10 Action Movies That Disappointed At The Box Office Despite A-List Casts

If action movies love to include two things, it's movie stars and stacked ensembles. And explosions, shaky cam, betrayals you saw coming a mile away, slow motion — okay, fine, there are a lot of things. But today, we're talking about the names on the marquee — specifically, the ones who couldn't will their movies to success, despite all that star power.

A-listers aren't always enough to ensure a compelling turn at the box office. When it comes to action movies, studios typically bank just as much on the explosive trailers, or the name of a director known for delivering bombast. But there's also a clear distinction between the quickies starring B-listers and below and the actioners headed up by top-level Hollywood stars — Stallone and Schwarzenegger vs. the Dolph Lundgrens and Steven Seagal (sorry, Dolph).

For fans of the genre, the promise of some goofy mayhem and exciting stunts is usually enough. But when the goal is getting more casual moviegoers into theaters, the names on the poster get a lot more weight. In these examples, though, star power alone couldn't deliver. Here are 10 action movies that disappointed at the box office despite A-list casts.

The "A-Team" brand wasn't exactly a thriving IP back in 2010. The TV series about a group of Vietnam War veterans turned outlaw mercenaries was a hit in the '80s, running for five seasons, but it was also unmistakably of its era. Other than a few lingering bits of pop culture influence ("I love it when a plan comes together"), it didn't seem like there was much there to dig into. But that didn't stop 20th Century Fox from rebooting "The A-Team" for the big screen.

Transposed from the 1980s into a more present moment (with the team changed from Vietnam vets to U.S. soldiers in Iraq), the 2010 film compensated for the fading memory of its source material with a star-led cast. Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper headlined as Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith and Templeton "Faceman" Peck, with former MMA star Quinton Jackson playing Mr. T's old role of B.A. Baracus, and Sharlto Copley — fresh off his star-making turn in "District 9" — playing H.M. Murdock. Jessica Biel and Patrick Wilson co-starred alongside the core four.

A much better movie than you might expect, "The A-Team" is a well-made action romp that stays surprisingly loyal to the spirit of the show, with a big boost in the form of some decent chemistry between the titular team. Unfortunately, none of that was enough to drag it to box office success. The film grossed less than $180 million on a $110 million budget, not even hitting the twice-the-budget mark typically demanded for a film to break even (given that half the box office goes to the theater owners). For that reason, we never got a sequel, but "The A-Team" is still a pretty fun watch.

There's been a disruption in the natural order these last few years, as video game adaptations got ... good. In fact, they kind of got great. "Castlevania," "The Last of Us," "Fallout," "Twisted Metal," "Cyberpunk: Edgerunners," "Sonic the Hedgehog," "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" — they've all worked together to completely change the narrative on a genre that used to be the laughingstock of Hollywood (and gamers, to be frank).

But this isn't how things were meant to be. What happened to the good old days of horrendous video game movies? Never fear: "Borderlands" is here. A 2024 live-action adaptation of the popular looter-shooter games from Gearbox Studios, "Borderlands" assembled a wild hodgepodge of a cast that included Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Ariana Greenblatt, and Cate Blanchett, among others. While certainly packed with star power, that ensemble didn't translate to either critical or commercial success.

Made for a reported production budget of $115 million, the film grossed just under $33 million worldwide — an absolute bomb in the truest sense of the word. Critics were just as brutal, pulling the film down to a dismal 10% on Rotten Tomatoes. "Nothing that works about the games has been adapted intact in this ugly, boring, truly inept piece of filmmaking," Brian Tallerico wrote in a brutal review for RogerEbert.com. It's no wonder that Craig Mazin — who's co-helmed one of the last decade's best game adaptations in "The Last of Us" — publicly emphasized his lack of involvement, despite early reports attaching him as a writer.

For action movie fans, "The Expendables" was an easy sell. Bring together a massive roster of '80s and '90s action stars, throw them in a blender with some quick cuts and bloody action, and you've got an easy piece of modern-retro nostalgia. The first two films are even pretty good, if you're into that sort of thing. But then they just kept making them.

