Box Office Bombs That Everyone Saw Coming

Studios don't spend tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars on movies they don't think are sure things. Still, every year, eight and nine figure projects bomb, sometimes taking down actors' reputations or even entire franchises with them. 

This is especially true in today's entertainment industry landscape. Since many independent and small-to-mid-budget movies either go straight to streaming or wind up there shortly after their theatrical runs, studios sometimes take huge gambles on titles they hope will play in movie houses for weeks or months at a time. For most mainstream feature films, price tags north of $100 million are common, and after the cost of marketing, the average blockbuster needs to clear near half a billion or more just to make a profit. 

Sometimes, a seemingly-anticipated movie's failure comes out of nowhere. The fault can lie in a bad idea, bad execution, bad business (particularly bad marketing), or bad luck. Some box office bombs are either adaptations or remakes of existing material. Others started out with bloated budgets and still ran out of time and money. Then there are others who suffer because of an unfortunate title, trailer, or poster. 

More often than not, multiple factors lead to a film's economic failure. Below, some famous trainwrecks that studios should have seen a mile away.

One of the more puzzling films ever made, "The Adventures of Pluto Nash" is a wonder it was released at all. The story of a space smuggler who bails out the indebted owner of a nightclub located on the moon, it was in development for an unreasonably long time — the original script was written in the '80s and worked over countless times by a long line of script doctors until it was finally deemed acceptable and shot with an all-star cast and Eddie Murphy in the title role, wrapping production in 2000. Then it sat on a shelf for two full years before its release. Warner Bros. claimed that the delay was in the interest of getting the special effects just right, but upon the film's release, it was obvious that this was baloney; "Pluto Nash" is simply one of the worst movies ever made.

The film's long and troubled production history would have raised red flags even if Murphy hadn't been well into the "sleepwalk through everything" phase of his career. The endlessly toiled-over script contained nothing resembling interesting characterizations, a unique plot, or jokes that were actually funny, and no amount of expensive special effects could paper over Murphy's plain disinterest in the film. The $100 million production didn't even crack $10 million at the box office worldwide, and Warners learned the valuable lesson that obvious turkeys don't improve with age.

Jon Favreau's "Cowboys and Aliens" seemed like the kind of high-concept romp that the right filmmaker could knock out of the park, and fresh off the success of "Iron Man" and its sequel, it seemed to have the right director in place. With Steven Spielberg as a producer and an all-star cast including Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, DreamWorks and distributor Paramount were predicting big things for the picture — but they should have paid a little closer attention to that writing on the wall.

For one thing, the script was labored over by more than a dozen writers for 14 years, which is never a good sign. For another, many observers assumed by its title that the film would be a comedy, rather than a straight-faced action outing (it wasn't), and it tracked consistently poorly among its target audience for the duration of its months-long, multi-faceted, very expensive marketing campaign. It just barely managed to edge out "The Smurfs" in its first week, and followed that performance with a precipitous drop which resulted in its failing to make back its production budget domestically. "Cowboys and Aliens" certainly had a wealth of talent on either side of the camera, but everyone involved forgot the crucial step of making sure they were crafting a picture people actually wanted to see.

Disney's "John Carter" seemingly had a lot of things going for it. It was an adaptation of the first in a series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs (also the creator of Tarzan) which had been a towering influence on pop culture staples such as the "Star Wars" and "Avatar" franchises; it was helmed by Andrew Stanton, director of beloved Pixar outings "Wall-E" and "Finding Nemo"; and it had the type of ridiculously huge production budget one would expect for a tentpole film. Any or all of these things would have been brilliant to play up in the film's marketing — so of course the first trailer capitalized by mentioning exactly none of them.

The teaser appeared in July 2011, and it wasn't until the 2012 Super Bowl that a second trailer was released. Unfortunately, it wasn't much better, and in the interim the film had become something of a joke among the moviegoing public. Speaking with Vulture, an anonymous former studio executive called the "John Carter" marketing campaign the worst in history, saying, "It's almost as if they went out of their way to not make us care." Amazingly, the problem was compounded by Stanton's familiarity with (and complete loyalty to) the source material — he called Burroughs' novels "my Harry Potter" — and his apparent assumption that the public at large adored John Carter as much as he did. This colossal miscalculation, plus the vague marketing campaign, equaled zero butts in the seats, as "Carter" became far and away the biggest flop of the year.

When Disney's live-action "The Lone Ranger" was announced in 2010, it was not at all clear whether audiences were even up for a retelling of the adventures of the Western hero so popular generations prior. More recent adaptations of the property had traditionally not fared very well, and while Gore Verbinski (of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series) was tapped to direct, a few feathers were ruffled over the choices of Armie Hammer in the title role and the dubiously-Native American Johnny Depp as sidekick Tonto. The production was briefly shut down over budget concerns in 2011 — never a good sign — but managed to get back on track. Then, in early 2012, fans were treated to the first production stills, featuring Hammer in the famous mask... and Depp in the most egregiously terrible Tonto makeup anyone could have imagined.

