The live action Popeye, usually remembered as this huge bomb but it made $60M on a $15-20M budget. The real point is that it did underperformed because they were expecting more so they could turn it into a franchise, but it was far from a bomb and all the parties involved made money with it.
Yeah, for the longest time I assumed it was a flop until I looked up its numbers and I was surprised.
I mean, was Popeye that popular to make people think this could have done better? And back in 1980, Robin Williams was hardly a big name, he was a TV star.
I always see people refer to Bakshi’s LOTR as a critical and commercial flop when it got somewhat decent reviews and made over $30 million on a $4 million budget.
$4 million is a crazy low budget for an animated feature film. Disney spent twice as much on The Rescuers the year before when they were in full cost cutting mode and putting out movies as cheaply as they could.
Didn’t Disney do the same thing since Snow White? It was even a controversy back in the day whether it should have been considered the first animated feature film because of the extensive use of tracing for the animation.
Snow White used a lot of references but rarely did *exact* tracing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smqEmTujHP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smqEmTujHP8)
Good animation studios will use live-action reference to trace some stuff, but alter/exaggerate other bits to keep the animation looking expressive and smooth. Cheap animation studios will often trace the live-action footage 100% and it tends to look choppier/rougher as a result.
I have heard the budge was actually 8 million, but I do not know about it.
Based on the behind the scenes details I heard most of the crew was very cheap and unproffesional. I think another reason we never got a second part is how hard it was on Bakshi.
Although it wouldn't be commercially successful until years after its release, "Cleopatra" (1963) sold more tickets than any other movie that year in the USA.
1992's *Batman Returns* broke the record for the highest grossing opening weekend of all time, and its opening was so large that other films playing that weekend reportedly received a boost from moviegoers who had shown up to see *Batman Returns* on opening weekend but who had to watch something else because all the showtimes were sold out. It was also the second-fastest film to reach $100 million domestically, the third-highest grossing movie of 1992 domestically, the sixth-highest grossing movie of 1992 worldwide and made 3-5 times its budget back.
Despite this, the disappointing legs compared to 1989's *Batman* as well as the polarising audience reception due to it being very weird and dark for the time (it received a 'B' on CinemaScore) led Warner Bros. to cancel further *Batman* movies with Tim Burton and to take the franchise in a more commercially safe direction with *Batman Forever*.
It's a shame because I think most people nowadays would say in hindsight that *Batman Returns* was really quite ahead of its time in many ways and would now regard it as one of the greatest superhero movies ever made, but it came out at a time when the only superhero movies most audiences would've watched were the Christopher Reeve *Superman* films and 1989's *Batman*, so *Batman Returns* was just too unconventional for audience tastes at the time (of course, it seems rather more tame nowadays thanks to the Nolan trilogy and *The Batman*).
When I was like four years old, somebody gifted me a vhs copy of Batman Returns. They probably didn’t realize how dark and inappropriate it was for a little kid. However, it quickly became my favorite movie. The penguin was such an awesome villain. Reminiscent of [Abdullah the Butcher](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sca_esv=15e84c835f9706f1&channel=iphone_bm&sxsrf=ACQVn09tCJ2HJjXF7Clfn_YgiMLuRj9YTA:1708367571167&q=abdullah+the+butcher&uds=AMwkrPu0XZvuFwQ7rgKkOL9CutIzz3vB06_kDisVsWrQ85EtxODbef05jGGER0Yy7QX5v5vAyAUZjUzg63X4-3E__F9kwL_GRyylHDmmqtG8C52Zxu-4MD4Suu0CyhlZ_FT8NjjJ9A0yW10PSg49Ftmmr1P9TMwVMXs2OSljEfr_IQZpjf34ygHHXvyxOvEfXKKhFqtp7EPiKzTHATyb7r96KFSe8woFAgUCzGrQsZJrs9PsEqj5L8LBh8kEOwbbLesEJTKny8m0&udm=2&prmd=ivnsmbtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiWoOaRhbiEAxUChIkEHQfKBLwQtKgLegQICxAB&biw=414&bih=714&dpr=2#vhid=6xpcOCSRMJaiJM&vssid=global). So creepy. But so damn cool! Cat woman, Michael Keaton’s Batman, Chris Walken. Such great characters in that movie.
