Whether it's good, bad, or just plain weird, no movie is guaranteed success at the box office nowadays
From big-budget failures to independent flops, these are the biggest bombs of 2025
The Weeknd knows a thing or two about making a chart-topping album, but a chart-topping movie? Eh, not so much
Abel Tesfaye's foray into screenwriting and film production, Hurry Up Tomorrow, made back just over half of its $15 million budget
After his controversial turn in the HBO series The Idol only lasted a single season
Tesfaye wasn't finished trying to break out as an actor. He teamed up with filmmaker Trey Edward
Schultz to bring his act to the big screen as a cinematic companion piece to his sixth album
which is also called Hurry Up Tomorrow. Not confusing at all. Tesfaye stars as a fictionalized
version of himself, performing gigs and doing drugs until he encounters a particularly unhinged
superfan who takes a cue from Stephen King's misery. A concert film-psychological-thriller
hybrid isn't a bad idea at all, as M. Light Shyamalan proved in 2024, but audiences didn't
find Hurry Up Tomorrow nearly as captivating as Trap. Critics didn't care for it either
and many of them chose not to mince words. They largely found it to be nothing more than an ego
trip, with Rob Silverman, Asher, writing for the Chicago Reader. The script runs in circles in an
effort to pad its runtime, and the finale is so self-flagellating that it feels like
a parody of broken artist tropes. And I just want to help you, Abel, but you're not kidding me
Shut the f*** up! Shut the f*** up! Shut up! It used to be that a new Pixar movie was certain to be an instant classic. The studio's run
in the 2000s was nothing short of historic. Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles
Ratatouille, and more. If you were a kid when they came out, you simply had to make it to
the theater. Fifteen years later, that's definitely not true, and the numbers prove it
Just look at Pixar's lackluster 2025 release, Elio. A boy who dreams of being abducted by aliens
Elio gets his wish after beaming a message into space. There's just one problem. The aliens think
he's in charge of the entire Earth. When an extraterrestrial warlord shows up with conquest
on his mind, Elio teams up with the villain's grubby son to save the human race and all the
other ones, ideally. In the lead-up to Elio's release, many Pixar fans picked up on something
strange. The marketing for the movie was nearly non-existent, compared to their other recent
releases, like the mega-successful Inside Out 2. Elio wasn't getting nearly as much of a marketing
push. Whether this was poor business sense or an effort to bury their own movie outright
the film failed to make much of an impact indeed. Its budget was anywhere from $150 to $200 million
dollars, but it only made back $154 million, a far cry from the glory days
I thought Earth was the problem, but what if it's me? Cooping up during COVID made us all go a little crazy, some more than others. Just ask hereditary
and Midsommar director Ari Aster, whose time in quarantine inspired him to create the twisted
pandemic period piece Eddington. Joaquin Phoenix stars as Joe Cross, a disgruntled sheriff who
declares a one-man crusade against Pedro Pascal's pro-masking mayor, Ted Garcia. As tensions come to a head and the town of Eddington becomes divided along political lines
it doesn't take long for things to spiral out of control. I am a much better human being than you, and I'm going to make a better and stronger and more
honest leader than you. Critics agreed that Eddington perfectly satirized the COVID-era
mindset. Maybe that's why it only made COVID-era money. With just $13 million earned on a $25
million budget, lots of moviegoers in largely empty theaters found themselves social distancing
by default. Believe it or not, people weren't lining up to revisit one of the most difficult
and isolating events in recent memory. Eddington is the second consecutive bomb from Aster
after his black comedy, Beau is afraid, proved even less profitable two years earlier
We'll see how long it takes for A24 to give him another shot. It's not you
Who are you talking to? There's nobody here. If you're looking for blockbuster success, it helps if your film is big, bold, and beautiful
But that doesn't mean you should say so in the title. When a big, bold, beautiful journey hit theaters
the promise of an epic trek through time wasn't enough to get audiences on board
Not even with Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell involved. After Irish immigrant David meets a free-spirited Sarah at a wedding
the two find themselves stepping through a magical door in the woods. From there, the two embark on an odyssey through their most treasured memories
and their most bitter regrets. The third film from director, Koganada, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, may have bit off a bit more than it could chew
Critics torched the movie for its poor characterization, sluggish pace, and this blatant Burger King product placement
that feels straight out of the 90s. "'Turne it on your ring?
