10 Awesome Recent Movies That Didn't Deserve To Bomb
6. Nightmare Alley
Budget: $60 million
Box Office: $39.6 million
Guillermo del Toro's new period psychological thriller Nightmare Alley was one of 2021's most unforgettable genre films - a sumptuously shot and brilliantly acted effort that received four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
Nightmare Alley's Oscar recognition is all the more surprising given the film's atrocious box office performance, barely clawing back half its $60 million budget.
The reasons for its failure are myriad: older viewers' reluctance to return to cinemas, a vague marketing campaign which didn't sell the movie well, and surely worst of all, deciding to release it the same day as Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Counter-programming can work, but not against a film as enormously hyped as No Way Home that basically everybody and their grandma wanted to see.
As with many other flops on this list, del Toro's latest performed better on streaming, even if its lavish production values absolutely made it a film well worth catching on the big screen.