Sometimes a movie is destined for the dollar bin, and even Hollywood's biggest stars, directors
and producers can't polish it into something worth paying to see. These cinematic flops just didn't leave the impact studios hoped they would
So say it with us, bombs away! There was a time when the name Robert Zemeckis was up there with the likes of George Lucas
and Steven Spielberg. The director of such classics as Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, and Castaway then fell
in love with the possibilities of computer-generated imagery, or CGI. His fascination
with the technology-slash-art form made sense. Zemeckis was an early adopter of similar innovations
on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but aside from 2004's The Polar Express, which made big bucks at the
box office but to this day remains infamous for its creepy, lifeless animation, his big-budget CGI
takes on Beowulf and A Christmas Carol debuted and disappeared quickly from theaters
Bah! Humbug! In 2011, Zemeckis produced Mars Needs Moms, with protégé Simon Wells writing and directing
But when it came to the uncanny valley factor, the off-putting effect was the same
This late in the CGI game, there was really no excuse for the motion-capture animation
in Mars Needs Moms to look so ugly and unsettling. James Cameron's avatar had wowed audiences two years earlier
and other breakthroughs had taken the medium a long way since Polar Express
Ticket buyers didn't connect with the title, the story, or the central characters
In a post-mortem, studio executives concluded that boys weren't interested in a movie about
mothers and younger children may have been scared off by the premise. Mars Needs Moms became one of the biggest box office bombs of its time, making less
than $40 million worldwide, resulting in a loss of more than $100 million
The Android Lloyd Webber musical Cats was a record-breaking hit on Broadway, where it
ran from 1982 until 2000. Its massive success was something of a surprise
a practically narrative-less show, based on the poetry of T.S. Eliot, that is really just a
sequence of songs and dances about a list of fictional cats with names like Bustopher Jones
and Jenny Any Darts. But because Cats made so much money in one format, executives at Universal
were willing to bet that it could do it again. Never mind that musical adaptations have been
struggling in the decades since Chicago had raked in ten times its budget and won Best Picture
And never mind that Cats was thought to be among the trickiest Broadway smashes to adapt
Tom Hooper, the man behind the 2012 film version of Les Miserables, signed on to direct
And a star-studded cast was assembled that featured everyone from Jason Derulo and Taylor
Swift to Idris Elba, Judi Dench, and Ian McKellen. Fans of the musical sensation wondered how
realistic the Cats movie would be, as the stage show simply isn't. Then, about five months before
the film was set to premiere, a trailer gave those fans their first glimpse of the titular animals
and many were horrified by what they saw These cats Macavity Old Deuteronomy Mr Mistafeles were disturbing human CGI live hybrids It was too late to change course Audiences hoped for a movie that might be so
bad it could rise to the level of camp pleasure. Unfortunately, the pandemic derailed any
possibility of rowdy, ironic screenings, and Cats never recouped its cost. Jack London's trim but powerful 1903 novel The Call of the Wild is required reading at
middle schools all over America. An anthropomorphic allegory about a hulking mixed-breed dog who must
evolve from beloved pet into fearsome pack leader in order to survive, it has been adapted for the
screen multiple times, but isn't exactly the type of story that lends itself to straightforward
cinematic retelling. For one thing, there isn't much of an overarching linear narrative to the
journey of the dog, named Buck. For another, it's told entirely from the perspective of the Big Mutt
while other characters, humans and canines, simply pass through. Despite the fact that it's so
regularly assigned to children, The Call of the Wild is also unceasingly brutal
It's basically 200 pages of dogs ripping each other apart. Not the best choice for what 20th
Century Fox intended to be a big-budget, family-friendly Christmas release. The original
densely literary novel aims to claw away at the facades of civilization and capitalism
revealing the grim, nihilistic truth underneath. Instead, viewers got this. You've been sleeping for two days. In my bed
From the trailer, fans of London's could tell they were getting a sanitized version
while the general public wasn't exactly begging for yet another remake of a 120-year-old book
Harrison Ford was in between reprising his roles in Star Wars and Indiana Jones
and was very much back in the zeitgeist, but the real stumbling block was Burke
a far too artificial-looking and expensive CGI creation that undermines the entire effort
In the end, the studio took a roughly $50 million ice bath on the call of the wild
One could argue that Robert Downey Jr. was the biggest movie star in the world at the end of 2019
He was the centerpiece of Avengers Endgame, the extraordinarily profitable capstone to the first
three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Audiences loved him 3,000, and couldn't wait to
see what he would do with his post-MCU career. No one expected it to be this
Chi-chi, brow. My brow as well, when you've got a second. Right, sorry
First up for Downey was 2020's Doolittle, ostensibly a family film based on the second
of author Hugh Lofting's Dr. Doolittle books. The fact that Doolittle had been delayed until January
a time when studios typically dump what are predicted to be losers, was worrying
Still, Downey's presence and the stellar voice cast, which included Emma Thompson
Tom Holland, Thelima Gomez, and Ralph Fiennes, just to name a few
gave Universal and audiences reason to hope. But the trailer seemed to confirm everyone's
worse fears. Viewers couldn't help but notice that Downey's accent was, to put it mildly
a bit odd If the best jokes were in the trailer they caught wind of the fact that the film sense of humor might fall flat The expensive CGI visuals also didn do much to inspire a sense of wonder in prospective audiences In short Doolittle
