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10 Box Office Flop Movies Nobody Asked For

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10 Box Office Flop Movies Nobody Asked For


The box office can be difficult to predict. In the same way that it can propel films like Star Wars and Titanic to massive, unexpected levels of success, other films can prove to be shocking financial failures. Even within the past few years, The Marvels and Joker: Folie à Deux, sequels to two wildly successful films, lost their respective studios millions of dollars each.

However, while it can be surprising to see some movies fail so spectacularly at the box office, there are also plenty of flops that are entirely predictable, simply because no one was asking for them to begin with. Some of these bombs are sequels to films that stood just fine on their own, while others are strange concepts that failed to gain audience interest. These are 10 box office flops that nobody asked for.

10

‘Evan Almighty’ (2007)

Directed by Tom Shadyac

Image via Universal Pictures

Jim Carrey was one of the single biggest film stars of the 1990s, leading in major box office hits like The Mask, Dumb and Dumber and Liar Liar. This success continued in the early 2000s with the release of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas and, most prominently, Bruce Almighty, a comedy in which Carrey plays Bruce Nolan, a man given the powers of God (Morgan Freeman) for a week. The film became Carrey’s highest-grossing release, encouraging members of the creative team behind it to produce a sequel, culminating in the release of 2007’s Evan Almighty.

Evan Almighty drops Carrey entirely in favor of focusing on Evan Baxter (Steve Carell), a side character from the first film who gradually becomes the Bible character Noah through God’s intervention. Unlike its predecessor, the film wound up being a financial flop that failed to recoup its production budget at the worldwide box office, and it’s easy to see why. While Bruce Almighty was a success, no one was begging for a sequel, especially not without Carrey’s distinct comedic presence. Steve Carell is great, but the original film’s primary appeal was Carrey, and without him a sequel was doomed from the start.

evan-almighty-poster.jpg

Evan Almighty

Release Date

June 22, 2007

Director

Tom Shadyac

Runtime

96 minutes

Main Genre

Comedy

9

‘The Lone Ranger’ (2013)

Directed by Gore Verbinski

Tonto and the Lone Ranger look off into the distance in 'The Lone Ranger'.
Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

The Lone Ranger and Tonto have been around since the 1930s, first making an impact in the world of radio before later becoming the center of a number of film projects, alongside television shows. Despite the fact that the characters maintained relevance for an impressive amount of time, by the 2010s, they had mostly faded from the mainstream conscience. Then, in 2013, Disney brought the once famous duo back in the appropriately titled The Lone Ranger.

The film wound up being a critical and commercial failure that won itself few fans during its initial release. Armie Hammer does okay as the film’s title character, but Johnny Depp is horribly miscast as Tonto, and both actors are given poor dialogue that no one could truly salvage. Making matters worse is the fact that the film makes brazen attempts to replicate the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, a previous collaboration between Depp and director Gore Verbinski, in tone and style, something which is especially damaging when The Lone Ranger isn’t anywhere near as good as the movies it tries to imitate.

The Lone Ranger Disney Movie Poster

Release Date

July 3, 2013

Runtime

149

Writers

Justin Haythe
, Ted Elliott
, Terry Rossio

8

‘Tomorrowland’ (2015)

Directed by Brad Bird

Athena, Casey Newton and Frank Walker stand side-by-side in 'Tomorrowland'.
Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Back in the early 2000s, Disney began heavily investing in producing big-screen adaptations of their theme park attractions, to varying degrees of success. The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise wound up being a box office juggernaut, but movies like The Country Bears and The Haunted Mansion were critical and financial failures. However, while each of those adaptations made some degree of sense, as they expanded upon attractions with sizable followings of their own, 2015’s Tomorrowland was a strange release on Disney’s part, adapting not a singular attraction, but an entire theme park land into a film; a concept which absolutely no one was asking for.

Unfortunately, while the final product isn’t terrible, it also isn’t particularly memorable. Brad Bird is an excellent director, providing some stellar action sequences throughout, but the script, co-written by him, leaves much to be desired. There are some great moments, like an early scene depicting a hidden passageway beneath the original It’s a Small World, but they’re buried beneath a convoluted science fiction plot that fails to make much of an impression otherwise.