"'Please. This is the only ring I'll be getting from you.'" Perhaps the unwieldy title is what turned people off. Whatever it was, a big, bold
beautiful journey made back just $22 million on a $45 million budget. Not very big or bold of it
The Coen brothers are pretty decent at recouping their production costs when they're working
together, but on his own, Ethan Coen is 0 for 2. After Drive Away Dolls came and went in 2024
He reunited with Margaret Qualley for the second in a planned trilogy of lesbian B-movies, Honey Don't
When private investigator Honey O'Donohue is called to the scene of a deadly car accident
it sends her down a rabbit hole that she never could have imagined. She stumbles upon a bizarre plot involving drugs, murder, and a sinister cult leader played by Chris Evans
I see a need and I feel it. You see a need and you exploit it. Honey Don't made just $7.4 million during its cinematic run
nowhere close to its $20 million budget. It not necessarily surprising given that Drive Dolls only earned half a million more Theater don seem to love the Coens unless they working together but luckily for their wallets and the public at large they intend on reuniting When asked if they were going to make another movie
together, Ethan told The Hollywood Reporter, Oh yeah, I assume we will. We've written something
Speaking of filmmaking siblings gone solo, director duo Josh and Benny Safdie have also
gone their separate ways in recent years. The brothers, known for their nail-biting collaborations
Good Time and Uncut Gems, each teamed up with an A-list actor for a 2025 release
For a while, it seemed like there might be a safety showdown at the Oscars, but the muted reception of Benny's The Smashing Machine proved that Josh's film is supreme
The Smashing Machine stars Dwayne Johnson as Mark Kerr, a UFC fighter whose biggest battles
take place outside of the ring. From his toxic relationship to his drug addiction
there's not much that Kerr has going for him besides his fists. The Smashing Machine made back less than half of its $50 million budget
which would have been even higher if Johnson hadn't taken a voluntary pay cut
He was a good sport about the film's lackluster returns, writing on Instagram
In our storytelling world, you can't control box office results. But what I realize you can control is your performance
and your commitment to completely disappear and go elsewhere, and I will always run to that opportunity
At the end of the day, not even Safdie's method of hitting the New York streets, wearing posters for the film, seemed to help Matt as much
Sorry, Benny. Hopefully that Bowser Jr. money makes up for him. Director Luca Guadagnino had a hell of a 2024
Not only was Challengers one of the most exciting films of the year, but he followed it up with his romantic drama, Queer, seven months later
Sure, the latter project might have been a massive flop at the box office, but it was well-liked enough to keep the Luca train chugging
Unfortunately, his 2025 effort After the Hunt went totally off the rails
Alma is a philosophy professor at Yale who gets caught in a moral dilemma
when her most devoted student accuses another professor of... This spirals into a campus-wide controversy that leaves jobs and reputations in its wake
I don't feel comfortable having this conversation with you anymore. Not everything is supposed to make you comfortable, Maggie
So what went wrong with After the Hunt? A lot, apparently. It was one of the most severe box
office bombs of the year, earning just $9 million back on a budget of $70 to $80 million
despite a buzzy director and a formidable cast featuring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield
and Ayo Edevery. The most likely culprit was the film's thorny subject matter
but lousy reviews didn't help. Less than 40% on Rotten Tomatoes from both critics and audiences
is pretty rough by Guadagnino standards. Like a Kikade era emerging from its 13-year slumber
the Tron series came back to cinemas after a decade and a half, and promptly got stomped
Tron Ares, starring Jared Leto as a rogue AI program brought into the real world
flopped so hard that it might have killed the franchise altogether. While the first two Tron
films showcased impressive advancements in special effects, Tron Ares failed to set itself apart from
other recent blockbusters. The movie's main draw ended up being its pulse-pounding score from Nine
Inch Nails, and not its leading man as Disney might have hoped when they'd cast Leto all the
way back in 2017. A lot can happen to a person's reputation in that time
What happened back there? I disobeyed my director. Ultimately, Tron Aries brought in a bit over $142 million at the box office
The creators of most of the films on this list would have sold their soul for a gross like that
but on a budget estimated to be somewhere between $180 and $222 million, it's chump change
That sent Disney a clear message as to where to go with the series. Nowhere
At this rate, it'll be the 2040s by the time we see another Tron