It made sense after "The Expendables 2" one-upped the first film with a $311 million gross at the global box office. But when "The Expendables 3" just barely cleared $209 million on a $100 million budget, it probably should have been the end — and it was, for a while. Eventually, though, somebody somewhere decided that we needed another one, and "The Expendables 4" (stylized in the marketing as the unpronounceable "Expend4bles") was born.

Where "The Expendables 3" was a disappointment on all fronts, "The Expendables 4" was a downright disaster — a critical bomb (not that the films ever earned high marks there) that earned back just over half of its $100 million production budget. While it boasted a similar star-studded cast as its predecessors, the ensemble just didn't move the needle the way it had before. Sylvester Stallone and crew were already past their action prime in 2010, but four films and 13 years later, the idea just made way less sense. The returning core of Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, and Randy Couture was augmented with a young supplement that included Megan Fox and 50 Cent, but it wasn't enough to bring audiences out for another geriatric gun fest.

Fans of "Edge of Tomorrow" will tell you that it's one of the best, most underrated sci-fi action movies of the last 15 years. Based on the Japanese light novel "All You Need Is Kill" by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, it's a smartly plotted, visually striking thriller set in a future war where nothing is what it seems. On the box office front, it looked like a surefire hit, with the combined star power of Emily Blunt and action movie patron saint Tom Cruise leading the way.

While the film was no bomb, it also wasn't much of a success. A $367 million box office take might seem like a big deal at first glance, but with a reported budget of $178 million, "Edge of Tomorrow" barely broke the double-the-budget threshold. Whether or not it truly wound up in the black is a bit of a toss-up, but if it did, it wasn't by much. That's a shame given how spectacular the movie is, and more than a little surprising given the A-list duo leading the charge. Maybe high-concept sci-fi is just always a bit of a hard sell to more casual audiences.

A modern buddy action comedy starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling, with a supporting cast that includes Matt Bomer, Keith David, and Margaret Qualley? And it's really good? Surely this was an easy hit at the box office, right? But sadly, the universe isn't fair. "The Nice Guys," directed by Shane Black and released in 2016, is a fantastic movie. But even on a modest production budget of around $50 million, it couldn't deliver a hit, clearing just over $71 million globally. That's surprising given where both stars were in their respective careers at the time.

While Crowe may have been a bit removed from his "Gladiator" peak, he had been a steady leading presence in Hollywood for years — a run that included "3:10 to Yuma," "Robin Hood," "Les Misérables," and "Man of Steel." Gosling had established himself as a highly versatile star in the decade-plus since his breakout in "The Notebook," with films like "Drive," "The Ides of March," "The Place Beyond the Pines," and "The Big Short." In the next several years after "The Nice Guys," he'd ascend again with "La La Land" and the cultural juggernaut that was "Barbie."

But for whatever reason, "The Nice Guys" just couldn't turn star chemistry and great reviews into box office magic. But hey, that doesn't make the film any less of a modern classic.

It might seem insane to put a "Mission: Impossible" film on this list, given the franchise's dominance of action movies over the last couple of decades. And on paper, 2023's "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One" (the "Part One" was later dropped) was not much different from the other latter-day entries in the series. But commercially, it was a different story. After "Ghost Protocol" and "Rogue Nation" cleared close to $700 million each worldwide, and "Fallout" came up just shy of $800 million, expectations were high for what was meant to be the first half of a two-part finale for the entire franchise. 

But then the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted production and shredded movie theaters, leading to a ballooning budget and a lackluster return when the film finally came out. A $565 million take doesn't sound anywhere close to a failure, but "Dead Reckoning" cost nearly $300 million to make, putting it in historic territory. And while the pandemic had a huge impact on that price tag, it's hard to blame lockdowns for a dismal audience turnout in 2023, the same year that "Barbenheimer" happened.

More likely, there was just a level of "Mission: Impossible" fatigue, even with the same star-studded ensemble of Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, and Simon Pegg, joined this time by Hayley Atwell and Vanessa Kirby. The following film eschewed the planned "Part Two" subtitle and redubbed itself "The Final Reckoning," but it fared about the same at the box office, albeit on a more reasonable budget. And while "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning" is a perfectly fine movie, it's certainly not the strongest the series has had to offer.