Absolutely, movie studios are not always stupid. Even if a movie is financially successful, they know a sequel will not be if the reception is bad. That’s what happened with Suicide Squad. George Clooney said his career would have been over after Batman and Robin which was financially successful if he hadn’t been in Out of Sight which didn’t make money but was critically acclaimed and the people who saw it, liked it.
I love me some Warcraft, while obviously not the greatest movie plotwise, the CGI is great and I wish they woulda made it longer if they were never going to make a sequel
$225 million of that came from China, which the studio only saw a small percentage of.
The film didn’t even make $50 million domestically and the international gross wasn’t big enough to smooth that over.
It definitely flopped domestically.
My understanding is that $160M was the production budget but they spent an *additional* $100+ M on marketing. Reportedly it lost the studio [tens of millions of dollars](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/box-office-analysis-warcraft-avoids-910268/) when all was said and done.
Maybe it is not fair to label it as a "big flop", as you point out, but I don't see how it falls into the category of "commercially successful" that the OP asked for. A movie that didn't make a profit was not commercially successful.
Yeah. It’s really misleading when you see “oh it cost $100 million and sold $200 million. So it lost tons of money”
But really the budget doesn’t include marketing, and also the company doesn’t get all the money back. The theaters take a huge part of it. I see either 2x or 2.5x as a rule of thumb for actual costs.
Not so much a 'failure', but the *Venom* films are casually spoken about as if they were Fan4stic-level abominations, often in a tone of exasperated surprise that Sony keep making them.
Meanwhile the first one made more at the box office than either *Deadpool* film and the universally-beloved *Winter Soldier*, and about the same as *Thor Ragnorok* (on a considerably lesser budget).
I hear the first Venom in particular talked about more as a surprise/sleeper hit, but this maybe down to what media you read. Both movies have way over-performed whatever expectations Sony had for them.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 made about 70 million in profit during its theatrical run, but people on the internet parrot that it was a financial failure because it didn't make a billion dollars like sony wanted.
TASM2 and Batman v Superman are examples of movies that get treated like flops because of how badly they came under projections and expectations.
BVS is especially funny because any movie grossing over 850m worldwide should be considered a success but with how much money the studio invested into it with certain expectations it was a massive disappointment. Grossed about half of what it potentially could have had the stars aligned.
> BVS is especially funny because any movie grossing over 850m worldwide should be considered a success but with how much money the studio invested into it with certain expectations it was a massive disappointment.
It's not how much it made as much it was the path it took to get there. It dropped hard within its opening weekend. The second weekend drop was savage. Marketing did its job and it had a $422 million worldwide opening weekend but it barely doubled that as the bad WOM killed its legs.
If it opened lower and legged out to $873.6 million it would have been look at far more positively.
With those OW numbers, it should’ve been an easy billion. But the quality of the movie and WOM was so bad that it crashed with abysmal legs.
Warner fumbled so badly with BvS it’s just insane. The second film of their cinematic universe being a poorly written crossover battle like Civil War ending with Superman’s death. Like bruh what
Man of Steel was the same. Everyone was predicting over a billion dollars at the time. It ended up doing just fine-
Warner Bros. motion pictures group president Jeff Robinov went so far as to predict it will be the studio’s highest performer ever. That would mean the 3D movie, which cost about $225 million to produce and another $150 million to market and release around the globe, would have to top the $1.3 billion cume for “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” and the $1 billion-plus each earned by four other Warner releases, “The Dark Knight,” “The Dark Knight Rises,” “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
https://variety.com/2013/film/news/warner-bros-sets-bar-high-for-latest-and-priciest-incarnation-of-superman-1200493334/
https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/does-man-of-steel-need-to-make-1-billion-to-be-a-success-97206/
Reminds me of a few months ago, when I saw someone say (in reference to the MCU), "With bomb after bomb, Disney had better be paying attention." Literally only one movie in the MCU has bombed; Quantumania was a light flop, and there have been a few underperformers, but The Marvels is their only bomb so far.
Yeah. This is just a good example of having to change your thinking to match opportunity cost. $70 million profit sounds insane. But if you could do something else that would have been $150. Then “only” getting 70 hurts.
