20 Horror Movie Box Office Bombs EVERYONE Saw Coming

5. Doctor Sleep

In the previous entry, it was referenced that good movies can suffer at the box office for a number of reasons, and Doctor Sleep absolutely falls into that category. It is a fine continuation from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, even if no one could have possibly expected it to be.

In spite of it being a direct adaptation of a Stephen King novel, rather than a sequel made for the sake of it, there were unfortunately just too many preconceptions going against the movie, as well as a few other factors, that stopped it from being the box office hit it deserved to be.

Of course, there is the natural skepticism that is to be expected around revisiting such a classic from 39 years prior. If this were happening in a vacuum, it may not have been such a big deal. But very much in the era of pointless and disappointing legacy sequels, this would have been looked at in the same way as the likes of Star Wars, Jurassic World, Jigsaw, Halloween (2018), and others.

Very much assumed to fall into this category, and with Mike Flanagan not quite yet the household name he is today, Doctor Sleep was always going to struggle. $72 million intake against a $45 million budget could have been worse, but it was still far from what was needed.