10 Films That Risk Being 2015's Biggest Box Office Failures

3. The Last Witch Hunter

The Last Witch Hunter pretty much explains itself with the title; Vin Diesel plays the titular hunter, a character tasked with stopping a coven of witches unleashing a plague in New York City, sporting a ridiculous hair-and-beard combination that seems right in tune with the B-movie synopsis. On paper at least, the project has all the makings of a box office flop. Breck Eisner returns to feature filmmaking for the first time in five years, and while he was responsible for the effective low-budget remake of The Crazies, this is also the guy that directed Sahara; not just one of the worst summer blockbusters in recent memory, but also one of the biggest box office bombs of all time. Strangely enough, one of the credited writers on the script is Dallas Buyers Club's Academy-Award nominee Melisa Wallack, but the actual screenplay credit goes to Cory Goodman who wrote the awful Priest, which is hardly encouraging. Then there is Vin Diesel himself; the actor has only played one live-action character that wasn't Dominic Toretto or Riddick in the last decade in the critical and commercial disaster Babylon A.D, and outside of the Fast And Furious franchise his track record is patchy to say the least. The October 23 release date could give The Last Witch Hunter a pre-Halloween boost, but it also falls two weeks after Jon Favreau's star-studded Jungle Book and two weeks before Spectre; two movies set to dominate the box office. On the release schedule it seems to be positioned as counter-programming to these big studio blockbusters but the Vacation remake, Steven Spielberg's St. James Place and Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak will all be in theaters at the same time, creating fierce competition at the box office that doesn't bode well for The Last Witch Hunter, which probably won't be a very good movie.