That is, if we ever see another one at all. Fans of Bruce Springsteen like to call him the boss
but the Pride of New Jersey wasn't bossing around anyone at the box office in 2025
The biopic Springsteen's Deliver Me From Nowhere, which details the creation of the rocker's
hit album Nebraska, came $10 million short of recouping its $55 million budget
After the success of A Complete Unknown, it seems like music biopics might have a future
after all. Now, we're not so sure. Deliver Me From Nowhere is far from the death knell of the entire genre like Walk Hard once
was thought to be, but its poor reception isn't a promising sign
The Springsteen producers' biggest misstep may have been their belief that their star
Jeremy Allen White, was as anywhere near as much of a draw as someone like Timothee Chalamet
No disrespect to White and his excellent work on The Bear, but he's much more of a TV star
than a movie star. Perhaps a miniseries about the life and times of the boss would have been
a smarter choice. I think we got that. Oh, yeah, we got that one
If you're not tapped into the world of film, you might know Begonia as that movie that got
Emma Stone to shape her head. While it is indeed that, it's also a bleak yet hilarious comedy
from one of Hollywood's most offbeat directors, Your Ghost Lanthimos. Jesse Plemons plays a
conspiracy-minded beekeeper who becomes convinced that Emma Stone's powerful CEO is an alien from the Andromeda galaxy. With some help from his cousin, he kidnaps the suspected
extraterrestrial in hopes of saving the Earth. Lanthimos dazzled audiences with his quirky sci-fi
fable Poor Things in 2023, and he was handsomely rewarded for his efforts at the box office
When his bizarre anthology film Kinds of Kindness bombed the following year, he probably figured
that his next project should be a little less alienating and a little more alien-baiting
Despite his best efforts, Lanthimos was once again enabled to live up to his previous success
Bargonia budget has been estimated to be somewhere between and million but it only raked in a bit over million No conspiracy here just a morbidly funny movie that didn attract enough eyeballs That was really good My pulse is racing right now
2025 has not been kind to Sidney Sweeney. After her appearances in Euphoria, The White Lotus
and Anyone But You all made major media buzz, she seemed poised to become one of the most
popular it girls of the 2020s. That was largely the case, until her American Eagle ad campaign
turned into a nationwide debate. Sweeney became a polarizing figure, but neither her defenders nor
her detractors had any interest in seeing her new film, Christy. Sweeney, who also produced the film
plays real-life boxer Christy Martin, whose popularity helps raise the profile of women's
boxing as a whole. As is the case in every sports biopic ever, her dramatic ascent is accompanied
by struggles in her personal life. Good luck. Good luck getting knocked the f*** out
With a $15 million budget, Christie didn't have to make blockbuster numbers to be considered
a success. Instead, it failed in the most humiliating of ways, earning just $2 million over the
course of its theatrical run. A swing and a miss from Sweeney. Sorry, wrong spawn
How many Stephen King stories about dystopian contests are there anyway? At least two, and they both got made into feature films and released in 2025
Francis Lawrence's The Long Walk tripled its budget and got great reviews
But, Edgar Wright's The Running Man stumbled at the starting block. The Running Man stars Glenn Powell as Ben Richards
a desperate father who takes part in a game show that forces him to kill or be killed
In order to win the grand prize, he must survive 30 days as headhunters follow his every move
The Running Man couldn't even survive 30 days in theater. By the time it got pushed off the big
screen to make way for more popular releases, it had only earned $66 million on a $110 million
budget. It sold a comparable amount of tickets to The Long Walk, but that film only cost $20
million to make. While some King fans hoped that Wright's version of The Running Man would bear
more similarities to the book than the 80s version with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wright couldn't help
but get a little silly with it. That said, if Powell's killer smile couldn't get people running
to the theater, maybe nothing could. What is happening! Welcome to the Running Man
What might have once seemed like a slam dunk ended up being a bit of a disaster for Disney's
live-action Snow White remake. The update of this classic fairy tale was always going to be a long
shot for profitability, considering its reported $269 million budget. Spending more on Snow White
than the 2019 Lion King remake wasn't the best idea, and it pretty much ensured that the movie
would have no realistic chance of becoming a big box office hit. It's not hard to understand the
studio's confidence, though, considering how well The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast
