20 Recent Box Office Flops Everyone Saw Coming

Black Bag is, sadly, the sort of movie that struggles to get audiences out of their homes these days - a more "modest" genre film without epic CGI set-pieces, no matter the plaudits of its exceptional ensemble cast.

In addition to distributor Focus Features barely marketing Steven Soderbergh's terrific spy thriller, it was produced for a budget of $60 million, which is an undeniably high figure for a film that largely takes place in just a few distinct locations.

Sure, a cast including Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, and Pierce Brosnan isn't going to come cheap, but this still seems like an inordinately high figure given the story's confined nature and overall brevity, clocking in at just 94 minutes.

Despite scoring rave reviews from many critics, Black Bag sadly topped out at just $43.4 million globally, though it has quite predictably performed better on streaming, helping mitigate some of its losses. It's certainly a shame that well-crafted genre fare like this struggles to ignite the box office nowadays, especially with so much talent behind and in front of the camera, but that budget is just way, way too high for what it is.