8 Lessons Studios Must Learn To Avoid Making Box-Office Duds

5. Some Types Of Film Are Not Popular With Audiences

King Arthur Legend Of The Sword Charlie Hunnam
Warner Bros.

Okay, show of hands; who actually thought that King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword was going to be a critical or financial success? You could smell the stench of a box-office flop on this one from miles away.

And that was without pre-judging the quality of the film itself - for all we knew, it could have been fantastic - and instead, it's an observation based on the fact that big-budget historical epics have not been clicking with audiences for a while now.

Exodus: Gods And Kings was a disappointment, with a meagre $24 million opening on a $140 million budget; the Ben-Hur remake was dead-on-arrival, failing to make back the money it cost to produce; and the less said about Gods Of Egypt, the better.

Looking at all this evidence, why would a studio greenlight another historical sword-slasher? Audiences simply do not respond to them, whatever the reason may be. Maybe Game Of Thrones is already scratching that itch. In any event, it's foolish to continue making these things.

Some genres do better than others - moviegoers seem to like their space movies at the minute, as Gravity, The Martian, Interstellar and Arrival will tell you - and others, like the big-budget historical epic, are best left alone.

Let's all pray for next year's Robin Hood reboot...

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!