10 Signs An Upcoming Film Is Going To Bomb HARD
9. Huge Budget, Untested Director
It should be common sense that on-the-rise filmmakers slowly build up to working on gigantic $200 million tentpole movies after first proving they've got the chops to work on smaller projects.
But Hollywood seemingly loves nothing like it loves a gamble, and so studios will occasionally roll the dice on an untested filmmaker by giving them more money than God to bring their dubious vision to life.
And more often than not, the results are disastrous commercially if not also critically.
Director David Twohy was inexplicably given $120 million to make The Chronicles of Riddick - more than five-fold the budget of its predecessor, Pitch Black - and it flopped hard, while the Keanu Reeves-starring fantasy-action disaster 47 Ronin flushed a cool $175 million down the toilet by handing it to Carl Rinsch on his directing debut.
Elsewhere, Josh Trank clearly wasn't ready to helm a movie as big as Fantastic Four with the studio forced to try and salvage it in post-production, while Paul Feig had no business directing a $144 million Ghostbusters movie, and Fox were fools to give Simon Kinberg $200 million to make Dark Phoenix in his filmmaking debut.
Letting talented artists work their way up to tentpole-sized movies is a vital part of the process more often than not, but by fast-tracking them to the big leagues, executives are usually setting money on fire.