The images quickly drew jeers and charges of racism, giving observers plenty of negative things to talk about before the film was finally released in July 2013. It failed to generate any significant positive social media buzz, and analysts correctly predicted that the film would be trounced by "Despicable Me 2," which opened the same weekend and went on to gross nearly a billion dollars. 

For years, swashbuckling epics had been notoriously risky propositions; 1995's pirate romp "Cutthroat Island" would so notoriously kill the genre that Hollywood wouldn't go near it again until "Pirates of the Caribbean" series came along about a decade later. According to director Renny Harlin, who discussed the picture's failure in an interview years after the fact, studio Carolco was broke and distributor MGM was in trouble before the film even went into production — which Harlin knew would mean a nonexistent advertising budget.

"At that point I was left there with my then-wife, Geena Davis and myself, and a company that was already belly-up," Harlin recalled. "We begged to be let go. We begged that we didn't have to make this movie. And I don't think I've ever said this in any other interview. We begged that we not be put in this position." He went on to elaborate that Davis was "terrified" of headlining the film, knowing full well that a female-led pirate movie was "suicidal," but that due to contractual obligations they had no choice but to play ball. The film went on to gross a tenth of its $100 million budget, and — as Harlin now insists he knew all along — it was the last picture Carolco would ever make.

There was a time when the name Robert Zemeckis was up there with the likes of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. The director of such classics as "Back to the Future," "Forrest Gump," and "Cast Away" then fell in love with the possibilities of computer-generated imagery (or CGI). 

His fascination with the technology/art form made sense; Zemeckis was an early adopter of similar innovations on "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?," but aside from 2004's "The Polar Express" (which made good box-office but to this day remains infamous for its creepily lifeless animation), his big-budget CGI takes on "Beowulf" (2007) and "A Christmas Carol" debuted and disappeared quickly from theaters.

In 2011, Zemeckis produced "Mars Needs Moms," with protege Simon Wells writing and directing and directed. But when it came to the uncanny valley factor, the off-putting effect was the same. 

This late in the CGI game, there was really no excuse for the motion capture animation in "Mars Needs Moms" to look so ugly and unsettling. James Cameron's "Avatar" had wowed audiences two years earlier, and other breakthroughs had taken the medium a long way since "Polar Express."

Ticket buyers didn't connect with the title, the story, or the central characters. In a post-mortem, studio executives concluded that boys weren't interested in a movie about mothers and younger children may have been scared off by the premise. "Mars Needs Moms" became one of the biggest box office bombs of its time, making less than $40 million worldwide, resulting in a loss of more than $100 million. 

Plenty of movies have been, at least at the point of their origin, a cynical cash grab based on the popularity of a toy. For generations, kids have played with Monster Trucks... those big wheeled vehicles built on exposed chassis, often sporting bodies that resemble, say, a bull, a shark, or even the iconic ride of a superhero. Sold in miniature under the Hot Wheels brand by Mattel, Monster Trucks also tied into the touring live competition and stunt show, Monster Jam. When Paramount announced they'd be releasing a movie titled "Monster Trucks," gear-headed kids and their families assumed they knew what to expect. 

But there isn't a brand connection between 2016's "Monster Trucks" and Monster Jam or Hot Wheels, which became clear immediately after folks saw the trailer. Instead of Gravedigger or El Toro Loco, this was a movie about a truck that had an actual monster in it, and not a very scary or interesting-looking one at that. 

The film's "Creech" resembled a kawaii shark's head with octopus-like tentacles, and sustained itself on motor oil. Potential audiences were stumped by and disinterested in the whole concept. Paramount had wanted to repeat the success of its "Transformers" franchise, assuming "Trucks" would appeal to boys while generating sequels, toys, and other merch. But the response to the trailer — equal parts generic and strange — was so bad, executives admitted they expected to take a $115 million hit before the movie even came out. 

Jack London's trim but powerful 1903 novel "The Call of the Wild" is required reading at middle schools all over America. An anthropomorphic allegorical story about a hulking mixed breed dog who must evolve from beloved pet into fearsome pack leader in order to survive, it has been adapted for the screen multiple times, but isn't exactly the type of story that lends itself to straightforward cinematic retelling. 

