20 Biggest Summer Box Office Bombs Of All Time
2. John Carter
Budget: $250+ million (marketing: $100 million)
Box office: $284.1 million
Loss: $140+ million
The bigger the movie, the muddier the finances, hence the discrepancies and disagreements that are inevitable when compiling a list of this nature. What remains beyond dispute is that Disney has presided over two of the biggest flops in recent times – or any time, for that matter.
What’s more, Disney managed the dubious feat of releasing these movies in back-to-back years, starting with John Carter in 2012.
Originally scheduled for release in May of that year, John Carter’s release was brought forward to shift it out of the path of the likes of The Avengers. Nevertheless, even with no obvious competition John Carter struggled to find its intended audience, coming in second behind The Lorax (which was released a week earlier) on its opening weekend.
Edgar Rice Burroughs’ early-twentieth century novels provided the film with its plot but also served as the inspiration for numerous other sci-fi adventures in the intervening years. By the time John Carter was released it came off as derivative, and a pretty decent worldwide gross wasn’t enough to offset the mammoth budget and marketing costs.