Keeping Up with the Joneses (-$50 million)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s laughably awful voice didn’t help matters, either.ħ. It doesn’t help that much of America just doesn’t care that much anymore about having their privacy invaded. The film also had the misfortune of premiering during an election campaign where new political conspiracies were more fascinating than the dramatic reenactments old ones. However, his story makes for lousy entertainment, and what little drama there is in Snowden is contrived. Put simply, $140 million was too much to spend for a film without a broader appeal.Įdward Snowden is a fascinating person, and his decision to whisteblow on the NSA will probably make him one of history’s heroes. Still, at $178 million, this was not a failure of box-office.
It also suffered from being a movie geared toward kids but that held little appeal for the younger children. It was charming and whimsical, but it didn’t connect as much with audiences as previous Spielberg outings. However, I doubt any studio is willing to say no to Spielberg. Mixed to poor reviews ultimately helped to sink the project.Ī Steven Spielberg adaptation of a beloved Roald Dahl seems like a home run at the box office, or at least it would have 10 years ago. Cloud) at the helm and a cast of young mostly unknowns (Lily James, Sam Riley, Bella Heathcote). The fact that great talent kept leaving the project should have been a huge red flag for the studio, but it chose to go ahead anyway with Burr Steers ( Charlie St. Russell) and at least one lead actress (Natalie Portman). It seemed like a bad idea at the time, but the very modest success of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter apparently convinced Sony to give this one a shot, but not before it chewed through three directors (including David O. The film, based on the novel co-written by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, was originally conceived in 2009 at the height of the mash-up concept. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (-$46 million) Paramount probably should have stuck with its original decision and declined to make the sequel.ġ0.
Its stars Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller also lack the relevance they once did, and to be honest, it was a terrible movie, the murder of Justin Bieber notwithstanding. It did have something of a cult following, but a 15-year gap between installments is not sustainable for most sequels that are not Star Wars. The original wasn’t exactly a smash hit (it made $60 million globally on a $30 million budget). Paramount dragged its feet on a Zoolander sequel for years, and for good reason. Honorable Mention: Zoolander 2 (-$20 million) With that in mind, here were the biggest flops of the year (and their estimated box-office losses). The formula here is not an exact science, but an estimate. That’s why a sequel is not being fast-tracked, although we can assume that the studio made up the difference in streaming, licensing, and toys, so even a misfire like Ghostbusters will likely break even in the long term. Assuming the studio received 70 percent of the take and spent $30 million in marketing, the film ultimately lost around $15 million. In other words, we assumed the studios would receive around 70 percent of the box office take and spend around $30 million in marketing, which gives us a rough estimate of how much each film lost.įor instance, Ghostbusters made $229 million at the box office globally. In calculating the biggest bombs of the year, however, we used a simple formula: Production Budget + 30 – (Box Office Gross x. We get the box-office figures and the production budget, but we don’t know exactly how much the studio gets of that money and how much goes to theaters, nor do we have access the marketing budgets. Did anyone want anther sequel to The Da Vinci Code? The American box office ($39 million) suggested no, but with international box office factored in, Inferno made $220 million on a $75 million budget.ĭetermining exactly what flopped and did not in 2016, however, is not an exact science. Likewise, Michael Fassbender’s poorly received Assassin’s Creed is laying eggs at the box office here in America, but it’s likely to make up the difference - and then some - internationally. Now, a movie poorly received in the United States has an actual shot at a sequel because globally, Warcraft is the most successful video-game adaptation of all time. Flop, right? Not when you account for worldwide grosses, where it added another $386 million. Remember Warcraft? The movie cost $160 million to produce and made only $47 million in America. Huge international grosses and risk-averse studios, however, have made straightforward box-office bombs a rarity. Box-office flops used to be not only more plentiful, but easier to calculate.