10 Awesome Recent Movies That Didn't Deserve To Bomb

Budget: $100 million

Box Office: $75.9 million

Bets don't come much surer than Steven Spielberg, who over the last 20 years has produced just two box office under-performers (Munich and The BFG) and almost a dozen smash hits.

A Spielberg-directed remake of West Side Story, one of the most iconic musicals of all time, must've seemed like a financial slam dunk to 20th Century Studios when the project began filming back in the summer of 2019.

But with the pandemic pumping the brakes on adult-skewing movies, and younger audiences having little-to-no nostalgia for the original 1961 film, West Side Story failed to turn a profit.

With its massive $100 million budget and extensive marketing campaign, it likely needed to gross around $250 million in order to be a success, but ultimately didn't even crack one-third of that figure.

Even with rave reviews and a mighty "A" CinemaScore, leading to seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture, this was a film that categorically failed to entice general audiences.

Beyond the pandemic, there have been other reasons cited, such as audiences feeling oversaturated with musicals, the problematic casting of Ansel Elgort in the lead role (whose presence was downplayed heavily in marketing), and the lack of major stars among the cast.

Though West Side Story has been another strong performer on streaming, it's a shame that arguably Spielberg's best movie in 20-or-so years was largely ignored on the big screen.