For one thing, there isn't much of an overarching, linear narrative to the journey of the dog, named Buck. For another, it's told entirely from the perspective of the big mutt, while other characters — humans and canines — simply pass through. Despite the fact that it's so regularly assigned to children, "The Call of the Wild" is also unceasingly brutal. It's basically 200 pages of dogs ripping each other apart... not the best choice for what 20th Century Fox (which was shortly thereafter acquired by Disney) intended to be a big budget, family-friendly Christmas release.  

The original, densely literary novel aims to claw away at the facades of civilization and capitalism, revealing the grim, nihilistic truth underneath. From the trailer, fans of London's could tell they were getting a sanitized version, while the general public wasn't exactly begging for yet another remake of a 120 year old book. Harrison Ford was in-between reprising his roles in "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" and was very much back in the zeitgeist. But the real stumbling block was Buck, a far-too-blatant (and expensive) CGI creation that undermined the entire effort. In the end, the studio took a roughly $50 million ice bath on 2020's "The Call of the Wild." 

Not two years after "Cats" crashed and burned, Universal tried again with the contemporary Broadway musical "Dear Evan Hansen." 

The play, about a high school student struggling with mental illness, had gained a loyal following, thanks in part to catchy music penned by Benji Pasek and Justin Paul of "The Greatest Showman" fame. Rather than wait two decades, Universal got to adapting "Dear Evan Hansen" so immediately, the same actor who'd originated the role in New York was set to reprise it for the forthcoming film. But once the trailer aired, even those loyal fans began to doubt that the 27-year-old Ben Platt was the right choice to portray 17-year-old Evan. 

It wasn't just that Platt had aged four years (he was 23 during the show's Broadway run); it was how he was styled and how differently the character came off in those intimate close ups. What had seemed emotionally honest on a proscenium stage suddenly seemed cringy when translated to the screen. 

There was also the matter of what "Dear Evan Hansen" was about. Broadway shows only have a single theater's worth of seats to fill, but the movie had to sell tickets at more than 3000 cinemas across the country. Bad buzz out of the Toronto Film Festival, where it premiered, didn't do it any favors. Neither did confusion about what "Dear Evan Hansen" was really about (everyone seemed to wrongly assume homosexuality). The curtains closed early on the film adaptation of "Dear Evan Hansen," which made a paltry $17 million worldwide in its three weeks of wide release.

Not so long ago, an R-rated romantic comedy — especially one produced by Judd Apatow — could do well enough at the box office to justify its existence. By and large, that time has passed. 

It's been an eternity since a comedy, let alone a rom-com, has landed in the top ten highest grossing films of the year. The last one to do so was 2011's "The Hangover: Part II," and the last true comedic romancers to break that ceiling were 2005's "Wedding Crashers" and "Hitch." Suffice it to say, the odds were stacked against "Bros" from the start, but they were stacked even higher because it was the first major studio rom-com that centered around a gay couple. 

After "Bros" fizzled out, co-writer and star Billy Eichner infamously took to twitter to express his displeasure, blaming homophobia for his film's poor performance. While there could be some truth to his theory, given the current political climate ("Bros" may have been review bombed on IMDB but wasn't on Rotten Tomatoes), it likely underwhelmed for reasons in addition to its potentially controversial subject matter. 

While Eichner has fans from his Funny or Die show "Billy on the Street" and from his time on "Parks and Recreation," he's not as familiar to a broader audience. Nor is his co-star and love interest, Luke McFarlane, best known for appearing in Hallmark movies. Also, there wasn't any urgency to see it on the big screen; "Bros" was available to stream within days of its release.

Even fans of the DCEU will admit it has never found the same level of consistency as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 2019's "Shazam!" was a bright spot. It got better than decent reviews and made better than decent money, and — compared to the often dour films about Superman and Batman — was charming in a way that some of the best MCU movies had been. Of course, there was going to be a sequel. 

As was the case with the majority of films that went into production in 2020, the pandemic caused stops and starts. Nevertheless, fans remained optimistic since star Zachary Levi and director David F. Sandberg were both returning. Then, Warner Bros. announced that it had hired James Gunn and Peter Safran to reboot its DC comics universe, which meant "Shazam! Fury of the Gods" no longer felt like it had a place in the universe's overall continuity. 

Another strike against the "Shazam" sequel? "Black Adam." The Dwayne Johnson vehicle should've tied into the "Shazam" storyline, since the characters are so closely connected in the comics. Instead, Johnson interfered in a way that hurt both films and Warner Bros. ended up with not one but two box office bombs on their hands. 

"Shazam! Fury of the Gods" never captured the previous film's magic, lost the original's lighthearted tone, and poor word of mouth and bad marketing ultimately extinguished Shazam's flame. Reviews weren't quite as gut punching to Zachary Levi as they were to Dwayne Johnson, but they weren't good. "Shazam 2" became an afterthought of a movie that few people felt the need to see.