20 Recent Box Office Flops Everyone Saw Coming

In theory, there were many, many reasons that Wolf Man was set to be a solid box office hit.

For one, it had Leigh Whannell working as writer-director, who did a fantastic job reinventing The Invisible Man back in 2020 to both critical and commercial success. With the supremely talented Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner leading the small cast, and a mere $25 million budget, this seemed like an incredibly low-risk, can't-miss project.

That was, until the months leading up to Wolf Man's release, when there was significant backlash against the title creature's apparent leaked design, prompting Whannell and co. to spend much of the marketing campaign in damage control mode.

This, and a mid-January release - typically a dumping ground for bad horror movies - did little to help its box office tracking leading up to release, and Universal ultimately got desperate enough that they spoiled the Wolf Man's transformation in a clip released shortly before the film came out.

Wildly mixed reviews ultimately dropped just two days before release and basically delivered the death knell to Wolf Man's prospects, causing it to end its run at a shockingly low $35.2 million. It was a poor enough result that even the film's own producer, Jason Blum, publicly tweeted his disappointment about it.