Predicting The Biggest Box Office Bombs Of 2019

The movie business is just that — a profit-driven enterprise. Sure, MGM's tagline was famously "Ars gratia artis" ("art for art's sake"), but let's be real here: a movie can get 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, but if it loses money, it's forever shackled with the label "box office bomb." Vertigo. Citizen Kane. It's A Wonderful Life. These films frequently make the lists of "greatest movies ever" (heck, one is even an annual holiday tradition), but at the time of their release, they barely made money, or even put their studios in the red. To put it bluntly, they bombed.

Let's be fair, though — unless it features dinosaurs or a Marvel hero, predicting a hit from a flop is really, really hard. A 2.5-hour movie about 15-foot tall blue aliens fighting space marines with a plot remarkably similar to Dances with Wolves and Ferngully is the highest-grossing movie ever, while Snakes on a Plane crashed and burned (#injustice).

That said, 2019 features some releases that seem pretty obviously destined for box office doom. And unlike some of the above-mentioned titles, none of them are likely to join the ranks of "greatest movie ever" — more likely they'll wind up on future episodes of How Did This Get Made? Just be glad your salary doesn't depend on any of these films making money, and get ready for a sneak peek at the biggest box office bombs of 2019.

Terminator, Titanic, and Avatar auteur James Cameron — whose Snapchat stories could probably break box office records — is producing this long-gestating sci-fi adventure, while director duties go to former indie darling turned Spy Kids creator/Lucha Underground executive producer Robert Rodriguez, who's helming the $200 million film adaptation of Yukito Kishiro's famous post-apocalyptic manga.

Anybody else getting a Last Airbender or Ghost in the Shell vibe? Those films were rightly and repeatedly criticized for white-washing their source material, and Rodriguez is already trying to get out in front of this, but his logic is a stretch. Airbender made money; Ghost, not so much. Alita seems more like the latter, with its PG-13 rating likely to turn off fans of the violent source material, while doing nothing to lure in kiddos.

There's also Rodriguez, whose last film was 2014's mega-turkey Sin City: A Dame To Kill For. While he's notorious for stretching a dollar (he made his first movie, El Mariachi, for just $7,000), this movie's budget is about 28,000 times that. It's one thing for your movie to make money because it was so cheap to produce. It's a whole different ballgame to turn a profit on a $200 million investment.

Look for this to bomb stateside, with producers hoping it'll perform well overseas. And if not, at least James Cameron has his four Avatar sequels to look forward to.

Does the world need another weepy teen romance where pretty sick kids dying from an incurable disease fall in love? Clearly the filmmakers behind Five Feet Apart think the answer is "yes." Seriously, if Blockbuster was still around (RIP), "Sick Teenagers in Love" would be its own section between Sci-Fi and Sports.

In Five Feet Apart, two teens with cystic fibrosis fall for each other despite the odds, because as they and the audience know, this story isn't going to have a happy ending. Sure, it'll have a life-affirming, inspirational, "two tissue boxes required" ending, but not happy. Swap cystic fibrosis for cancer and you have pretty much the same setup as The Fault in Our Stars, or whatever movie is playing on the Lifetime Channel this very second.

The "five feet apart" in the title is that the hospital is forcing the sickly Romeo and Juliet to stay... wait for it... five feet apart from each other. You can almost see the pitch:

Producer: It's like Fault in Our Stars, but they can't touch!

Studio Boss: Love it! Here's $30 million.

Meanwhile, it takes Martin Scorsese decades to get his dream projects made. Anyway, the film will be up against the third weekend of Captain Marvel, the second weekend of Jordan Peele's Get Out followup, Us, as well as Tom Hanks' World War II drama Greyhound (Hanks + WWII = $$$$). Look for moviegoers to stay several screens away from Five Feet Away.

Beware of Oscar-bait movies that come out in the spring. As a general rule, Oscar season usually starts in the fall (given Academy members' short-term memories). With the notable exception of Best Picture winner Crash (which has its critics), springtime "message movies" rarely make a dent in the public consciousness, let alone the box office.

Take The Best of Enemies, for example. The film is about a civil rights activist played by Taraji P. Henson who co-chairs a community meeting about school desegregation with a KKK leader played by Sam Rockwell. Surprising nobody, the experience changes both of their lives. It sounds like either a really saccharine made-for-TV movie or a really twisted SNL skit, but it's actually based on a true story.

Henson recently starred in the Oscar-nominated blockbuster Hidden Figures, as well as the award-winning hit TV show Empire. She's also starring in What Men Want, which has good momentum leading to its February 8, 2019 opening. But while Henson is on a roll lately, Rockwell has never been on one. Rockwell's a fine actor, sure, but his only hit remains 2008's Iron Man 2.

