Sometimes there’s nothing for it, a movie is going to bomb no matter how good it looks or how many popular actors have attached their name to it. Some of them can achieve a greater bit of success later on, but when it comes to box office numbers that’s where their initial greatness is thought to lie since that’s where they first get noticed and that’s where a lot of people decide then and there if the movie is worth their time and their money. Unfortunately not every movie is going to come out and be a blockbuster as it’s a guessing game to find out which ones are going to be worth the hype and which ones will simply fade from the public eye for a while. Likely as not a lot of them do come back as people remember that there was something about the movie they liked even if it didn’t do that well in the theater. But the overall idea is that expecting a movie to be a huge hit and then watching it do so very little at the box office has to be frustrating. And yet with all these movies and so many formulas to work with, some studios keep on doing it.
Here are some of the biggest box office bombs that were thought to be surefire hits.
5. Dredd
You’ve got to admit that Stallone’s attempt at this movie felt pretty campy and almost juvenile in a very big way. Karl Urban’s attempt went for the full-on adult version as blood was flying and the language was on point with what you might expect. But somehow it still didn’t feel complete since there was something missing throughout the entire movie. Oh yeah, it was content. This felt like a shell of a movie really and there wasn’t a lot that could bring it back near the end, or the middle. The beginning might have had some promise if it had really dug in and done something special with the opening content, but then again, maybe not.
4. Cloud Atlas
The Wachowski’s definitely like to go big and this movie had a lot of great moments that showed the talents of the main actors in a lot of ways since they each had to perform a few very different roles and the story had to be kept in line somehow since it was all connected in one way or another. But the downside of this is that showing this connection almost had to be done with a well-defined map and a set of glow in the dark arrows that could lead a person along the path that the Wachowski’s were laying. Otherwise it was just too easy to get lost in this movie, despite the fact that it was quite interesting upon getting into it.
3. John Carter
A lot of people felt that John Carter suffered from a few different woes when it came to the release and the overall treatment it received, as it was supposed to be one of Disney’s bigger movies when it came out. For one reason or another however it kind of flopped and didn’t really get a lot of mention when most Disney movies end up being given TV spots without any end in sight until the movie is finally released. It was almost as though the Mouse House figured that this just wasn’t worth the effort when it was finally ready to be released and said ‘Meh, here you go, enjoy.”. That sounds horrible, but accurate.
2. Fight Club
This is a good example of a movie gaining a lot more popularity after it was released since people will quote Fight Club verbatim at this point, but when it came out in the theater it flopped pretty hard and was only really enjoyed by those of us that have a serious mental lean that allows us to dip into our own personal chaos far too often. As of now Fight Club is thought to be a masterpiece and a genius movie in its own way, but back then it was kind of an oddity and didn’t really get the attention it deserved largely because it didn’t fit every possible convention that people wanted in a movie.
1. Warrior
MMA has been building in the public interest for a good long while now and despite that fact this movie didn’t really capture the attention of the people, perhaps because it didn’t feel real enough, which is hard to believe, or maybe because it didn’t feature enough big names that could have lifted it out of the lethargy it appeared to be stuck in. Here Comes the Boom with Kevin James had the same problem in a way, even though it featured former fighter Bas Rutten as the trainer and Krzysztof Soszynski as the top fighter. Warrior though really dealt with a lot of no-names, though it was amusing to see Kurt Angle show up as Koba, a Russian fighter.
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