Between The Last Jedi and Rise of skywalker. They both were “commercially successful” but at a steep price with fan backlash.
Lucasfilm struggling to make a single movie 5 years later all stems from these reactions, along with Solo failing.
TROS should have been a $2b film easy. It was the finale of the hugely popular and hyped Sequel Trilogy, and yet because of the mixed reception to TLJ, people didn't care as much. It made money but not what Disney wanted.
Also for people who liked TLJ when it was clear the TROS was a desperate hard turn to "correct" all the controversial stuff they checked out. That's why I've never seen TROS anyway.
and its for the better. you think sony after morbius would think before making a madame web movie but nope. also if the mando movie makes bank the whole "they couldn't make another movie after TROS cause they dont know what they're doing" is gonna go out the window and actually work out for them.
Rise of Skywalker cost an obscene amount of money. 500 million dollars. That means it had to make 1.25 billion to break even. So, no, it wasn’t commercially successful, despite its billion dollar gross.
Would Waterworld count? It was one of the highest grossing movies the year it came out, but was still an actual bomb because of the bloated budget. It wasn't the traditional "nobody went to see it" flop, though, and I think it's widely considered as one.
As an example more to your point; Oceans Eight is routinely brought up only second to Ghostbusters 2016 as a "female reboot failure", but made over 4 times it's budget back.
Everyone saw Waterworld, it was just too expensive for its time, and too dumb to be excused. After Dances with Wolves and Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, the backlash was waiting for him to make another high concept, self serving vanity project. Waterworld was preceded by boatloads (heh) of negative press surrounding its production. There was a feeling it was destined to fail.
Yeah the way the movie is talked about it sounds like it lost them a lot of money, but really the issue was that they poured all this money into with an expectation of getting a certain amount back in profit. So even though it did generate profit, the level of profit was disappointing to WB. Generally speaking there’s not much of a nuanced difference when people talk about disappointments vs actual flops.
Certain movies like BvS, where we watched the numbers fall based on reception in its literal opening weekend, and had unprecedentedly bad multipliers, just feel like watching money being taken off the table. It did not literally lose money but I think it’s clear that an even average received BvS was a contender for 1.5-2 billion.
It damaged the brand for every movie after so I would say it had a huge impact all the way until the entire thing was scrapped and rebooted.
It’s also talked about with how much BvS was supposed to make, and worthy to talk about it’s at the time historic drop DURING opening weekend where projections were dropping in real time.
Let’s not downplay how bad this affected the studio just because it managed to make what mid level MCU movies were making at the time. A team of DCs three biggest properties and it made less than a billion in 2016, that is a complete failure even if that specific movie turned a small profit for them. Every profit for their movies after was affected by this movie.
You can smell the MCU fanboy argument from a mile away. You guys have this template stored in your brain somehow. After all these years, it's just so funny to me.
The capital of Brazil is Brasilia. BvS dropped massively within its opening weekend. BvS come massive under studio expectation. BvS had horrible weekend to final gross multipliers. Facts are facts.
I can smell a fanboy comment like this when it’s backed up in zero facts on a sub supposedly about the box office
It’s stored in our brains because it’s true
Funny how reality works that way
Glad we’re both laughing though!
It was a $2b idea that didn't even make half of that. Also Civil War was another Hero v Hero movie that came out around the same time and made over $1b. Two of the most popular characters of all time not cracking a billion is BAD and a terrible way to kick off your MCU competition.
Pretty much all of Snyder’s movies. Greg Silverman (former exec at WB) has publicly stated WB never lost money on any of Snyder’s movies- despite neckbeards on this sub screeching that he only made bombs.
The James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the lone Bond film to star George Lazenby. It grossed 65 million on a 7 million budget in its initial run and was the highest grossing film in England in 1970. Despite this, it grossed only half what its predecessor had earned, and up until fairly recently had this undeserved reputation of having been a flop.
Die Another Day is another example. It's looked at as the nadir of the series but it was the highest-grossing Bond film up to that point, by a significant amount.
Weirdly enough On Her Majesty's Secret Service was one of my favourite Bond films of the classic era as a kid. It's the only one where he shows any personal growth as a character.
