10 Critically Acclaimed Films You Never Realised Bombed At The Box Office

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score: 99%

Budget: $2.7 Million

Box Office: $3 Million

Marketed as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Technicolor triumph, The Wizard of Oz represented the riskiest and most expensive undertaking in their history at the time, with a budget of $2.7 million made available by the studio. Despite a heavy advertising campaign, their adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s classic children’s novel only managed to rake in $2.1 million in the US and an extra $900,000 overseas for a total gross of $3 million.

According to MGM’s records, the disappointing box office takings meant that the studio was out of pocket by over $1 million - still a huge amount of money today, but a staggering sum in 1939 - though the positive reaction from film critics (the late Frank Nugent, veteran of almost 1000 reviews for The New York Times, called it a delightful piece of wonder-working) meant that Oz would not only go on to claw back those initial losses, but turn a healthy profit, too.

A theatrical re-release a decade later in 1949 was the point that the film officially became profitable for MGM, and the 1956 broadcast television premiere of the film on CBS introduced it to a new, wider audience, starting what would become an annual tradition of airing the now much-loved fantasy epic. After adjustment for inflation, the film has now generated just shy of $250 million.