Speaking of movies that Tom Cruise couldn't carry to the promised land, let's talk about "The Mummy," the 2017 Universal Pictures reboot intended to kick off a whole cinematic universe. It didn't, nor did it make much money. The film grossed a little over $400 million on a budget of nearly half that, escaping the land of official bombs but landing squarely in the realm of box office disappointments.

In Cruise's defense, this was largely an issue of concept and pitch. The military angle on the "Mummy" trailers and the faux-gritty tone had little of the fun, adventurous energy that made the Brendan Fraser movies so beloved, and the film arrived to lackluster reviews from critics and fans alike.

Part of that poor positioning may have been connected to the franchise Universal was trying to set up — the so-called "Dark Universe," in the vein of the MCU, but using the company's own roster of classic horror movie creatures. In chasing the model created by superhero franchises, Universal may have leaned a bit harder into a mass-appeal action movie zone than really made sense for the property. The larger scheme wound up dead on arrival, and "The Mummy" failed to generate even a new solo series after falling flat at the box office.

Few actors over the last 30 years have had the same level of consistent box office draw as Will Smith. But even a star clock is wrong twice a day (or something). "Gemini Man" was an interesting movie in theory — a sci-fi action flick starring Will Smith and a second, CGI de-aged version of him. It's the sort of wacky premise that director Ang Lee has occasionally turned into interesting cinema, but here, it doesn't really work.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Clive Owen, and Benedict Wong all co-star, but the focus is on Smith, both in the posters and the 2019 film itself. The story follows the "Men in Black" star as a veteran military operative who encounters a clone of himself after running afoul of some dangerous people. First pitted against each other, the two must learn to work together, etc.

In some bizarro universe, doubling the number of Will Smiths in your movie may have doubled the money. But this is the real world, and no amount of Smiths could cover for a sauceless script or the Grand Canyon of an uncanny valley that happens anytime the younger clone character appears on screen. "Gemini Man" got decent marks from the fans who did turn out to see it, but a poor grade from critics. On a reported production budget of $140 million, the film grossed just $166.5 million, making it one of the bigger bombs of Smith's career.

On paper, "The 355" is a compelling pitch: bring together five of the most successful actresses in Hollywood for an ensemble spy flick directed by blockbuster writer-producer Simon Kinberg. Unfortunately, it didn't come out the way anyone involved might have hoped. The combined razzle-dazzle of Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Diane Kruger, and Lupita Nyong'o, plus Chinese film star Fan Bingbing, sounds like enough on its face to make for an entertaining two hours, but the film suffered through the worst of COVID-19 production hiccups and was released early in 2022, just in time for a massive new wave of the virus to keep folks out of theaters.

Of course, pandemic anxieties and production dilemmas can't be blamed for everything. The film may well have been a better finished product had it been made in a different time, but the one that audiences got was written off by most critics as generic genre fare — nothing special. "The 355" didn't even make close to half of its reported $75 million budget back, and its limited theatrical exclusivity window — a common practice during the peak COVID years — certainly didn't help.

After the general backlash to 2008's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," the Indiana Jones franchise seemed to be in the rearview mirror — at least when it came to actual movies. Harrison Ford wasn't getting any younger, nor did he seem particularly interested in continuing to play the character. But while fans lambasted the fourth film, it made bank at the box office, to the tune of $786 million. That's the most of any film in the series by a wide margin. So it was inevitable that eventually, Disney would go back to the well.

That finally happened with 2023's "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," a perfectly fine film that was simply too little, too late to eke more blood out of the adventure serial stone. While the film cleared nearly $400 million at the global box office, its gargantuan budget clocked in at close to the same figure, turning the whole thing into a dicey financial proposition even before the premiere. The film itself came and went without much fanfare, showing that maybe, sometimes, it's okay to let a classic series end.

If you're looking for a more satisfying modern-day Indiana Jones adventure, the MachineGames' big-budget 2024 video game "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle" may be a better bet.