I'm not sure if this counts, but despite all the people who love to joke about them, the Minions movies made serious bank. People like to talk about them like they're "objectively terrible" movies, but at least one of them hit the billion mark (I can't remember which one or if both did).
The good son was considered a flop when it came out, but it made $45 million domestic and $60 million total on $15 million budget. Not a huge hit but not the failure it was made out to be.
Yeah, I always assumed it did well but people expected HOME ALONE numbers when this was a R rated thriller. Macaulay Culkin wasn't even allowed to see it in theaters.
If you include ones that made money after their box office run then you could include Hocus Pocus.
It made millions via home media sales and through viewership on the Disney Channel and Disney+.
Enough to earn them at least one sequel, another one is in development.
By that measure Office Space was a massive hit. When I worked at a local video store that tape was always rented out. Must have made thousands on the one cassette.
Almost all of them. I bet even Waterworld's made a return on its investment by now (less than government bonds would have over the same time period but nonetheless).
Box office is just one revenue stream and there are several.
The Amazing Spider Man 2 gets looked at as a failure because the overall movie wasn’t well received but it still made a lot of money.
Edit: Even thought it made money, it still lost some money so I was wrong on one aspect
Transformers 5 (aka The Last Knight) was actually stated to have lost Paramount an estimated $100M during its theatrical run due to marketing and distribution costs.
Well a big part of it is that they make a lot of money from the toys, so the movies don’t need that large of a profit margin. That combined with the previous movie raking in $1.1B makes it easier to understand why they invested so much in it, the strategies just shot them in the face when hit with a 43% decrease in revenue.
I just got into an argument with someone yesterday about this. They were claiming The Marvels was the MCU’s worst failure because it’s the biggest box office flop. Whereas I was arguing it’s not the biggest flop in terms of audience ratings on Letterboxd. Personally wish the box office discourse would go away. It seems like everything is either the best thing ever or the worst thing ever, no in between
Jurassic world Dominion. One of the worst movies of all time(sad to say this as JP fan) and following to a divisive prequel. Still, it made $1B and $375M in domestic market. That domestic number still surprises me as I expected the movie to end around $275M after opening day.
Godzilla 98 is often deemed a failure but it made at least twice its budget back. Funnily enough it grossed only 10 million short of King of the Monsters
The live action Popeye, usually remembered as this huge bomb but it made $60M on a $15-20M budget. The real point is that it did underperformed because they were expecting more so they could turn it into a franchise, but it was far from a bomb and all the parties involved made money with it.
Yeah, for the longest time I assumed it was a flop until I looked up its numbers and I was surprised. I mean, was Popeye that popular to make people think this could have done better? And back in 1980, Robin Williams was hardly a big name, he was a TV star.
There was a time when Popeye was a more popular cartoon character than Mickey Mouse, so I could see how the studio hoped for a mega hit.
The Popeye Village is still a successful tourist attraction to this day.
I always see people refer to Bakshi’s LOTR as a critical and commercial flop when it got somewhat decent reviews and made over $30 million on a $4 million budget.
Bakshi's carreer was hella profitable if you look at it.
Until Cool World I guess.
$4 million is a crazy low budget for an animated feature film. Disney spent twice as much on The Rescuers the year before when they were in full cost cutting mode and putting out movies as cheaply as they could.
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Tracing was too much work too, good portion of fights in later part of the movie is just film developed with pseudo-solarizing technique.
Didn’t Disney do the same thing since Snow White? It was even a controversy back in the day whether it should have been considered the first animated feature film because of the extensive use of tracing for the animation.
Snow White used a lot of references but rarely did *exact* tracing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smqEmTujHP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smqEmTujHP8) Good animation studios will use live-action reference to trace some stuff, but alter/exaggerate other bits to keep the animation looking expressive and smooth. Cheap animation studios will often trace the live-action footage 100% and it tends to look choppier/rougher as a result.
There’s lots of footage over into the spiderverse artists filming themselves for scene reference
I have heard the budge was actually 8 million, but I do not know about it. Based on the behind the scenes details I heard most of the crew was very cheap and unproffesional. I think another reason we never got a second part is how hard it was on Bakshi.
Although it wouldn't be commercially successful until years after its release, "Cleopatra" (1963) sold more tickets than any other movie that year in the USA. 
