars Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty, likely fell prey to poor reviews and bad buzz about the comedy adventure film’s relatively high budget.
37. Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)
Combining folk stories Jack the Giant Slayer and Jack and the Beanstalk into a big-budget fantasy adventure movie was never the best idea. Pouring almost $200 million into the film’s production was undoubtedly a terrible idea. When the film made just under $200 million at the global box office, it was still a massive failure for the studio because of the enormous budget.
38. Gemini Man (2019)
Ang Lee first used a high frame rate in his 2016 film Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. He continued his affair with the still experimental filmmaking choice in his 2019 Will Smith vehicle, Gemini Man. We’ll never know whether it was the high frame rate look that some consider a gimmick, Will Smith in a dual role as an older and not-so-well-younger version of himself, or the negative reviews that kept audiences away. In all likelihood, it’s a combination of them all.
39. Battlefield Earth (2000)
Based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, Battlefield Earth was a labor of love for star John Travolta, who wanted to adapt the book into a two-part science fiction epic. When the 2000 film, which only adapts the novel’s first half, was universally derided by moviegoers and critics, those dreams died quickly.
40. Beloved (1998)
Jonathan Demme’s adaptation of Toni Morrison’s novel was met with significant praise from critics upon its release in 1998 and did reasonably well with its target audience of educated adults. The only problem was that the movie was made for $80 million, and its decent box office performance did not match that spending.
41. Evan Almighty (2007)
The most expensive comedy ever made at its release in 2007, Evan Almighty faced an uphill battle to make a profit. Unsurprisingly, it lost; the Bruce Almighty sequel failed to make back its $175 million budget and didn’t come close to the original film’s almost $500 million global box office.
42. The Wolfman (2010)
While 2017’s The Mummy may be more widely ridiculed as a false start to a franchise, Universal’s earlier attempt to reboot a classic monster lost the studio far more money. The 2010 remake of the 1941 werewolf film of the same name was made for $150 million and failed to recoup that number despite a great cast, including Anthony Hopkins and Benicio Del Toro. Poor reviews certainly didn’t boost sales for the film that even Universal COO at the time called “One of the worst movies we ever made.”
43. Monkeybone (2001)
Henry Selick, the beloved director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline, made his first and only live-action film in 2001 with Monkeybone, and given the film’s reception, it’s easy to see why he went back to animation. Based on the graphic novel Dark Town by Kaja Blackley, the movie creatively combined stop-motion and live-action elements in an unbelievable story of a different world. But neither Selick nor star Brendan Fraser were enough to get filmgoers to see the film.
44. Tomorrowland (2015)
More than a decade after the success of The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Disney returned to the movies based on rides idea for Tomorrowland. But this time, a winning cast, including George Clooney and a celebrated director, Brad Bird of The Incredibles, couldn’t carry the ride-based movie to box office glory.
45. Jack Frost (1998)
Jack Frost sought to become a holiday classic with its story of a father resurrected in a snowman’s body. But, as that premise makes clear, the movie was a bit too dark and strange for most audiences and became more of a joke than a classic.
46. Lightyear (2022)
IP-mining took a new turn with the premise of Lightyear: a movie that exists in the Toy Story movie universe. But despite its undeniably ridiculous premise, the film was a success with critics and viewers, viewers who caught the film on Disney+ at least. Theater-going audiences skipped the movie, making it a box office bomb before taking flight on the streaming service.
47. Monster Trucks (2016)
Monster Trucks asks the big question: what if monster trucks were literal monsters? It’s a cute idea, and the execution shows that the filmmakers didn’t take themselves too seriously. But despite an “A” CinemaScore from audiences who did see the movie, it didn’t drive nearly enough people to the theater to remake its $125 million budget.
48. Moonfall (2022)
Disaster movie master Roland Emmerich’s films have often been dismissed or outright lambasted by critics but have often turned a significant profit for the studios. Not so with his most recent outing, Moonfall, which sees astronauts investigating how and why the moon has left Earth’s orbit. The movie, made for over $130 million, failed to make back even $70 million at the global box office.
49. Hugo (2011)
Like Steven Spielberg a decade later, Martin Scorsese proved that big-name directors are far from immune to box office losses. Marty’s adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick used 3D to draw viewers into a fantastical world and was widely praised for that creative choice. But despite that praise and a healthy box office return of more than $180 million, the film’s big budget and market costs still ended up losing the studio $100 million.
50. Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
The Michael Bay-directed Transformers films made over $4 billion combined. With that in mind, Transformers: The Last Knight’s box office “failure” shows how confusing, silly, and downright ridiculous Hollywood finances can be. The film made over $600 million at the global box office, more than double its significant budget of over $200 million. But considering marketing and distribution costs, the film ultimately lost the studio $100 million.
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