Maybe Henson's star power will eclipse Rockwell's "box office poison" status? Or more likely The Best of Enemies will disappear from theaters just as fast as every other "awards contender" released in April.

The New Mutants is about a group of teenage mutant superheroes who aren't turtles, so that's already a huge mark against it. Not helping matters is the confused genre-splicing of horror and superhero action in what will be the 13th film in 20th Century Fox's X-Men franchise. Take a moment to consider how much of your life you've spent watching X-Men movies.

To its credit, the series hasn't been overly cautious about about mixing genres. The comedy-superhero hybrid Deadpool spinoffs have made millions at the domestic box office, and are the highest-grossing films in the entire X-Men franchise. But those films had a huge plus factor in their favor — people actually wanted to see them. When the Deadpool trailer dropped, moviegoers were circling their calendars for February 12, 2016.

The reception for The New Mutants was much more muted and frankly confused. The incredibly dark, murky and dread-filled trailer even had some fans mockingly saying it looks like a DCEU movie, which are fighting words in the superhero genre. Is there really an appetite for a Hostel-esque X-Men movie?

There's also the franchise fatigue factor — again, this is the 13th film in the series since 2000, and the 12th, Dark Phoenix, opens just two months before on June 7. Perhaps fans are just ready for The Mouse House to take over Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters?

Sylvester Stallone is awesome, and Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo (and Rocky Balboa) is the most awesome. But while the Rocky series has wisely transformed into the Creed series and thus freshened up the franchise, Rambo V definitely has the air of  "Oh boy, here we go again."

Rambo V finds the septuagenarian Stallone returning to the character he hasn't played since 2008's Rambo, this time to battle Mexican drug cartels. Given that he's already beaten redneck cops, the Viet Cong, and the Soviet and Burmese Armies, finally winning the drug war should be a walk in the park.

It's worth noting that Stallone is tougher at 72 than most of us at 22, 32 — any two, really. But do audiences really want to see someone older than their grandfather playing a one-man Army like it's 1985? Honestly, the idea does have its appeal, and who knows? Maybe Stallone will find a way to reinvigorate Rambo the way he did with Rocky. In all likelihood, however, it's long past time for Rambo to hang up the bandana and blade — and this is the film that forces him to do it.

Not long ago, Will Smith could star in a deodorant commercial and it would be a surefire hit. But a string of bad, bland, and just plain bizarre choices has damaged the Fresh Prince's bankability — and perhaps more importantly, his credibility. Which brings us to Gemini Man, which is being helmed by Ang Lee, one of the greatest living directors, though one with a spotty box office record at best. More importantly, it reunites Smith with his Bad Boys and Enemy of the State producer, Jerry Bruckheimer.

The story — an older hitman faces off against a young clone of himself — sounds like a lazy Looper ripoff, except Gemini Man was in development for 20 years before being greenlit. Maybe there was a reason for that? It certainly feels like a movie that would have been fresh in 1997. Now it sounds like a been-there, done-that, '90s actioner, complete with genre icons Smith and Bruckheimer. Honestly, the only one missing is Michael Bay. Gemini Man won't light the box office on fire, but should at least get plenty of play on basic cable. Because when it comes to movies, there is life after death. It's called the TNT network.

Speaking of going to the well too many times, here's the latest attempt to get the Terminator franchise back on track. You're probably thinking "Wait, another one? Didn't Terminator: Whatever bomb?"

It did. Terminator: Genisys was a dud in 2015... in the U.S., anyway. It made enough overseas to justify another trip to the post-apocalypse. Thank China for this latest entry — otherwise, the series would've been sold for scraps.

As with Rambo, every new Terminator movie is basically another attempt to resurrect an aimless franchise headlined by a 70-something star. Like Stallone, Schwarzenegger could definitely still kick all of our butts without breaking his cigar, but that doesn't stop this whole enterprise from seeming like a tired cash grab with an ever-decreasing return on its investment. Honestly, the most interesting thing this series could do is send the T-800 back in time to stop these movies from being made (at least after the masterpiece that was T2: Judgment Day.)

Although actually it sounds like that's what they're doing. T6 is supposed to be a direct sequel to T2, with Rise of the Machines, Salvation, Genisys and The Sarah Connor Chronicles wiped from history. You can do that with a time-travel movie, right? Linda Hamilton is even returning as Sarah Connor, and James Cameron is producing and contributing to the story. That's good enough for a little interest, though it won't be enough to save this film from bombing harder than, well...

Don't fret, Terminator franchise. There's still China.