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

10. Children Of Men (2006)

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.