20 Recent Movies That Made ONE Huge Mistake

Steven Soderbergh's new film Black Bag is an expertly crafted crime thriller with one of the year's most enviable ensemble casts, touting a roster including Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, and Pierce Brosnan.

Now, even accepting that Focus Features didn't give the film much of a marketing push despite it receiving rave reviews, Black Bag ultimately flopped at the box office because its budget was so alarmingly large for a film of this type.

It ended up costing a whopping $60 million, and while the salaries for A-listers like Blanchett, Fassbender, and Brosnan, as well as Soderbergh himself, likely ate up a large chunk of that price tag, it still seems pretty excessive considering that the bulk of the film takes place in just a few locations.

Given that the spy thriller isn't exactly box office dynamite these days, the smarter play would've probably been to give the cast a lower upfront salary with back-end participation instead, though of course there's no guarantee they all would've agreed to that.

Either way, there wasn't much prospect of a $60 million spy movie making the $120+ million it needed to be a box office hit, and Black Bag ultimately topped out at a disappointing $43.4 million.