looked to be a disappointment. Once critics and families got to see the final product
word got out about just how bad Downey's supposedly Welsh affectation was
and the film ultimately came to be known for an in-pour-taste extended fart joke
Doolittle made $251 million, but it was so pricey to produce a market that it still ended
up costing Universal money. Not two years after Cats crashed and burned, Universal tried again
with the contemporary Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen. The play about a high school student
struggling with mental illness had gained a loyal following, thanks in part to catchy music penned
by Benji Pasek and Justin Paul of The Greatest Showman fame. Rather than wait two decades
Universal got to adapting Dear Evan Hansen so immediately, the same actor who'd originated
the role in New York was set to reprise it for the forthcoming film. But once the trailer aired
even those loyal fans began to doubt that the 27-year-old Ben Platt was the right choice to
portray 17-year-old Evan. It wasn't just that Platt had aged four years. It was how he was
styled and how differently the character came off in those intimate close-ups, which had seemed
emotionally honest on a stage suddenly seemed cringy when translated to the screen. There was
also the matter of what Dear Evan Hansen was about. Broadway shows only have a single theater's
worth of seats to fill, but the movie had to sell tickets at more than 3,000 cinemas across the
country. Bad buzz out of the Toronto Film Festival where it premiered didn't do it any favors
The curtains closed early on the film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen, which made a paltry $70 million worldwide in its three weeks of wide release
Back in 1995, the artists and storytellers of Pixar dreamt up a simple but satisfying premise
for a children's movie. What if toys came to life and we weren't looking? That premise spawned
four well-received films, one of which, Toy Story 3, was even nominated for Best Picture at the
Academy Awards. The franchise's dynamic duo Woody and Buzz became icons. Then Disney announced a
fifth film, Focus on the Later, that complicated the original premise so thoroughly and unnecessarily
that fans literally didn't understand what the studio was trying to do. It was a real drag
Good luck, Captain. We're coming on you! Roger that. Adding to the confusion was the fact that Chris Evans, as opposed to Tim Allen
would be voicing the character. This change alone angered some, who speculated that Alan
had been passed over because of his political beliefs. Spoiler alert, he wasn't. Evans tried
to do damage control, tweeting, Just to be clear, this isn't Buzz Lightyear the toy. This is the origin story of the human Buzz
Lightyear that the toy is based on. But that turned out not to be true, either. 2022's Lightyear
wasn't about a toy astronaut that doesn't realize he's a toy astronaut, nor was it about a fictional
but supposedly real astronaut from Andy's world. Even after trailers dropped and announcements were made at Disney Investor Day and CinemaCon
prospective audiences were still scratching their heads It took a title card tapped at the beginning of the film to finally clear things up It read In 1995 Andy got a toy That toy was based on a movie This is that movie But by then
audiences had already lost interest in Lightyear. Not so long ago, an R-rated romantic comedy, especially one produced by Judd Apatow
could do well enough at the box office to justify its existence. By and large
that time has passed. It's been an eternity since the comedy, let alone a rom-com
has landed in the top 10 highest-grossing films of the year. The last one to do so was 2011's
The Hangover Part 2, and the last true rom-coms to break that ceiling was 2005's Wedding Crashers
and Hitch. Suffice it to say, the odds were stacked against Bros from the start, but they
were stacked even higher because it was the first major studio rom-com that centered around a gay
couple. After Bros fizzled out, co-writer and star Billy Eichner infamously took to Twitter to
expressed his displeasure, blaming homophobia for his film's poor performance. While there could be
truth to his theory, given the current political climate, it likely underwhelmed for reasons in
addition to its subject matter. While Eichner has fans from his funny or die show Billy on the Street
and from his time on Parks and Recreation, he's not as familiar to a broader audience
nor is his co-star and love interest Luke McFarlane, best known for appearing in Hallmark
movies. Also, there wasn't any urgency to see it on the big screen, as Bros was available to stream
within days of its release. Nothing lasts forever. Even fans of the DCEU will admit it has never found the same level of consistency as the Marvel
Cinematic Universe. 2019's Shazam was a bright spot. It got better than decent reviews and made
better than decent money, and compared to the often dour films about Superman and Batman
was charming in a way that some of the best MCU movies had been. Of course it was going to be a
sequel. As was the case with the majority of films that went into production in 2020
the pandemic caused stops and starts. Nevertheless, fans remained optimistic, since stars Zachary Levi and director David F. Sandberg were both returning
Then Warner Bros. announced that it had hired James Gunn and Peter Safran to reboot its DC Comics
universe, which meant Shazam! Fury of the Gods no longer felt like it had a place in the universe's
overall continuity. Another strike against the Shazam! sequel, Black Adam. The Dwayne Johnson
vehicle should have tied into the Shazam storyline, since the characters are so closely
connected in the comics. Instead, Johnson interfered in a way that hurt both films
and Warner Bros. ended up with not one but two box office bombs on their hands
Shazam! Fury of the Gods never captured the previous film's magic, lost the original's
light-hearted tone, and poor word of mouth and bad marketing ultimately extinguished Shazam!'s
flame. Reviews weren't quite as gut-punching to Zachary Levi as they were to Dwayne Johnson
but they weren't good. Shazam 2 became an afterthought of a movie that few people felt the need to see