7

‘Mars Needs Moms’ (2011)

Directed by Simon Wells

Gribble, played by Dan Fogler, sits while looking excited in 'Mars Needs Moms'.
Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Robert Zemeckis‘ The Polar Express has become a holiday classic for many families, but it also unfortunately introduced audiences to the uncanny, motion-capture-based animation style that would become heavily associated with the director throughout the 2000s. Mars Needs Moms, produced by Zemeckis, was another attempt at using this expensive approach to animation in a major blockbuster. It proved to be a completely predictable box office failure that few remember fondly.

Mars Needs Moms was based on a picture book that didn’t have the universal appeal of properties like Where the Wild Things Are, which was already a major strike against it. But the biggest factor contributing to its failure was its animation style. It is flat-out unpleasant to look at, and while it had the advantage of being groundbreaking in The Polar Express, by 2011, audiences knew the style well enough to know that they were unnerved by it. It doesn’t help that Mars Needs Moms is an overall weak film with few redeeming qualities, ensuring that not even word of mouth could help its abysmal reception at the box office.

6

‘Dolittle’ (2020)

Directed by Stephen Gaghan

Dr. Dolittle, played by Robert Downey Jr., smirks while looking at a parrot in 'Dolittle'.
Image via Universal Pictures

In the 2010s, Robert Downey Jr. established himself as one of cinema’s biggest stars simply through his recurring appearances as Tony Stark, otherwise known as Iron Man, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, following the record-breaking success of Avengers: Endgame, Stark’s story within the MCU had concluded, leaving Downey free to explore other professional opportunities at his discretion. Unfortunately, his first big-screen appearance after Endgame was as the title character in 2020’s Dolittle, a terrible film that managed to do little at the box office.

It’s hard to see why Dolittle was even made in the first place. The Eddie Murphy-led Dr. Dolittle films of the late 90s and early 2000s had their fans, but few were begging for a revival of the franchise, and even fewer were interested in a film that stayed true to the setting of the Hugh Lofting book series the movies were loosely based on. Unfortunately, for audiences, Dolittle did exactly that by taking the franchise back to the Victorian Era, while still remaining fully committed to the unfunny scatological humor of the Murphy movies. It’s also dreadfully boring, making Dolittle a box office flop that’s best left forgotten.

5

‘Lightyear’ (2022)

Directed by Angus MacLane

Buzz Lightyear holds Sox the robotic cat while piloting a starship in 'Lightyear'.
Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

For over twenty years now, the Toy Story franchise has proven itself to be one of the most beloved, both critically and financially, animated film series of all time. However, despite the fact that Buzz (Tim Allen), Woody (Tom Hanks) and the gang have become icons to multiple generations over the years, there’s never been much of a demand for spin-offs. Fans of the series liked seeing the toys together, and to make a film without Hanks and Allen seemed unthinkable. And yet, Pixar made an attempt anyway with 2022’s Lightyear.

Presented as the in-universe film that the Buzz Lightyear line of toys is based on, Lightyear centers on Buzz Lightyear, now played by Chris Evans, a cosmic explorer who finds himself stranded on an alien planet with his crew of Space Rangers. It could have been an interesting spin-off, but Lightyear falls completely flat, telling a fairly uninspired science fiction story while disappointing fans by recasting its title character. All of this led to the film being the first, and so far only, box office flop in the franchise.

4

‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ (1946)

Directed by Frank Capra

George Bailey, played by James Stewart, stands with his hair unkempt in 'It's a Wonderful Life'.
Image via RKO Radio Pictures

It can be easy to forget, but yes, It’s a Wonderful Life was a box office flop upon its initial release. In the time since, it has been recognized as a timeless holiday classic, but back in the mid-1940s, audiences weren’t exactly flocking to the theater to see the new holiday movie about a good man who nearly loses it all and contemplates suicide as a result, only being prevented by an angel who gives him a peek into what life would look like in his absence. Obviously, the actual film is far more light-hearted and optimistic than that synopsis may imply, but it was still notably darker from a conceptual standpoint than most holiday films of the period.

