The Biggest Box Office Bomb, Every Year Since 1990

Sometimes, you can get all the big-name talent in the world, and it still can't draw in audiences. Case in point: The Bonfire of the Vanities, a 1990 film adaptation of the Tom Wolfe novel of the same name. This film was directed by Brian De Palma and stars Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, and Melanie Griffith — a truly astonishing collection of talent. Yet none of them were able to drum up much interest in moviegoers, who largely gave the movie the cold shoulder. Vanities only grossed $15.6 million on a $47 million budget. The Bonfire of the Vanities had talent to spare, but none of those famous faces were enough to save it at the box office.

Many box office flops are also critically derided. In the case of the 1992 Dustin Hoffman vehicle Hero, though, we see a box office dud that actually scored generally positive reviews. However, that wasn't enough to save this project, which ended up grossing only $66 million on a $42 million budget. Part of the problem here was the oversized budget. Hero is as homage to wacky old-school comedies, which is the kind of project that doesn't generate massive box office returns, let alone ones that can justify a $42 million price tag. Even though its ill-matched budget ended up making it a loser, however, Hero can comfort itself with its reviews, which few other duds of this caliber have.

For his first five movies, director Rob Reiner was on a hot streak. So beloved were Reiner's initial works that he remains one of only two filmmakers in history to have three directorial efforts receive A+ CinemaScore grades. All that success came crashing down with the 1994 film North, however, which was reviled by moviegoers and critics alike. 

Produced on $40 million budget, North grossed a disastrous $7.1 million worldwide. Not only was it a costly dud, it proved a turning point in Reiner's career as a filmmaker. Though he's gone on to direct the occasional hit (like The American President and The Bucket List), Reiner has never returned to the constant success he enjoyed before North derailed his career.

"If Mary Reilly falters at the box office," The Washington Post wrote before Mary Reilly's debut, "it will not be a bomb on the order of Heaven's Gate or Howard the Duck. It will be a smaller failure, but a bitter disappointment to the well-meaning filmmakers who wanted to make ... a commercial as well as an artistic success." In fact, an even worse fate awaited Mary Reilly, a romantic drama that grossed a disastrous $12.9 million on a $47 million budget. Release date delays and behind-the-scenes difficulties tainted the film's reputation, while TriStar Pictures gave the film a meager release. On opening weekend, the studio put Mary Reilly in only 1,470 locations, a lower theater count than all but two other movies in the top 10. With these factors in play, Mary Reilly ended up having a truly terrifying box office run.

When you think of Christmas movies, you're bound to think of cuddly characters like the exuberant Buddy the Elf and the kind-hearted Kris Kringle from Miracle on 34th Street. On the opposite end of that spectrum is the titular lead of Jack Frost. Jack Frost tells the story of a dad (Michael Keaton) who dies and comes back to life as his kid's snowman. The snowman version of Jack Frost is brought to life through CGI effects that make the chilly creation more unnerving than lovable. 

Perhaps that's why audiences stayed away from Jack Frost. With an $85 million budget, Jack Frost only made $34.5 million worldwide. Jack Frost also faced competition in its December 1998 release from other family movies like The Prince of Egypt and A Bug's Life. Unlike Jack Frost, none of the characters in those movies are likely to instill nightmares in kid viewers.

Titan A.E. had a number of positive factors in its favor, including the presence of director Don Bluth, who had previously helmed An American Tail and Anastasia. Unfortunately, nothing could help Titan A.E. at the worldwide box office, where it grossed just $36.7 million on a $75 million budget. 

The fallout from this box office failure was tremendous. Within weeks, Titan A.E. distributor 20th Century Fox closed its animation studio. Years after its release, former 20th Century Fox Animation head Chris Meledandri stated that Titan A.E. lost $100 million at the box office. Even with some big-name filmmaking talent at its back, Titan A.E. was a cosmic castaway.

Eddie Murphy's box office highs have been incredibly high, but his box office lows have been just as low. Enter The Adventures of Pluto Nash, whose box office haul made Meet Dave look like The Nutty Professor. Pluto Nash didn't just underperform, it crashed and burned with just $7.1 million earned worldwide on a $100 million budget. That price tag may have been necessary to bring the movie's various sci-fi sets and costumes to life, but it did nothing to coerce moviegoers to shell out for the flick. Pluto Nash was further done in by utterly toxic reviews. All of these factors kept the film from soaring into the stars at the box office.

"Remember the Alamo!" So goes the famous saying that's been etched into American history. But does anyone remember 2004's The Alamo, the big-budget movie based on the historic fight? Despite being rooted in such a famous event, The Alamo grossed only $25.8 million on an alleged budget of $125 million, a price tag widely reported to be lower than its actual costs. 

Whatever its final budget, The Alamo was a massive money-loser. Chief among its problems is that movies based on the events at the Alamo have a dismal box office track record. Competition from The Passion of the Christ cemented the film's failure. Although The Alamo may be long forgotten, its enormous failure at the worldwide box office will never be lost to history.

A ship going awry worked like gangbusters at the box office for 1997's Titanic and 1972's The Poseidon Adventure. So why didn't it work for Poseidon? This 2006 remake came armed with a $160 million budget meant to ensure the film would have enough spectacle to stand out in a crowded summertime marketplace. Unfortunately for Poseidon, it sank without a trace, grossing only $181.6 million worldwide. 