and Aladdin all performed. But those are all remakes of 90s animated musicals
something like Dumbo, meanwhile, crated when it came out in 2019, seemingly proving that
older Disney films just didn't have the same broad modern appeal. So even though the original
is a beloved classic, the live-action Snow White was always going to struggle. The issue was only
compounded by a poor marketing campaign and unnerving imagery, like the CG version of The
Seven Dwarfs. Unfortunately, it looks like this movie's entire box office run is just one big
poison apple. For years, director Paul W.S. Anderson wasn't making anything besides Resident
Evil movies. They were never huge hits domestically, although 2016's The Final Chapter
did manage to secure about $312 million worldwide. In 2025, Anderson re-teamed with his wife
Mila Jovovich for In the Lost Lands, a dark fantasy epic based on a short story by Game
of Thrones author George R.R. Martin. Most moviegoers didn't seem to care
Please, don't do this. We have no choice. On a somewhat hefty $55 million budget, In the Lost Lands has only grossed about $4.8 million
worldwide, including just $1.8 million domestically as of April 2025. Part of the
problem is simply the movie's domestic distributor. Whereas the Resident Evil movies were handled by
Sony's Screen Gems division, Lost Lands was released by the much smaller Vertical Entertainment
Plus, the obscurity of the source material, despite coming from a well-known author
has only made it more difficult to stand out in the marketplace. Wolfman, Blumhouse's second stab at a modern Universal Monsters movie following The Invisible
Man, had a reported budget of $25 million, which was a little high for the usually cost-effective
company. The film was helmed by Lee Wan-El, who previously directed the successful Invisible Man
But audiences didn't have much patience for this story of a husband and father who transformed
into something monstrous after being bit by a mysterious creature. Wolfman only grossed $20
million domestically and $34.9 million worldwide. These anemic results reflected a perfect storm of
bad elements. For starters, werewolf movies have had a mixed box office track record
and the marketing for Wolfman wasn't as distinctive as that of The Invisible Man
Plus, that $25 million budget made it hard for this R-rated horror to break even under the best
of circumstances. Poor reviews certainly didn't help either. Perhaps it's time for Blumhouse to
just stick to tiny budgets and original concepts. It's doubtful that 2025 will see a more bizarre
major studio release than The Alto Knights. This 1950s-set gangster movie directed by
Barry Levinson saw Robert De Niro playing two separate real-life mob bosses, Frank Costello
and Vito Genovese. But despite his star power, the Alto Knights made hardly a dent at the box
office. The gangster genre has always been hit or miss at theaters, even in the best of times
In recent years, the likes of The Kitchen, Garty, and White Boy Rick all flamed out pretty quickly
So what hope did the Alto Knights have in this environment? Still, few could have predicted just
how badly it would go. The Alto Knights barely cleared $3 million during its opening weekend in
North America, a dismal haul for a movie playing in over 2,600 theaters. It didn't get much better
in the next few weeks either as it limped to about million domestically and only million worldwide Love Hurts But what something even more painful is sitting through a movie that wastes so much potential like Love Hurts A tepid John Wick pastiche starring Ki Kwan as a mild real
estate with a dark past, Love Hurts was hit with both terrible reviews and a terrible box office
to match. Even on a thrifty $80 million budget, the receipts were disappointing. Love Hurts
grossed just $17.5 million worldwide, with only a meager $1.9 million of that coming from overseas
territories. In addition to the lack of quality, this was also a case of unfortunate timing
Love Hurts opened on February 7th, a few weeks after Companion and the same day as Hard Eyes
two other R-rated features that emphasized ironic romance themes in their marketing. Plus
January's heavy slate of action movies like Den of Thieves 2 and Flight Risk further meant that
Love Hurts couldn't stick out in a crowded marketplace. Bong Joon-ho followed up his
Oscar-winning 2019 triumph Parasite with a doozy. Mickey's 17 promised moviegoers multiple Robert Pattinson's for the price of one ticket. Alas, based on the disappointing receipts
it seems like Pattinson is more indie movie darling than major box office draw
It probably didn't help that Mickey's 17 has a somewhat complicated, offbeat premise
Pattinson plays a space traveler who keeps dying and then being cloned into new versions of himself
With a budget of $118 million, the movie has only grossed about $45 million domestically
earned $130 million worldwide. Shortly into its theatrical run, it was estimated that the film