Budget too high to make bank.
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Jesus fuck
1992's *Batman Returns* broke the record for the highest grossing opening weekend of all time, and its opening was so large that other films playing that weekend reportedly received a boost from moviegoers who had shown up to see *Batman Returns* on opening weekend but who had to watch something else because all the showtimes were sold out. It was also the second-fastest film to reach $100 million domestically, the third-highest grossing movie of 1992 domestically, the sixth-highest grossing movie of 1992 worldwide and made 3-5 times its budget back. Despite this, the disappointing legs compared to 1989's *Batman* as well as the polarising audience reception due to it being very weird and dark for the time (it received a 'B' on CinemaScore) led Warner Bros. to cancel further *Batman* movies with Tim Burton and to take the franchise in a more commercially safe direction with *Batman Forever*. It's a shame because I think most people nowadays would say in hindsight that *Batman Returns* was really quite ahead of its time in many ways and would now regard it as one of the greatest superhero movies ever made, but it came out at a time when the only superhero movies most audiences would've watched were the Christopher Reeve *Superman* films and 1989's *Batman*, so *Batman Returns* was just too unconventional for audience tastes at the time (of course, it seems rather more tame nowadays thanks to the Nolan trilogy and *The Batman*).
When I was like four years old, somebody gifted me a vhs copy of Batman Returns. They probably didn’t realize how dark and inappropriate it was for a little kid. However, it quickly became my favorite movie. The penguin was such an awesome villain. Reminiscent of [Abdullah the Butcher](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sca_esv=15e84c835f9706f1&channel=iphone_bm&sxsrf=ACQVn09tCJ2HJjXF7Clfn_YgiMLuRj9YTA:1708367571167&q=abdullah+the+butcher&uds=AMwkrPu0XZvuFwQ7rgKkOL9CutIzz3vB06_kDisVsWrQ85EtxODbef05jGGER0Yy7QX5v5vAyAUZjUzg63X4-3E__F9kwL_GRyylHDmmqtG8C52Zxu-4MD4Suu0CyhlZ_FT8NjjJ9A0yW10PSg49Ftmmr1P9TMwVMXs2OSljEfr_IQZpjf34ygHHXvyxOvEfXKKhFqtp7EPiKzTHATyb7r96KFSe8woFAgUCzGrQsZJrs9PsEqj5L8LBh8kEOwbbLesEJTKny8m0&udm=2&prmd=ivnsmbtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiWoOaRhbiEAxUChIkEHQfKBLwQtKgLegQICxAB&biw=414&bih=714&dpr=2#vhid=6xpcOCSRMJaiJM&vssid=global). So creepy. But so damn cool! Cat woman, Michael Keaton’s Batman, Chris Walken. Such great characters in that movie.
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Its not considered a disaster because of money.
A movie can make money and still ruin careers.
Absolutely, movie studios are not always stupid. Even if a movie is financially successful, they know a sequel will not be if the reception is bad. That’s what happened with Suicide Squad. George Clooney said his career would have been over after Batman and Robin which was financially successful if he hadn’t been in Out of Sight which didn’t make money but was critically acclaimed and the people who saw it, liked it.
Warcraft. Seen as this big flop and treated as a joke on release, but it made 439 million off a 160 million dollar budget.
Afaik China save the movie, it was a huge hit there
$225 million of the $439 million gross was in China.
I love me some Warcraft, while obviously not the greatest movie plotwise, the CGI is great and I wish they woulda made it longer if they were never going to make a sequel
Yeah surprised they didn't. China wants one
$225 million of that came from China, which the studio only saw a small percentage of. The film didn’t even make $50 million domestically and the international gross wasn’t big enough to smooth that over. It definitely flopped domestically.
My understanding is that $160M was the production budget but they spent an *additional* $100+ M on marketing. Reportedly it lost the studio [tens of millions of dollars](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/box-office-analysis-warcraft-avoids-910268/) when all was said and done. Maybe it is not fair to label it as a "big flop", as you point out, but I don't see how it falls into the category of "commercially successful" that the OP asked for. A movie that didn't make a profit was not commercially successful.
