5 funniest box office failures
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Schadenfreude is a German word meaning ‘pleasure derived from someone else’s misfortune’. As such, it’s my middle name, my planned tombstone and my tinder bio. Sometimes studios, actors or even fans just make you beg for a movie to flop. Sure, it’s mean spirited but, in my opinion, those are the funniest type of spirits. Here’s my most amusing examples.
5. Justice League (2017)
The most recent example that made me smirk. Warner Brothers put so little effort into their franchise as a symptom of overconfidence. ‘Marvel makes money… and they don’t even have the best heroes’ was the thinking of every executive investing in this train-wreck. The very fact that the laziness and reactive production all amounted to a domestic gross of just over $200 million for the film with the two biggest superheroes in the world is sadly amusing. For a film that they’re too embarrassed to tell us the production budget for (but considering the huge re-shoots that are evident in the product it’s likely colossal), this is embarrassing.
4. The Mummy (2017)
Everything I just said for WB goes double for Universal. They were so blissfully oblivious to how little anyone wanted an MCU for Dracula and proudly produced a release slate, a full cast and a logo. Then The Mummy came out. With a budget of $125 million it garnered a paltry $80 million back in domestic markets. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion. Only the car was a smug board of execs and the tree was consumer reality.
3. Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016)
After Alice in Wonderland somehow made a billion dollars, this was an inevitable choice. However, it was also an inevitability that came about four years too late. And with all we now know about Johnny Depp, it’s simply fantastic that something that was a sure-fire hit in 2010 raked in less than $80 million on a $170 million budget (plus marketing costs which usually roughly double the production costs by the way).
2. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)
This one is only really funny because of how obvious it was so far before it opened. I mean, you can just tell from the title can’t you?
Person A: ‘What do you want to see?’
Person B: ‘Let’s see that Valerie and… err Valerie and her thousand city plans?… um… never mind let’s just see Dunkirk again’.
1. John Carter (2012)
This is more wish-fulfilment on my part. John Carter features a human guy ending up on an alien planet and falling in love with an indigenous woman. It’s big budget and has expensive special effects but an incredibly clichéd plot. Sound familiar? That’s because Avatar made $2.7 billion in 2009. Disney clearly tried to ape this success and to see the returns amount to $73 million domestic from a $250 million budget is foreshadowingly satisfying because it’s the fate I want for the four Avatar sequels. Someone needs to teach James Cameron some hubris.