![]() ![]() ![]() Image Credit: ©Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection ![]() Sometimes, there really is no limit to what’s possible in cinema if your film features a recognizable comic book character. Decades later, the eerily similar “Joker” (which essentially saw De Niro play the Lewis part) grossed over $1 billion. Despite featuring the star power of Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis, “The King of Comedy” only brought in $2.5 million on a budget of $19 million. “The King of Comedy” is one of the auteur’s best character studies, deserving to be mentioned in the same breath as “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull.” But the film was a bona fide financial flop. Martin Scorsese is no stranger to box office bombs, but this one had to hurt. Image Credit: ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection “Blow Out” cost $18 million to make in 1981, only making $13.7 million of that back at the box office. But it was probably ahead of its time, and failed to find much of an audience when it was originally released. The film is an excellent illustration of many of De Palma’s trademark editing techniques, including his iconic use of split screens. The Quentin Tarantino favorite stars John Travolta as a sound editor who accidentally captures audio footage of a murder, resulting in one of the best performances of Travolta’s career. But one of his masterpieces, “Blow Out,” is not one of them. Image Credit: ©Filmways Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collectionīrian De Palma has made some of the most lucrative films of all time, with blockbusters like the first “Mission: Impossible” under his belt. New viewers helped the movie to gain critical appreciation, and nowadays the story of George Bailey (James Stewart) is frequently ranked as an all-time American cinematic classic. In the ’70s, the movie’s copywright lapsed, and it became a regular staple of TV runs during Christmas. The movie only managed to gross $3.3 million on a $3 million budget, far short of breaking even, and ended up signaling a decline in the career of director Frank Capra. The most famous Christmas film of all time, “It’s a Wonderful Life” was a financial disappointment and received mixed reviews. But Hearst couldn’t keep the film down forever, and “Citizen Kane” is now frequently ranked as the single best movie ever made. As a result, the movie lost around $160,000. The very clear inspiration behind the character of Charles Foster Kane that Welles plays in the movie, Hearst was incensed at the film’s negative depiction of him, and attempted to sabotage its release by forbidding his papers from mentioning or advertising the movie, and bribing several theater chains to not play it. During its theatrical run, however, the film struggled, almost entirely because of the interference of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst. Mankiewicz, and the incredible performances of the ensemble cast. Upon its release, “Citizen Kane” was an immediate critical success, with reviewers praising Orson Welles’ inventive direction, his acerbic screenplay with Herman J. Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Ryan Lattanzio, Zack Sharf, and Christian Zilko contributed to this story. Keep reading to see some of our favorite movies that bombed at the box office. This year has also given us examples of gems that went sadly overlooked during their theatrical runs, such as the charming family comedy “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” Fortunately, a disappointing theatrical performance doesn’t have to be a death sentence, and many flops go on to be reevaluated as classics, cult or otherwise, in their own right. Plenty of great movies have been the victims of bad timing, ineffective marketing campaigns, or simply being too “out there” for the general public. That said, there’s a multitude of other reasons why a film can lose money at the box office. Considering the slew of terrible superhero and action movies able to eke out a profit on name recognition alone, those are usually the most catastrophic and memorable failures. 2023 has given us plenty of examples of big-budget flops that flopped because of poor quality, like “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”. In fact, if a blockbuster or big franchise movie goes wrong at the box office, it’s safe to assume that bad reviews and poor word-of-mouth is what scared audiences away. Many, many movies flop because they’re outright bad. Filmmaking is a fickle industry, and if you make enough movies, one of them is bound to go wrong. Everyone from Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino to Martin Scorsese and Denis Villeneuve has released a film that, for whatever reason, didn’t resonate with audiences during its initial release. No filmmaker has ascended to the apex of Hollywood - and stayed there - without surviving the occasional flop. ![]()
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