10 Box Office Flops That Threw Away Stupid Amounts Of Money
6. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - $102.4 million
Budget: $115 million Box Office: $85.1 million
The only film based on a video game on this list, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, in a turn that seems made up, didnt flop because of the obvious reason.
Directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the man who created the enduring game series, this isnt the usual blatant cash grab that has ruined the medium as a source of cinematic inspiration. Neither based off a particular game nor spawning an adaptation, this was a labour of love, evident by the amount of effort put into making lead character Aki look as real as possible (it makes James Camerons efforts with the Navi positively lazy).
The box office poison all comes out of what make the project so intriguing. Of course unable to escape the video game movie stigma, the obsessive animation (which impresses thirteen years on) sent the budget skywards and Sakaguchi showed he wasnt as masterful at telling a story on the big screen. The film was actually OK, but audiences had a buffet of reasons to not check it out.
Did it deserve to flop? With its envelope pushing effects and by the simple fact it isnt terrible, not really.