10 Critically Acclaimed Films You Never Realised Bombed At The Box Office

Critical acclaim and financial reward have never been mutually exclusive outcomes in Hollywood, and, while in theory they should go hand in hand, there have always been cases of films coming out to rave reviews but still failing miserably in ticket sales. Reasons for this vary, though it normally boils down to a mixture of stiff competition and bad luck.

A film’s budget also has to be taken into account when attempting to determine success, which is often the tripping point for those under the impression that budget equals total outlay. As a rule of thumb, a studio will match every dollar it allocates for a budget in advertising spending, and that estimate is probably on the conservative side.

President of CBS Films Terry Press called marketing the single most discussed and debated issue in Hollywood in 2014, and the costs of advertising movies has been on the increase since, with Chinese interests as well as emerging markets in Russia, Asia, and Latin America meaning studios are spending more than ever before per picture.

With marketing expenses and all extra costs incurred in the making of a movie taken into account, some of these critically acclaimed films bombed at the box office, while others bombed a whole lot harder...

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score: 92%

Budget: $76 million

Box Office: $70 million

Alfonso Cuarón must have been used to accepting awards by the time the 2014 season was complete, picking up three Oscars, two BAFTAs and a score of other accolades for his work on Gravity. His previous effort was similarly well received by critics, though it failed to make anywhere near the same kind of impact at the box office.

Children of Men, his 2006 adaptation of P. D. James’ 1992 novel of the same name, was a far more down to earth sci-fi, set in a fictional Britain after two decades of worldwide infertility has society on the brink of meltdown and humanity on the verge of extinction.

The film boasts an impressive 92% Critic Score on Rotten Tomatoes, where it was described as a violent chase thriller, a fantastical cautionary tale, and a sophisticated human drama that works on every level, whereas Metacritic named it the eleventh greatest film of the 2000s.

Despite the positive reaction from film commentators, however, movie audiences at the time did not flock to the cinema to see Children of Men. The film made less than $180,000 the weekend that it opened, and less than £130,000 in the UK, eventually grossing only $70 million from a budget of $76 million.