7. The Last Airbender (2010) Budget: $150m/Total Gross: $319m
Oh M. Night Shyamalan, where did it all go wrong? The man once pegged as 'the hottest new director in Hollywood' after the triple whammy of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs has seen his career slip so far from the heights once predicted that his name was almost entirely absent from any promotional material for his latest, After Earth. It may have had something to do with this multiple Razzie winner. Based on the first season of popular animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender (with the title obviously changed in the wake of James Cameron's game-changing epic), the movie actually did decent business and opened to $40.3m on its way to a respectable $131.7m domestic. Originally envisioned as the first part of a trilogy (what isn't?), these plans were soon put on the backburner when the overwhelmingly negative reviews came in. Despite some solid visuals, The Last Airbender suffered from a 3D post conversion that was Clash of the Titans bad, rendering many of the action scenes incomprehensible onscreen. You would never have guessed Shyamalan was an Academy Award-nominated writer either, as the clunky and overwrought dialogue drowns in a sea of turgid exposition. The cast didn't fare much better; lead Noah Ringer's martial arts prowess didn't conceal the fact that the little guy wasn't a trained actor, while the more experienced cast members weren't any better. The film picked up no less than nine Razzie nominations, and 'won' for Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Supporting Actor and most fittingly, Worst Eye-Gouging Misuse of 3D. Although The Last Airbender did stellar business at the box office, it didn't exactly garner the goodwill on which to build an expensive franchise.