In spite of its disappointing financial returns, It’s a Wonderful Life would find new life on television in the ’70s. By that point, it was three decades old, but the film’s themes and messages resonated with viewers nonetheless, eventually making it the endlessly rewatched holiday classic it is today. Few box office flops have managed to achieve the level of success that It’s a Wonderful Life eventually did, but there are also few flops more deserving of its iconic status.

3

‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ (2016)

Directed by James Bobin

Mad Hatter, played by Johnny Depp, looks confused in 'Alice Through the Looking Glass'.
Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Throughout the course of their long history as a studio, Disney has released a number of live-action remakes of their classic animated films, but one of the worst is 2010’s Alice in Wonderland. Tim Burton‘s reinterpretation of the 1951 classic disappointed fans with its drab imagery and strange character changes, but it was also a financial hit, grossing over $1 billion at the box office and proving to Disney just how lucrative live-action remakes could be. Unfortunately, Disney took Alice‘s success as a clear indication that audiences were interested in spending more time in Burton’s Wonderland (called Underland in the films), leading to the eventual release of a sequel, 2016’s Alice Through the Looking Glass.

Again, the 2010 film didn’t have many fans, so the decision to produce a sequel was truly bizarre. Even more bizarre was the choice to center the plot around the survival of Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter, a character who was poorly received in the original, and who viewers were likely content with never having to see again. The final product is a boring mess that fails to justify its own existence while not managing to make anywhere near the amount of money that its predecessor did, disappointing Disney and audiences alike.

2

‘Ghostbusters’ (2016)

Directed by Paul Feig

The Ghostbusters stand in front of Ecto-1 in 2016's 'Ghostbusters'.
Image via Sony Pictures Releasing

Ghostbusters is easily one of the most iconic comedies of the ’80s. Featuring impressive special effects (for the time) and some truly stellar comedic chemistry between leads Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson, it’s easy to see how the 1984 original became so beloved by audiences. 1989’s Ghostbusters II is significantly less beloved, but after its release, there remained a fair amount of demand for another Ghostbusters film starring the original cast. Unfortunately, after more than 25 years of waiting, fans were instead given a reboot of the franchise, starring an entirely new cast of comedians and directed by Paul Feig.

Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones are extremely talented comedic performers, and Feig is responsible for some of the best comedies of the 2010s, but 2016’s Ghostbusters falls completely flat, missing just about every quality that made the original a classic. While the original Ghostbusters crew was a well-defined cast of characters that were organically funny, the characters in the new film feel like joke machines who never get any sort of proper development. Some members of the original cast return, but they play different characters in mostly unsatisfying cameo scenes, making the film even less pleasing to fans of the original who were hoping for an appearance from Peter Venkman and Co. The franchise was rebooted again with 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife, giving audiences something closer to what they wanted by featuring the return of Murray, Aykroyd and Hudson as their original Ghostbusters, while once again highlighting the bizarre choices made during the production of the 2016 film.

1

‘Cats’ (2019)

Directed by Tom Hooper

Old Deuteronomy, played by Dame Judi Dench, smiles softly in 'Cats'.
Image via Universal Pictures

For decades, Cats was a massively successful musical production, both on Broadway and in London’s West End, but there was never a huge demand for a silver-screen adaptation of the stage show. Unfortunately, Universal attempted exactly that in 2019 when they released Tom Hooper‘s Cats, a complete disaster of a film that failed to make anywhere near the same financial impression that its stage counterpart had.

The most notable issue with Cats is its CGI. Much like with Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog, internet discourse surrounding the film was immediately focused upon the unnerving design of its lead characters, but unlike that movie, Universal didn’t bother to delay the film to fix the visual design; it fully committed to it, resulting in a final product that even fewer people wanted to see. On top of that, though, it’s just a weak movie. No performance stands out in a positive way, which is a shame when it features stars like Dame Judi Dench and Idris Elba. Ultimately, Cats was an entirely predictable box office bomb that Universal should have known better than to put out.

NEXT: 10 Essential Movies That Flopped at the Box Office



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