Don’t you just love a good tragedy? Sometimes a movie gets made that gets hyped so bad, and then only a handful of people go see it in theaters. You can already smell the sequel plans slowly getting shoved in a very well locked cabinet.
Nobody wants to invest in a failed product. And with movie budgets getting bigger every year, so are movie losses! I know, that’s probably not a very nice thing to get excited about. I may be a horrible person for doing so, but look at it this way: no matter how bad you are at your job, you’ll never be “I blew 100 million dollars of rich people’s money” bad. Never.
Let’s take a look at some financial disasters that happened to other people. Numbers are adjusted for inflation and losses take production budget and the marketing budget (which is an estimated value) into account.
Evan Almighty (2007)
You know what happens to sequels of mediocre comedy movies? They tank hard. This one lost the big suits about $102,000,000. That’s a lot of suits.
The Lone Ranger (2013)
Johnny Depp playing a native American, what could go wrong? $98,000,000 to $195,000,000, that’s what could go wrong.
47 Ronin (2013)
This big budget movie (about $200 million) lost an equally big budget after all was said and done. Losses are estimated at $101 million to $154 million. That’s 2 to 3 million dollars per ronin.
R.I.P.D. (2013)
It should be obvious at this point that Hollywood lost a lot of money in 2013. This movie cost them $94 million to $118 million. That’s what you get for writing a bad script, movie goons!
King Arthur (2017)
This one takes real skill to pull off: this movie had a $175,000,000 budget and made an estimated $150,000,000 loss. How big was your marketing budget to be this horrible at making a profit?
Pixels (2015)
It’s an Adam Sandler movie! Those always sell good, right? And it has Peter Dinklage in it. He’s the little fellow from Game of Thrones. This sounds like a really great idea on paper. Of course the $88,000,000 movie, despite making over $244,900,000 in box office revenue, actually lost $76,000,000 after all expenses were added in. I mean, did you blow 230 million on the marketing budget? How does this even happen?
Fantastic Four (2015)
You know what wasn’t fantastic? Their box office revenue. The $125,000,000 movie lost about $81million to $101 million. Ouch!
John Carter (2012)
It’s a superhero movie that looks like a superhero movie, got a superhero movie budget of a whopping $263,7000,000 but didn’t quite make the superhero profits. The estimated losses for this movie range from a modest $127,000,000 to a whopping $209,000,000. Try explaining that number to the shareholders. I double dare you.
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Oh wow! Mila Kunis! Channing Tatum! Other names I’ve heard before! A story that does literally nothing for anyone! $88 million to $121 million in estimated financial losses! This movie has everything! Except money. This movie has none of that. It pretty much lost all of it.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Well, it’s too early to tell, but at the time of writing this, it’s currently $80,000,000 short of making any profit. And the reviews are lukewarm at best. Get it, luke-warm? Because it has Harrison Ford in it, who played Han Solo, best friend of Luke Skywalker? Well, I got my Star Wars joke in, now I can rest in peace.
