5 Movie Flops That Blamed Piracy

5. Zombieland

Disclaimer: Zombieland cannot be considered a flop. However, despite the fact that the surprise cult hit Zombieland (2009) made back over four times its budget during its initial run alone, its studio still griped about piracy impacting its bottom line, and its director pointed at its popularity on file sharing sites as a reason a sequel wouldn't be greenlit. Here's what director Rhett Reese had to say about the matter on Twitter back when the film came out: "Zombieland currently the most pirated movie on bit torrent. Over one million downloads and counting. Beyond depressing. This greatly affects the likelihood of a Zombieland 2." Lets be extremely clear here: Piracy had zero to do with a sequel to Zombieland not happening. The movie made back its budget and then some. Worldwide, Zombieland grossed $102 million dollars U.S. on a $23 million dollar budget. Even accounting for its advertising campaign, it was a very profitable little movie for Columbia Pictures/Sony (who distributed the film). That does not count DVD/Blu-Ray sales, legitimate downloadable copies of the movie purchased from online stores, VOD and Pay-per-View revenue, and merchandise - Zombieland toys, t-shirts, and the like. Realistically all that probably doubled the film's total revenue. So why didn't a sequel happen if it wasn't piracy? The careers of all those involved took off. Emma Stone wound up part of the Spider-Man franchise and became Hollywood's "it" girl of the last few years. Abigail Breslin got busy doing movies like Rango and Ender's Game (plus, she grew up, and her window of playing a young girl was pretty much over after Zombieland anyway). Jesse Eisenberg wound up a big star thanks to The Social Network and has since joined Batman vs. Superman, and Woody Harrelson joined the heir apparent to the Twilight franchise in tween blockbusters, The Hunger Games. Zombieland was a perfect storm of the right actors all coming together at a right time, but everyone has just been too busy in the past five years to make another go of it. The property was shopped around as a TV series and picked up as a pilot by Amazon, but they opted not to greenlight it as a full series (thankfully, as the show had the same characters as the movie recast, and had fans in an uproar).