10 Box Office Bombs You Could Spot From A Mile Away
Literally billions of dollars spent on absolute garbage.
Every year the studios play the blockbuster lottery, dropping $100 million movies into an already-crowded marketplace in the hope of scoring a hit. With the sheer volume of multi-billion franchises around today the odds maybe aren't as steep as they once were, but the truth is that not every movie gets to be a hit. Especially if it sucks.
Brand recognition has replaced the movie star as the way to sell your movie to the widest possible audience, with the reliance on style over substance driving up budgets and increasing the risk that when a movie bombs, it bombs hard.
While there are plenty of safe bets when it comes to predicting what the biggest hit of the summer will be, now and again a big-budget movie gets released that everyone knows is going to flop. You can spot it instantly, there is usually a stench of failure surrounding it from the first trailer.
If we, the people they want to pay to see this movie, can tell that its going to be awful from a mile away then why can't they?
10. Jupiter Ascending
Jupiter Ascending is already establishing a reputation as a cult classic that will only grow over time, but when you saw the first trailer for the Wachowskis sci-fi epic you just knew that this thing was going to bomb.
It was visually stunning, hugely ambitious and massive in scope but it was just too out-there for audiences, with the movie's almost-nonsensical narrative a major point of contention. Several release date shifts saw the budget go up to $176 million and it only made $184 million at the box office, becoming one of the biggest bombs in history.
The movie is the Wachowskis at their most unrestrained, and delivers both the best and worst of what that entails. Not quite 'so bad its good', more 'so unique its interesting', it was nonetheless predicted to crash and burn at the box office and did just that.