For me, it’s Black Adam. Sure the movie still flopped and didn’t live up to the expectations set up by Dwayne, but considering this is a movie about a D-list character and it still made almost 400 million and outgrossed a movie like The Flash is a testament to The Rock’s star power at the time. What other box office flops impressed you?
by DarlingLuna
26 Comments
Final Reckoning. Pretty solid run with 600m worldwide, just flopped cuz of the massive budget
one battle after another did pretty decent for an original 3 hour movie
It also came out before superhero/blockbuster fatigue really took effect. If it had released 12 months later that movie would’ve been cooked.
The Legend of Tarzan (2016)
Blade Runner 2049
*Fast X* (2023) grossed $704 million, far higher than many CBMs post-2020 and franchise films with 10 movies. That production budget of $340 million is crazy, though.
Mummy (2017) and Edge of Tomorrow both made around 375 million (and starred Tom Cruise).
Tom Cruise’s Mummy film managed to make over 400 million, despite being regarded as a massive disaster. Ditto for Warcraft as well, with 439 million.
OBAA and the Little Mermaid Domestic
The Mummy 2017 did $410M worldwide thanks to international audiences carrying it hard, yet its Dark Universe launched absolutely nothing.
Biggest lesson here was don’t brute-force a cinematic universe and see the outcome of your first movie before thinking about kickstarting a universe.
Transformers the last knight movie made $602 million on a budget of $217 million but lost $100 million due to marketing costs .
Imagine a transformers movie making 600 million in 2026 that would be crazy the fact that people look down on TLK so much because it lost $100 million is crazy even after losing that much it made a 600 million box office that’s impressive on its own merit
Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom
It did as much as the DCEU films that made under $300M WW but the $215M was underwhelming with a gross of $433M WW mark despite the holiday boast from 2023
I’m reminded of Pearl Harbor back in 2001, which managed to cross 200M domestic despite being a lengthy historical epic debuting in summer. But because of its huge budget, middling critical reception, and very obvious attempt to be the next Titanic, it was seen as a disappointment.
If it can be considered a flop—it’s probably more lukewarm—Elemental.
Predator Badlands?
A common theme in a lot of the movies being mentioned here is that they have stars like Rock (as OP mentioned), Cruise, and DiCaprio. Big names still help
Justice League making 600M is kinda good for DCEU standards
Pearl Harbor
No time to die made 774m, that was during Covid. It lost money because of the crazy budget though
Honestly aquaman 2 because it was the dead end of the franchise. Had about 0 marketing (to this day I’ve never seen it) and didn’t even have a premiere and every other dc movie had struggled to even make 400M. So the fact that it of all movies did was surprising.
IF. Pretty hard to sell an original live action kids movie in this theatrical ecosystem and even outgrossed The Garfield Movie domestically, which released a week after and was an established IP
Eternals. Came out in 2021 covid, first rotten film for the MCU, B cinemascore, but managed to do $400M+. Had mid legs but still ended up making more than Thunderbolts WW.
I think Elemental gotta be up there unless the movie made profit somehow ($250M budget and $496M worldwide box office. If we apply the 2,5x rule, it needed $625M to break even).
The fact this movie opened with $44.5M worldwide and legged out until almost hit half a billion is god damn impressive. People gotta remind too that it opened on the same day as The Flash and was at first completely overshadowed by the DC movie, but it’s audience reception and WOM was so positive that it had outstanding legs.
It is also the highest grossing original movie of the 2020s, a record it managed to maintain for 2.5 years so far.
BA suffered from not being released in China. Probably would had made 100m more if it was. Aquaman made 300m from China so 1/3 of that would had been easily obtained. Budget was rumored around 200m + 75m in marketing, if it made 500-600m it probably would have been seen as decent. But missing on China made it impossible
I wouldn’t quite call it impressive but honestly, I still can’t believe that Morbius earned $167.5 million worldwide. Leto got trolled the heck out of for that film. The memes were great though.
I always thought that Ghostbusters from 2016 making 229M worldwide was pretty good, more than Afterlife and Frozen Empire despite only having a short cameo by Murray, while the others featured the original cast. They just messed up with that bloated third act that brought up the budget and didn’t even look good