The Real Reasons These 2018 Films Flopped At The Box Office

It seems silly to even entertain the notion that a Star Wars movie could be anything but wildly profitable, yet here we are. Solo: A Star Wars Story opened in May to a shrug from audiences, and its underwhelming box office left it the first film the franchise to be branded a bona fide flop. The red flags were there from the beginning: from original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller (The Lego Movie) departing late in production to incoming director Ron Howard being forced to reshoot three-quarters of the movie to star Alden Ehrenreich requiring on-set acting coaching, it seemed as if everything that could go wrong did. But it's not that the film turned out to be a complete stinker — it's just that Solo was not the Star Wars film fans wanted.

The same fans who were famously divided over The Last Jedi were even more underwhelmed this time around, as many felt that fleshing out the backstory of one of the franchise's most beloved characters simply wasn't necessary. While Donald Glover provided a bright spot as a young Lando Calrissian, Ehrenreich simply turned in a pretty good performance in service of a thin story that did nothing to serve the greater series. Star Wars fatigue may also have been a factor, and the decision to open the film with Avengers: Infinity War still in theaters may have played a part as well — somewhat ironically, it wasn't just one thing that sunk Solo.

Aside from the fact that it's an adaptation of a beloved novel, A Wrinkle in Time encouraged high expectations with its absolutely stellar cast and its obvious commitment to diversity. It was the first big-budget tentpole film to be directed by a black woman (the exceedingly talented Ava DuVernay), and that amazing cast included young Storm Reid in the lead role, along with the likes of Mindy Kaling, David Oyelowo and Oprah Winfrey. With YA franchises such as Harry Potter and The Hunger Games banking big bucks in recent years, it could have been reasonably expected to be a smash hit, pulling in huge, wildly diverse audiences much like Black Panther had a month earlier. This, however, turned out not to be the case.

All of those wonderfully diverse audiences simply failed to materialize, and — perhaps due to lukewarm critical response — the usual YA crowd largely declined to turn out as well. The film's convoluted marketing certainly didn't help matters, confusing audiences unfamiliar with the source material's labyrinthine plot. While Black Panther continued to rack up the box office receipts, Wrinkle limped to just over $100 million domestically, and it didn't fare much better overseas. The film amounted to a rare total whiff for Disney, and with marketing costs factored in, it's estimated that the House of Mouse may have lost close to $200 million on the project.

Despite not being a sequel, reboot or adaptation, The Hurricane Heist looked like guaranteed dollar signs due to its high concept and directorial pedigree. Rob Cohen gave us the original Fast and the Furious and xXx, both high-octane, stunt-heavy actioners which bloomed into surprisingly profitable franchises. The plot is explained succinctly by its title — a band of thieves attempt to rob the U.S. Mint during a Category 5 storm — and the film appeared to be a welcome throwback to the intense, Die Hard-esque thrillers of yesteryear. Unfortunately, The Hurricane Heist threw back just a bit too hard.

Reviews skewered the movie for being ridiculously derivative (said the Village Voice: "It's like the filmmakers went into the Die Hard Store, stretched out their arms, rolled their eyes back, and bellowed, 'Give me eeevvveeeerryything!'"). Also: head-scratchingly dumb, full of plot holes, and poorly shot and edited. Audiences stayed away in droves; the movie failed to break $1 million on its opening day, and finished its theatrical run having barely grossed $6 million on a budget six times that. More than one reviewer even likened it to Sharknado without the sharks, and the film likely wouldn't have tanked any harder with audiences had that been its tagline.

Winchester appeared to have both the premise and the pedigree to be a potential horror classic. Dame Helen Mirren starred as Sarah Winchester, heiress to the gun manufacturer's fortune, who spent decades building addition after addition onto her famous mansion, the construction practically never stopping during the entire time she resided there. The real Sarah Winchester may have been plagued by poor mental health and an abundance of time and money, but Winchester posited that she was driven by something decidedly more sinister... and supernatural.