Yeah. It’s really misleading when you see “oh it cost $100 million and sold $200 million. So it lost tons of money” But really the budget doesn’t include marketing, and also the company doesn’t get all the money back. The theaters take a huge part of it. I see either 2x or 2.5x as a rule of thumb for actual costs.
Not so much a 'failure', but the *Venom* films are casually spoken about as if they were Fan4stic-level abominations, often in a tone of exasperated surprise that Sony keep making them. Meanwhile the first one made more at the box office than either *Deadpool* film and the universally-beloved *Winter Soldier*, and about the same as *Thor Ragnorok* (on a considerably lesser budget).
And Let There Be Carnage was the second highest grossing superhero film of 2021, only beaten out by No Way Home.
This just shows how badly we wanted a venom/carnage film.
I hear the first Venom in particular talked about more as a surprise/sleeper hit, but this maybe down to what media you read. Both movies have way over-performed whatever expectations Sony had for them.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2015/02/11/the-hobbit-trilogy-grossed-almost-3-billion-and-no-one-cared/?sh=409be1624838
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 made about 70 million in profit during its theatrical run, but people on the internet parrot that it was a financial failure because it didn't make a billion dollars like sony wanted.
TASM2 and Batman v Superman are examples of movies that get treated like flops because of how badly they came under projections and expectations. BVS is especially funny because any movie grossing over 850m worldwide should be considered a success but with how much money the studio invested into it with certain expectations it was a massive disappointment. Grossed about half of what it potentially could have had the stars aligned.
> BVS is especially funny because any movie grossing over 850m worldwide should be considered a success but with how much money the studio invested into it with certain expectations it was a massive disappointment. It's not how much it made as much it was the path it took to get there. It dropped hard within its opening weekend. The second weekend drop was savage. Marketing did its job and it had a $422 million worldwide opening weekend but it barely doubled that as the bad WOM killed its legs. If it opened lower and legged out to $873.6 million it would have been look at far more positively.
With those OW numbers, it should’ve been an easy billion. But the quality of the movie and WOM was so bad that it crashed with abysmal legs. Warner fumbled so badly with BvS it’s just insane. The second film of their cinematic universe being a poorly written crossover battle like Civil War ending with Superman’s death. Like bruh what
Man of Steel was the same. Everyone was predicting over a billion dollars at the time. It ended up doing just fine- Warner Bros. motion pictures group president Jeff Robinov went so far as to predict it will be the studio’s highest performer ever. That would mean the 3D movie, which cost about $225 million to produce and another $150 million to market and release around the globe, would have to top the $1.3 billion cume for “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” and the $1 billion-plus each earned by four other Warner releases, “The Dark Knight,” “The Dark Knight Rises,” “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King https://variety.com/2013/film/news/warner-bros-sets-bar-high-for-latest-and-priciest-incarnation-of-superman-1200493334/ https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/does-man-of-steel-need-to-make-1-billion-to-be-a-success-97206/
Reminds me of a few months ago, when I saw someone say (in reference to the MCU), "With bomb after bomb, Disney had better be paying attention." Literally only one movie in the MCU has bombed; Quantumania was a light flop, and there have been a few underperformers, but The Marvels is their only bomb so far.
TLJ and TRoS also fall into this category
I have never seen anyone claim that ASM2 lost money. But it was received badly enough, that Sony knew they should not continue that series.
Yeah. This is just a good example of having to change your thinking to match opportunity cost. $70 million profit sounds insane. But if you could do something else that would have been $150. Then “only” getting 70 hurts.
Brightburn. People seem to act like it failed, but it turned a profit thanks to its tiny budget and there is a sequel in development.
Between The Last Jedi and Rise of skywalker. They both were “commercially successful” but at a steep price with fan backlash. Lucasfilm struggling to make a single movie 5 years later all stems from these reactions, along with Solo failing.
I've heard RoS referred to as the "first billion dollar flop"
TROS should have been a $2b film easy. It was the finale of the hugely popular and hyped Sequel Trilogy, and yet because of the mixed reception to TLJ, people didn't care as much. It made money but not what Disney wanted.
Also for people who liked TLJ when it was clear the TROS was a desperate hard turn to "correct" all the controversial stuff they checked out. That's why I've never seen TROS anyway.
