Famous Directors' Biggest Box Office Bombs

You can't always predict whether a movie is going to succeed or fail at the box office. While there are some future films that are obviously going to flop, by and large predicting box office bombs is kind of a crapshoot. After all, why would a multibillion dollar corporation spend the GDP of a small country on a film destined to lose money? Sure, La-La-Land can be a pretty kooky place sometimes, but that's just nuts. This isn't The Producers, where studios can make more money with a flop than a hit. Studios need their movies to succeed to keep the lights on... and to sell toys. Lots and lots of toys.

One of the most reliable predictors for whether a film will succeed or fail is the director. Famous directors got that way for a reason — they have a track record of producing hits. If they didn't, they would be sent packing back home to Boise to direct commercials for used car dealerships. But even famous directors can fail. Every director, no matter how popular, has a few turkeys on their resume. Most of these bombs weren't career killers. Some may have even saved their directors' careers by teaching them a lesson in Hollywood's rarest commodity: humility. No matter how rich, famous and talented you are, nobody is perfect. This list proves it. Here are famous directors biggest box office bombs!

James Cameron brought us the two highest grossing films of all time. Let that sink in for a second. Not Marvel. Not Disney. Not even Star Wars. James Cameron. One is a melodramatic retelling of a sinking ship with Lifetime-level dialogue. The other stars ten-foot-tall blue aliens. How did this happen? We're not sure. Maybe Cameron sold his soul to the devil? Somebody should look into that. 

Cameron seems to have a supernatural ability to make Na'vi salad out of Na'vi you-know-what. But before he was the King of the World, he was just another hotshot director who needed to eat some crow. That crow was The Abyss. Following The Terminator and Aliens, it appeared Cameron could do no wrong. With that in mind, 20th Century Fox gave him nearly $70 million dollars (about $130 million today) to make The Abyss, in which Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio play a bickering divorced couple facing off against an aquatic lifeform. Sounds like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou when we put it that way.

While Harris and Mastrantonio are fine actors, they aren't Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sigourney Weaver, the ticket-selling stars of Cameron's previous two films. Despite what he may have thought, Cameron's name alone wasn't yet enough to sell a movie. While The Abyss was a landmark in special effects, it only earned $90 million worldwide. Instead of going back in time to stop himself from directing The Abyss, Cameron decided to direct Terminator 2 instead.

Ron Howard began his showbiz career as a child actor, but became an A-List director with quintessential flicks from the '80s (Splash), '90s (Apollo 13) and 2000s (A Beautiful Mind). While no one would likely claim he's the greatest director ever, he is reliable in a pinch, which is why he was chosen to rescue — er, direct — Solo: A Star Wars Story after it spiraled out of control. We won't pick on Ronny for that one, as its lackluster performance wasn't his fault. We will, however, pick on him for In the Heart of the Sea.

It stars Chris Hemsworth, who hasn't really had a hit that doesn't involve him wielding a magic hammer. In fact, just before In the Heart of the Sea, Howard directed Hemsworth in another contender for both men's biggest bomb, Rush. Rush's performance was not great, but it was not the whale of a flop that was In the Heart of the Sea, which earned $93 million worldwide on a $100 million budget. Spending that kinda money to make a movie based on the true story behind a book most of us slept through in high school (Moby Dick) was always risky. Maybe if In the Heart of the Sea were good, it would've done okay. Instead, it stunk, so any chance that it might have had legs (or fins) was obliterated... especially when the quiet little indie drama Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened the following week.

Before he made millions in Middle Earth, Peter Jackson made a string of low-budget flicks that didn't make much money, but showed his range as a filmmaker. One of those was Beautiful Creatures. Starring a pre-Titanic Kate Winslet as a murderer, Beautiful Creatures has the haunting quality of a dream. After directing the mega-budget tentpoles that were the Lord of The Rings trilogy and King Kong, Jackson returned to personal, intimate filmmaking with a similarly dark story, The Lovely Bones.

