10 Lowest Grossing Superhero Films

4. Punisher: War Zone

Superman Iv The Quest For Peace Christopher Reeve
Lionsgate

Worldwide Gross: $10,100,036

You can say this for Marvel: if at first they don’t succeed, they try and try again. While this third Punisher movie is closer to the source material than Jonathan Hensleigh’s 2004 effort, it was also considerably less successful, earning back less than a third of its budget at the box office.

Thanks to a meatier script and some flamboyant villains, though, it’s still the best of the three. Eschewing another origin story, War Zone pits Frank Castle (Ray Stevenson) against the disfigured Jigsaw (Dominic West) and his brother Loony Bin Jim, played with wide-eyed abandon by Doug Hutchison.

Letting rip with all the gore-soaked insanity that Hensleigh held back on, War Zone introduces Castle doing what he does best – tearing out throats, snapping necks and shooting hordes of bad guys while hanging upside down from a chandelier. This is not the generic character played previously by Dolph Lundgren and Thomas Jane but a snarling, laconic vigilante and Stevenson acquits himself well in the part. It’s too bad he never got the chance to reprise the role in a sequel.

Contributor

Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'