20 Horror Movie Box Office Bombs EVERYONE Saw Coming
Who was ever going to watch a big-budget remake of Psycho?
There are multiple ways the success of a movie can be measured, be it critically, come award season, or financially. There will always be differing levels of importance placed on these aspects by those involved, but the latter cannot be ignored.
While most of the creative minds behind a project, and certainly the audience, will simply want something good to be made, the industry, at the end of the day, is a business, and so the bottom line is crucial - often to the most important people in the room.
This is what makes some of the decisions that have been made, particularly in the world of horror over the years, so questionable. The genre can produce some incredibly lucrative pictures when done right, and yet there are films released that are obviously going to bomb. Nobody likes to see it, but for a multitude of reasons, there was no hope for any of the following 20 horror movies, and it wasn't exactly tough to predict.
Classics have been remade, budgets have been inflated, and genuinely good films have been let down by bad marketing, all leading to some outings that were so obviously going to flop that it was painful.
20. Jennifer's Body
A film can often have its make-or-break moment long before it ever actually releases. It is the trailer where the marketing machine has the biggest opportunity to sell tickets and get bums on seats, but if it misses the mark, it could be a setback that simply cannot be recovered from.
It's not uncommon for marketing to undersell a movie, but how Jennifer's Body was sold to prospective audiences was downright criminal. In 2009, hot on the heels of Transformers two years earlier, the trailers utilised Megan Fox to target teenage boys rather than the actual intended audience.
It's a strategy that didn't work and was never going to work, as it sent the wrong message about the entire thing. The story was complex in its exploration of feminist themes, whereas the marketing showed it as nothing more than another generic sexy horror flick doomed to obscurity.
Without the expectations set by a poor marketing performance, Jennifer's Body has gone on to become a cult classic, but with just $31 million at the box office, it unequivocally flopped, unsurprisingly so, thanks to its marketing. If it was sold as the movie it actually was, instead of as little more than a way of seeing Megan Fox on screen, it may have had a chance.