The Lovely Bones is about a murdered young girl's journey through the afterlife as she tries to help her loved ones move on, as well as find her killer. Everything Beautiful Creatures was, The Lovely Bones was not. Jackson hadn't quite gotten out of the habits of big-budget filmmaking, as he directed a pic with a $2 million story on a $65 million budget. The grand spectacle and overt sentimentality of his filmmaking distracted from the subtle touch that the tragedy of the story demanded. Critics helped kill it, and the film wound up making less than $100 million worldwide. 

Sometimes more isn't better. Had Jackson spent less on The Lovely Bones, it might have done better at the box office. But rather than trying to helm another intimate film, Jackson returned to Middle Earth, turning one Tolkien book into three epic-length movies. Billions of dollars later, Jackson seems right where he belongs.

Jon Favreau is another director who likes to bookend his blockbusters with bombs. Between Iron Man 2 and The Jungle Book, he made Cowboys & Aliens. Between Elf and Iron Man, he made what we consider his biggest bust, Zathura. You could argue that Cowboys & Aliens was a bigger bomb, but we're giving the less-than-illustrious crown to Zathura because the movie didn't break $100 million worldwide which, believe it or not, Cowboys & Aliens did. Really, Cowboys & Aliens' biggest sin was its $160+ million budget. Shave some of that off and it might have been considered a minor hit. Zathura was a bomb any way you look at it.

Zathura is about a couple of kids who play a board game, the titular Zathura, that blasts them into space, where adventure ensues. You can almost see the pitch for this movie — "It's Jumanji... but in space!" While Jumanji was a hit in 1995 and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was an even bigger one in 2017, Zathura's box office take is worth less than Monopoly money. While critics liked the flick, it suffered from the lack of star power that a film without a built-in audience like this demands. Sorry, but Dax Shephard just ain't Robin Williams or the Rock. Zathura cost $65 million to make and only made $64 million worldwide. Maybe that $1 million is floating in space somewhere?

Even the Mouse House makes a turkey now and then. Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars had been sitting in development hell for years, and Disney probably wished it stayed there. John Carter was finally released in 2012 as director Andrew Stanton's live-action debut. Stanton was a star director at Pixar, with Finding Nemo and WALL-E on his resume. Giving him the reins seemed like a safe-ish bet. Disney and Stanton soon learned how different directing an animated film was from a live-action one.

John Carter's budget reached an astronomical $250 million. Who knew making an epic, CG-heavy movie about a distant civilization on freaking Mars would be so expensive? In fact, John Carter's price tag makes it one of the most expensive movies of all time, which is all the more incredible considering it is one of the few on that list that isn't a sequel. The film only made $284 million worldwide, most of it overseas — not nearly enough to break even when burdened with Disney's exorbitant marketing costs.

Stanton learned his lesson and went back to directing animation, with 2016's Finding Dory becoming Pixar's then-biggest hit ever (until it was eclipsed by Incredibles 2). It took Disney a few more socks in the teeth to learn its lesson, most notably with the $215 million The Lone Ranger, which made only $260 million worldwide. Rather than keep making big-budget action movies, Disney decided to just buy Marvel and Lucasfilm instead. 

There are a few movies you can say had a definitive "Before" and "After" effect on the culture. The Matrix is one. It was a milestone in action and special effects filmmaking, with its style influencing action pics for the past two decades. We won't even get into its philosophy-laden storyline, as books have literally been written on the subject. Alas, the Wachowski sisters, the creative minds behind The Matrix, have yet to match its success creatively or commercially. On a few occasions, they've flat out face-planted, as with 2015's $176 million-budgeted Jupiter Ascending, which earned just $183 million worldwide. Believe it or not, that's not even their biggest bomb. That title belongs to 2008's Speed Racer.

Based on the landmark anime, Speed Racer was the Wachowskis' first new film after The Matrix trilogy ended in disappointment with 2003's The Matrix Revolutions. As huge anime fans, Speed Racer seemed like the perfect opportunity for the Wachowskis to earn back goodwill from their fanbase and attract a huge mainstream audience as well. However, Speed Racer crashed right out of the gate, opening to only $18 million and earning just $93 million worldwide, far below its $120 million price tag. The sisters followed Speed Racer up with bombs Cloud Atlas and the aforementioned Jupiter Ascending, leaving one to wonder if they should have just taken the blue pill and stayed inside the Matrix.