Writer/directors the Spierig Brothers delivered a nifty sci-fi thriller in 2014's Predestination, but their previous gig had been as guns for hire on Jigsaw, the eighth film in the Saw franchise, which was less well-received. With Winchester they displayed a distinct lack of interest in elevating the material, relying on cheap jump scares and questionable plotting in lieu of anything resembling atmosphere or tension. Many critics wondered how they were able to coax the great Mirren into appearing in the film, which was described as "unforgivably unimpressive" and "a surprisingly flaccid affair."

The John Travolta biopic Gotti got a lot of press due to its star and subject, infamous mob boss John Gotti, leading up to its screening at Cannes. But its reception at the festival was less than rapturous, and upon its June release in the U.S., few critics bothered to review it. Literally every single one that did panned it up one side and down the other — leading the film's social media account to pin its subsequent poor box office showing on unfair negative reviews. Considering that fewer than 40 critics have reviewed Gotti at all, it seemed a bit disingenuous — the problem may not be those few dozen pundits, but the many, many things they found wrong with it.

Literally every aspect of the film's production was roundly blasted, from its lack of coherent themes and ham-fisted direction to Travolta's "distractingly terrible" lead performance. The movie failed to even make back half of its paltry $10 million budget, and those involved in its production and seeking a reason for its failure would probably do better to watch the unwatchable picture rather than trying to pin the blame on reviewers, who — to paraphrase the great Roger Ebert — were just doing their jobs.

Those of us who even remember Gnomeo and Juliet may have been surprised to find that it was getting a sequel, but the 2011 animated feature quietly did nearly $200 million at the box office, so another outing was never in doubt. Somehow in development for six years, Sherlock Gnomes returned us to Gnomeworld with Johnny Depp in the title role, supported by the likes of Sir Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy — but it was a return trip audiences had no interest in taking. 

While it can perhaps be argued that Paramount waited too long to capitalize on the success of Gnomeo, it can be just as effectively argued that a more expedient production schedule wouldn't have made a difference. The film fell just as flat with audiences as it did with critics, and not even a batch of tunes from producer Elton John could paper over the fact that Sherlock simply wasn't any good. Critics found the film to be devoid of wit and charm, while committing the additional offenses of being boring, needlessly convoluted and forgettable. It's tough to fault Paramount for attempting to cash in on their surprise hit, but in this case, lightning struck only once.

The Darkest Minds seemed to come with a built-in audience. It's an adaptation of the well-received young adult novel of the same name, with an attractive cast of fresh-faced stars, featuring a timely government-run-amok narrative and superpowered characters that could have come straight from the latest X-Men movie. Unfortunately, critics took the film to task for being muddled, confusing and trite — and it whiffed with audiences as well, failing to even clear $6 million in its opening weekend.

As to why that is, a good many critics were strongly of the opinion that Minds — while appearing to celebrate diversity and individuality — is guilty of pandering to its audience, giving them a predictable story full of tired cliches and plot twists which are telegraphed from a mile away. The A.V. Club's A.A. Dowd even went so far as to say, "The Darkest Minds is such a formulaic hodgepodge of secondhand plot points that it can't help but feel like an insult to its target demographic: just another case of adults trying to manipulate kids, this time by bilking them out of their allowance." YA audiences are not always the most discriminating, but in the case of The Darkest Minds, assembling rehashed plot points from better movies in the service of a poorly scripted, indifferently shot picture was simply not enough to get them in the seats.

NBC's This Is Us has become one of network television's breakout hits of the last few years, so it stood to reason that the melodramatic, family-oriented formula could translate to beaucoup big-screen bucks. At least, that was Amazon Studios' thinking; they recruited series creator Dan Fogelman to write and direct Life Itself, a similarly-themed feature with an all-star cast including Olivia Wilde, Oscar Isaac, and Antonio Banderas. Amazon went big with a wide, 2,609-screen release; then, they went home, as Life Itself had the worst run of any film to open on 2,500-plus screens... ever.

