We hear a lot about gross takings, but what does that actually mean? Outside of a weird internet porn way, we mean. To decide whether a film recouped its expenses and made a profit is an inexact art, but the general rule of thumb is that if a movie makes back twice its budget - allowing for the half of box office receipts that go to cinemas, and money spent on advertising etc - then it was a success. Many, many films not only fail to make back twice their budget, but barely manage to even scrape the huge, blockbuster costs it took to make them in the first place. Looking at the list of the biggest box office bombs of all time, eight of them came out in the last decade. In fact if you take into account the top fifty films to post the biggest losses, almost all of them were made this century, which means that Hollywood is haemorrhaging money at a rate unparalleled in its history. Just last year 47 Ronin, the critically panned Keanu Reeves samurai movie, reportedly made a loss of $149,518,762. If that's a difficult figure to get your head around, well, just imagine being a Universal exec. Close behind were RIPD and The Lone Ranger, each of lost at least $9 million (or as much as $11 million). At some point all of this has to come crashing down. The system can't keep producing turkeys like this, and losing such significant sums of money, without there being any consequences. Well, audiences are already party to some of the changes being made due to such losses, but you get the feeling that between this and all the other death knells on this list, a bit of belt-tightening mightn't be enough. New Line already imploded, despite producing the phenomenally successful Lord of the Rings films - on which it didn't turn a profit - and they certainly won't be the last major studio to do so.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