While the titular ship in Poseidon is capsized by a gigantic wave, the movie itself was hit hard by a competing summer blockbuster: The Da Vinci Code. That movie generated so much conversation and buzz that it utterly wrecked Poseidon. Sure, movies about ships running into trouble on the open sea worked in the past. But considering how hard it struggled to stand out against other summer movies, Poseidon proved you need more than that to be a hit.

Today, Speed Racer is widely regarded as a cult hit. In its initial theatrical release, though, Speed Racer was widely rejected by the general moviegoing public. Armed with a massive publicity campaign and the distinction of being the first Wachowski-directed movie since the Matrix trilogy, Speed Racer still managed to crash and burn with just $93.9 million earned on a $120 million budget. 

The fact that Speed Racer wasn't an immediately recognizable brand name for many moviegoers may have put a bump in the film's road, but the real challenge came from its release date. Speed Racer had to compete with Iron Man, herald of the MCU age, leaving no room for the oddball anime adaptation at the box office. However, unlike many blockbuster duds, Speed Racer has managed to keep on trucking in the hearts of moviegoers long after its theatrical run ended.

When it comes to movies that lose excessive amounts of money, the usual culprits are big-budget summer blockbusters gone awry. Not so with How Do You Know, a romantic comedy that may not have featured costly CGI robots but nonetheless proved to be a massive flop. 

Released in December 2010, How Do You Know is a far cry from the lucrative titles directed by James L. Brooks in the past, such As Good As It Gets. How Do You Know grossed just $48.6 million worldwide against a $120 million budget. How did How Do You Know rack up such an expensive price tag? It's all thanks to its star-studded cast and crew: $50 million of the film's budget went to its megawatt talent. These kinds of exorbitant costs set this rom-com up for a legendarily disastrous box office performance.

Once upon a time, John Carter was a groundbreaking character in the world of science fiction literature. In the modern world, John Carter is more synonymous with headlining one of the biggest box office flops of all time. 2012's John Carter amassed only $284.1 million worldwide on a $250 million budget. Theories regarding why John Carter became such a massive non-starter are numerous. The prevailing ones highlight Disney's decision to minimize the film's distinct sci-fi elements in its marketing (including changing the film's title from John Carter of Mars). Whatever the reason for its financial misery, John Carter snowballed into a $200 million writedown for the company, cementing "John Carter" as shorthand for "costly box office flop".

1939's The Wizard of Oz's fame has been both blessing and curse for later film adaptations of L.  Frank Baum's beloved books. On the one hand, everyone still knows what the land of Oz is. On the other hand, The Wizard of Oz casts such an enormous shadow that it's hard to establish anything new. 

Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return was no exception to this trend, earning a paltry $21.7 million gross on a $70 million budget. But Dorothy's Return's problems ran deeper than its struggle to live up to the legacy of The Wizard of Oz. There is also the fact that it was released by short-lived distributor Clarius Entertainment, as well as the film's cheap-looking animation. Even if The Wizard of Oz didn't exist, Legends of Oz was always going to struggle to get the attention of moviegoers.

Usually, movie studios wait until after a film is released to announce that they've lost money on it. But Paramount Pictures made history with Monster Trucks when, three months before it started playing in places like France, the studio announced it was taking a $115 million writedown on the film. Paramount's concerns turned out to be well-placed, as the $125-million budgeted Monster Trucks was greeted with a shrug by general moviegoers, grossing just $64.4 million worldwide. 

In the years since its release, Monster Trucks has scored its fair share of defenders. Film critic Kristy Puchko praised the film's "absolute commitment to a premise conceived by a child (seriously)" as "winsome and unapologetically fun." However, decidedly not among those fans are Paramount Pictures' executives, who didn't even let Monster Trucks premiere worldwide before declaring it a significant box office flop.

In the past, big-budget adaptations of fantasy novels penned by Peter Jackson and released in December had yielded box office success. However, that trend came to an abrupt halt with Mortal Engines. Despite its pedigree, the whole project sputtered out: Mortal Engines grossed only $83.6 million on what is alleged to have been a $150 million budget. 

What's the difference between Mortal Engines and earlier blockbusters written by Peter Jackson? Well, for one thing, Mortal Engines isn't based on source material quite as widely known as J.R.R. Tolkien's work. That lack of familiarity may well have resulted in Mortal Engines losing $174.8 million, a far cry from the kind of profits the individual Lord of the Rings movies brought in.

Something unprecedented happened in 2020: Theatrical movies came to a halt. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, movie theaters closed, upending Hollywood in the process. As a result, the box office grosses of all 2020 titles were dramatically impacted. The includes everything from shelved titles to films like Birds of Prey and Bloodshot that were released in the first three months of 2020. 

Calculating box office failures for 2020 is, accordingly, an impossible task. How can one determine what movies count as hits and flops, considering the staggering circumstances of the year? It's better to just say that, due to circumstances far beyond anyone's control, all movies in 2020 were the biggest box office failures of the year. Well, except for Bad Boys for Life: That one was an indisputably massive surprise hit lucky enough to debut before the pandemic shuttered theaters around the world.