could lose as much as $75 million for Warner Bros. In addition to Pattinson's questionable
box office pull, the film was also hindered by how audiences tend to give original sci-fi
flicks the cold shoulder. Even with the artistic pedigree of Bong and multiple Pattinson's
Mickey 17 just couldn't avoid that fate. Most of A24's most successful releases have been low-budget films that came from
out of nowhere to take the world by storm. Nowadays, however, the studio is growing and
taking on higher-profile enterprises like Civil War and Marty Supreme. Even something lower-profile
like the satirical musical thriller Opus reportedly still costs $10 million to make
A major studio like Disney wouldn't blink at that price tag, but for A24
it reflected a desire to make bigger and potentially even more lucrative genre fare
Unfortunately, Opus didn't come close to matching the box office heights of past
A24 horror sensations. Despite launching in nearly 1,800 theaters, Opus only grossed $1.03
million over its domestic opening weekend. It totaled only $1.8 million in North America
and just under $2 million worldwide. Mixed reviews pretty much doomed Opus from the start
although some critics did praise John Malkovich's performance as a reclusive pop star
The crowd is upset! A generic marketing campaign that failed to differentiate Opus from similar recent
and thrillers didn't help either. If Civil War showed in 2024 that cost the year A24 movies
could succeed, Opus was a more cautionary tale in the studio's evolution
Though it started shooting in November 2020 and was originally set for a March 2022 release
The Unbreakable Boy didn't hit theaters until February 2025. The excessive delays proved to be
the most notable part of the pre-release hype for this inspirational true-life drama about a
father's experience raising an autistic son. It was yet another faith-based tearjerker from
director John Gunn, who had previously directed Ordinary Angels and The Case for Christ
Production label Kingdom Story Company has had many hits in the past, but Unbreakable Boy will most certainly not be counted amongst them. Its domestic box office run
only amounted to $6.4 million, noticeably less than the studio's 2020 release, I Still Believe
which only got to play in domestic theaters for seven days before COVID-19 shut things down
The Unbreakable Boy was hurt by countless obstacles, including competition for Family
Dollars from the likes of Paddington in Peru and Dogman. Its source material was also relatively
obscure compared to other faith-based flicks. Plus, it didn't help that star Zachary Levi was
in the midst of a box office losing streak following Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Harold
and the Purple Crayon. The actor begins with lots of potential as a starring vehicle for Ryan Gosling
He walked away from the project, though, and Andre Holland stepped in to take on the role
of an actor with amnesia in a small 1950s Ohio town. After years of radio silence
distributor Neon abruptly announced in February 2025 that the film would hit theaters in just a
few weeks on March 14th. It opened in only 23 domestic theaters and ultimately grossed only
about $40,000. Though no official budget has been released, the actor couldn't have possibly come
close to recouping the cost of its flashy production design and star-studded cast
which also includes Gemma Chan, Toby Jones, and Joe Cole. You could certainly blame the oddball
premise, but the box office failure of the actor is pretty much entirely due to its limited release
and total lack of a promotion or campaign. What movie could possibly break even with no real
support or theatrical footprint? Angel Studios scored a massive win in 2023 with one of the
biggest indie movies in history, Sound of Freedom. But the company has struggled to repeat that
success since then. Sound of Freedom made more than $180 million domestically and $250 million
worldwide, but more recent Angel Studios releases have struggled to crack $5 million
This problem was especially apparent with March 2025's Rule Breakers, which tells the true-life
story of the first all-girls robotics team from Afghanistan. Despite opening in over 2,000 theaters
it grossed less than $3 million in its entire domestic run. Rule Breakers was a rare PG-rated
feature for Angel Studios, which typically embraces PG-13 faith-based movies. Trying and
failing to figure out how to market to families really hindered this title, which looked like a
knockoff of a 2000s inspiration or Disney movie. Plus, it apparently didn't appeal much to the
older action fans who came out for the likes of Sound of Freedom and Homestead. Rule Breakers also
had to face off against other faith-based competition, including The Last Supper
Furthermore, the film cost at least $8 million to make, a significant increase from, for example
the $2 million price tag of God's Not Dead. Rule Breakers was always going to struggle
to be profitable, but few could have predicted that it would flail this badly