Vanity Fair described the film as having "died gruesomely at the box office," which was probably being too kind. It struggled to a $2.1 million gross for a pitiful $807 per screen average over its opening weekend, which can only partially be chalked up to absolutely brutal reviews. Fogelman appeared to have been attempting to make a weepy melodrama which would be all things to all people, ostensibly encouraging white males to confront their privilege while catering to their gaze, and couching itself in feminism while featuring multiple examples of the exhausted Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. Critics who caught its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival ripped it to bits, and Fogelman initially tried to blame its resounding flop on white male critics who just didn't "get it" rather than take responsibility for his almost comically tragic, over-the-top misfire. One potential upside: Amazon learned a $10 million lesson about biting off more than it can chew.

All year long, fans of sci-fi/horror were pumped beyond belief for The Predator, a seemingly fresh new entry in the series originated by the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger classic Predator. It had a unique spin on the story template (Predators running wild in suburbia), a great cast including Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Jane and Olivia Munn, and the sure directorial hand of Shane Black (Iron Man 3) — who, as an actor, appeared in the original film. All the pieces were in place, but a funny thing happened on the way to the multiplex: all involved forgot to assemble those pieces into a watchable, entertaining whole.

The film's fortunes weren't helped by Munn's revelation that she'd been duped into shooting scenes alongside a friend of Black's who is a convicted sexual... um... predator (or Black's half-hearted apology), but this was the least of its problems. Black and company seem to have vastly overestimated the public appetite for the sequel beyond the original's fanbase, and the film itself simply failed to deliver the fresh take on the franchise that its suburban setting promised. Add to the mix a sequel hook that seemed to set up a far more interesting film than the one audiences had just seen, and said audiences were left wondering why they weren't given that movie instead. Ironically, the film's underwhelming box office means that this next promised installment may never even see the light of day.

Medieval epics are notoriously hit and miss, and the latest big-screen iteration of Robin Hood was far more miss than hit. Critics savaged the film for its forced edginess, winking anachronisms and an emphasis on spectacle, none of which would have mattered had it hooked audiences. But they were a little busy the weekend of its release — flocking to see Ralph Breaks the Internet and Creed II, both eagerly anticipated sequels which also had the benefit of being very good. The two hits combined to rake in nearly $92 million between them, and Robin Hood also faced competition in the form of animated feature The Grinch (in its third week) and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (in its second). 

When the dust cleared, Robin Hood finished its opening weekend in seventh place, failing to scrape together even $10 million domestically. The film's aggressive marketing campaign probably didn't help matters, as it seems audiences simply found no purpose in an updated, edgy take on a tale that Hollywood has literally been telling for over century. The $100 million film is one of the biggest money losers of the last couple years, and that's saying something.

Universal had hopes that the Peter Jackson-produced Mortal Engines, based on the first in a series of YA novels, would launch a lucrative new franchise along the lines of Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. The high-concept fantasy picture, in which giant cities on wheels trawl a post-apocalyptic landscape in search of resources, had been highly touted all year long, and with a $100 million budget — and Jackson's guiding hand — it promised to provide plenty of spectacle for holiday audiences. That it did, but it failed to provide much of anything else — like, say, competent character development, a coherent plot, or viable competition for fellow holiday tentpoles Aquaman and Bumblebee, both of which snared sizable chunks of moviegoing audiences' late December dollars.

It didn't help that Engines' concept was perhaps a bit too high, as the film's marketing proved confusing to potential audiences, and the source novels — by British author Philip Reeve — were not well-known enough stateside to fill in any gaps. The result was a year-end megabomb for Universal, as the flick posted a meager $7.5 million in its opening weekend. With the obligatory massive marketing push failing to put any butts in seats, Mortal Engines became one of the year's biggest money losers, taking a loss upwards of $100 million. Said one analyst, "This is a true Christmas disaster and a lump of coal for Universal. They took a big swing, and they struck out."