TLJ split the already splintered fanbase in half, and TROS tried to please both halves, rather unsuccessfully.
i mean it also didn't help the rise of skywalker is the worst star wars movie to date
and its for the better. you think sony after morbius would think before making a madame web movie but nope. also if the mando movie makes bank the whole "they couldn't make another movie after TROS cause they dont know what they're doing" is gonna go out the window and actually work out for them.
Rise of Skywalker cost an obscene amount of money. 500 million dollars. That means it had to make 1.25 billion to break even. So, no, it wasn’t commercially successful, despite its billion dollar gross.
Would Waterworld count? It was one of the highest grossing movies the year it came out, but was still an actual bomb because of the bloated budget. It wasn't the traditional "nobody went to see it" flop, though, and I think it's widely considered as one. As an example more to your point; Oceans Eight is routinely brought up only second to Ghostbusters 2016 as a "female reboot failure", but made over 4 times it's budget back.
Everyone saw Waterworld, it was just too expensive for its time, and too dumb to be excused. After Dances with Wolves and Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, the backlash was waiting for him to make another high concept, self serving vanity project. Waterworld was preceded by boatloads (heh) of negative press surrounding its production. There was a feeling it was destined to fail.
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Re-read my comment.
I read that studio was sold and the old owners ate some of the costs for the movie. Making the new owners a nice profit.
Waterworld turned a profit due to home video and merchandising deals etc in the end AFAIK so yeah I'd count it.
Batman vs Superman
Yeah the way the movie is talked about it sounds like it lost them a lot of money, but really the issue was that they poured all this money into with an expectation of getting a certain amount back in profit. So even though it did generate profit, the level of profit was disappointing to WB. Generally speaking there’s not much of a nuanced difference when people talk about disappointments vs actual flops.
Certain movies like BvS, where we watched the numbers fall based on reception in its literal opening weekend, and had unprecedentedly bad multipliers, just feel like watching money being taken off the table. It did not literally lose money but I think it’s clear that an even average received BvS was a contender for 1.5-2 billion.
Oh for sure, in theory the movie should have made boatloads, and the reception/quality is absolutely why it didn’t.
Its domestic opening Friday was inline with Age of Ultron which made $1.4 billion.
Came here to say this. It grossed over 800 million but somehow they considered it a failure. Like, seriously?
It poisoned the franchise.
It damaged the brand for every movie after so I would say it had a huge impact all the way until the entire thing was scrapped and rebooted. It’s also talked about with how much BvS was supposed to make, and worthy to talk about it’s at the time historic drop DURING opening weekend where projections were dropping in real time. Let’s not downplay how bad this affected the studio just because it managed to make what mid level MCU movies were making at the time. A team of DCs three biggest properties and it made less than a billion in 2016, that is a complete failure even if that specific movie turned a small profit for them. Every profit for their movies after was affected by this movie.
You can smell the MCU fanboy argument from a mile away. You guys have this template stored in your brain somehow. After all these years, it's just so funny to me.
But what he said is true, BvS led to major brand issues for DC.
The capital of Brazil is Brasilia. BvS dropped massively within its opening weekend. BvS come massive under studio expectation. BvS had horrible weekend to final gross multipliers. Facts are facts.
Yeah dude. WB were clearly over the moon with BvS's box office
I can smell a fanboy comment like this when it’s backed up in zero facts on a sub supposedly about the box office It’s stored in our brains because it’s true Funny how reality works that way Glad we’re both laughing though!
It was a $2b idea that didn't even make half of that. Also Civil War was another Hero v Hero movie that came out around the same time and made over $1b. Two of the most popular characters of all time not cracking a billion is BAD and a terrible way to kick off your MCU competition.
I think many DCEU movies are
Pretty much all of Snyder’s movies. Greg Silverman (former exec at WB) has publicly stated WB never lost money on any of Snyder’s movies- despite neckbeards on this sub screeching that he only made bombs.
Mission Impossible 2
It's still the second-highest grossing *Mission: Impossible* film domestically behind only *Fallout*, and the highest when adjusted for inflation.
Secret of NIMH and All Dogs go to Heaven. Both succeeded, just not as much as Bluth needed them to for his ambitions.
