Investing a lot of money in a movie with a star-studded cast and a larger-than-life storyline can pay off greatly when the movie hits the zeitgeist and audiences show up in droves to see it. Marvel manages to do this three times a year (when theaters are open) and the studio has yet to produce a box office flop. But not every studio is as lucky as Marvel.
Sometimes, the stars align and a director and their cast and crew get together to make a movie that’s truly great and will stand the test of time, but either due to poor marketing or simply low interest from the public, the movie crashes and burns financially.
10 Deepwater Horizon
Just when BP Oil thought it was off the hook for all the lives its operations have cost over the years (both human and marine life), director Peter Berg spent $156 million on a movie that would hold the company accountable. Mark Wahlberg and the rest of the cast give fantastic performances in a movie that captures both the spirit of working-class Americans and the consequences of BP’s recklessness.
Unfortunately, it only grossed $121.8 million. True-to-life dramas are rarely blockbuster fare, and Deepwater Horizon needed blockbuster numbers to justify that budget.
9 Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
The Lonely Island troupe reunited in 2016 for a mockumentary about a former boy band member’s attempts to make a solo career work. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is a great satire of celebrities like Justin Bieber, with tons of jokes crammed into its 87-minute runtime.
Sadly, Popstar failed to catch on, and only grossed $9.7 million against its $20 million budget, despite the renewed interest in Andy Samberg from Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s success.
8 Dredd
After Sylvester Stallone’s bitterly disappointing PG-13 Judge Dredd movie from the ‘90s, 2000 A.D. fans were relieved that the character’s second big-screen adaptation – an ultraviolent R-rated outing starring a perfectly cast Karl Urban – was the Dredd movie they’d waited their whole lives for.
Unfortunately, the $45 million movie was badly marketed by the studio and it only went on to gross $41.5 million at the worldwide box office, putting a stop to the planned sequels.
7 Office Space
Mike Judge’s Office Space is one of the funniest movies ever made, and a poignant satire of corporate America in the late ‘90s. Despite capturing the zeitgeist perfectly, it struggled at the box office. Judge hated the poster that the studio made for the movie, which depicted an office worker covered head-to-toe in Post-It notes.
Ultimately, the movie’s quirky, pitch-black comic sensibility was a tough sell. Relatable everyday situations usually struggle to draw crowds on a Friday night. On a budget of $10 million, Office Space grossed $12.2 million.
6 Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory
The surreal ‘70s musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory might be considered a beloved classic now, but the Gene Wilder-starring Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory went mostly unnoticed upon release. It grossed $4.5 million against its $3 million budget.
Its popularity has grown over the years due to home media and non-stop TV airings. It was eventually popular enough to get a big-budget CGI-ridden reboot courtesy of Tim Burton.
5 Fight Club
David Fincher’s adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club may be a cult classic now (almost annoyingly so), but it struggled to take off at the box office. The movie’s $101.2 million gross against its $63 million doesn’t make its box office failure look too bad, but when marketing costs were taken into account, it was considered a disappointment.
Anchored by Edward Norton and Brad Pitt’s electric performances as the Narrator and Tyler Durden, Fight Club is one of the definitive movies of its era, but ironically didn’t find a wide audience in that era.
4 The Iron Giant
While Brad Bird would go on to helm such huge box office hits as The Incredibles and Ratatouille for Pixar, his directorial debut bombed at the box office in the late ‘90s.
Despite bringing a unique and heartfelt angle to a boy-and-his-dog story, The Iron Giant only grossed $31.3 million against its budget of $50 million.
3 Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Edgar Wright’s first Hollywood movie after catching American moviegoers’ attention with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz was Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim comics.
The movie is great, as is usually the case with Wright, but on a budget of $85 million, it only grossed $48.1 million at the worldwide box office.
2 The Master
Five years after There Will Be Blood was hailed as one of the greatest movies ever made and showered with awards, Paul Thomas Anderson’s next movie The Master offered possibly an even more poignant character study than his previous work, swapping out oil for cults.
While The Master was met with the same critical recognition as its predecessor, it wasn’t nearly as successful at the box office. Having cost $32 million to produce, The Master only grossed $28.3 million. But it’s a bona fide masterpiece.
1 Blade Runner 2049
Denis Villeneuve did the impossible with the long-awaited Blade Runner sequel Blade Runner 2049: he made a sequel to a seemingly untouchable masterpiece that satisfies as a continuation of its story and an expansion of its world, and even enhances the original with the new insights it provides. But since it’s bleak and slow-paced and thoughtful, not a lot of modern Marvel-addled moviegoers showed up. Blade Runner 2049 grossed $260 million against a budget reportedly as high as $185 million.
Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner movie also bombed at the box office – both Blade Runner and The Thing got run off the road by E.T. in the summer of 1982 – but the sequel was much more expensive, even when the budgets are adjusted for inflation.