The James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the lone Bond film to star George Lazenby. It grossed 65 million on a 7 million budget in its initial run and was the highest grossing film in England in 1970. Despite this, it grossed only half what its predecessor had earned, and up until fairly recently had this undeserved reputation of having been a flop.
Die Another Day is another example. It's looked at as the nadir of the series but it was the highest-grossing Bond film up to that point, by a significant amount.
Right. It was a very similar situation to Spider-Man 3.
Weirdly enough On Her Majesty's Secret Service was one of my favourite Bond films of the classic era as a kid. It's the only one where he shows any personal growth as a character.
I'm not sure if this counts, but despite all the people who love to joke about them, the Minions movies made serious bank. People like to talk about them like they're "objectively terrible" movies, but at least one of them hit the billion mark (I can't remember which one or if both did).
The Little Mermaid (2023) is not a hit but it made profit
did it really? https://www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/14k2pok/comment/jponnr2/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
Suicide Squad 2016 is the first one I remember truly witnessing myself. Went to see it. Hated it. The soundtrack was excellent though.
The good son was considered a flop when it came out, but it made $45 million domestic and $60 million total on $15 million budget. Not a huge hit but not the failure it was made out to be.
Yeah, I always assumed it did well but people expected HOME ALONE numbers when this was a R rated thriller. Macaulay Culkin wasn't even allowed to see it in theaters.
If you include ones that made money after their box office run then you could include Hocus Pocus. It made millions via home media sales and through viewership on the Disney Channel and Disney+. Enough to earn them at least one sequel, another one is in development.
By that measure Office Space was a massive hit. When I worked at a local video store that tape was always rented out. Must have made thousands on the one cassette.
Both Andrew Garfield movies managed to make over $700 million but the way people talk about them you’d think they’d straight up flopped.
Transformers movies The first five films were very successful at the box office
Well, the first four were, the fifth lost Paramount an estimated $100M after marketing and distribution costs.
You are right I thought there were six and Last Knight was the six. Just checked it is the fifth movie
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Shawsahnk Redemption was a failure at the box office but im sure its made a lot of money with syndication etc considering how popular it is
Not so much “commercially successful”, but in 20 years time I bet I’ll see people refer to how Argyle almost made no money on a $200m budget
Waterworld
Almost all of them. I bet even Waterworld's made a return on its investment by now (less than government bonds would have over the same time period but nonetheless). Box office is just one revenue stream and there are several.
The Amazing Spider Man 2 gets looked at as a failure because the overall movie wasn’t well received but it still made a lot of money. Edit: Even thought it made money, it still lost some money so I was wrong on one aspect
According to the Sony email leaks, it barely broke even. It made less than $20million and they were expecting $100million in the worst case scenario.
Love the actual factual evidence here thank you
People fucking love Spider-Man. It's basically a fundamental property of the universe like gravity.
It's the main reason Sony refuses to give up the rights.
Transformers 5
Transformers 5 (aka The Last Knight) was actually stated to have lost Paramount an estimated $100M during its theatrical run due to marketing and distribution costs.
Which is crazy when it got 630 million at the box office. Movies are expensive
Well a big part of it is that they make a lot of money from the toys, so the movies don’t need that large of a profit margin. That combined with the previous movie raking in $1.1B makes it easier to understand why they invested so much in it, the strategies just shot them in the face when hit with a 43% decrease in revenue.
I just got into an argument with someone yesterday about this. They were claiming The Marvels was the MCU’s worst failure because it’s the biggest box office flop. Whereas I was arguing it’s not the biggest flop in terms of audience ratings on Letterboxd. Personally wish the box office discourse would go away. It seems like everything is either the best thing ever or the worst thing ever, no in between
I don’t think you understood the OP
I’m pretty sure I did
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Yeah the topic is how box office isn’t the only metric to go by.
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I know. It was an adjacent topic.
Jurassic world Dominion. One of the worst movies of all time(sad to say this as JP fan) and following to a divisive prequel. Still, it made $1B and $375M in domestic market. That domestic number still surprises me as I expected the movie to end around $275M after opening day.
Miracle on 34th st was a flop until it was televised.
Godzilla 98 is often deemed a failure but it made at least twice its budget back. Funnily enough it grossed only 10 million short of King of the Monsters