Biggest movie flops: The 42 biggest box-office bombs

By Staff Writer
Published: 08:49 PM February 23, 2022
Disney

Biggest movie flops: The 42 biggest box-office bombs

Are there still box-office bombs these days? We can note that Disney's live-action "Mulan" (2020) saw a reported loss of $147 million — but given the pandemic that's still sweeping the planet, is it fair to put it in the same category as, say, "The Adventures of Pluto Nash," whose clear failure couldn't be blamed on a disease?

It's a decent question, but in the meantime, we can say this: Pre-pandemic, there were clear box office winners and losers every weekend. And when a movie failed, it failed epically.

Using stats from the box-office site The Numbers, we've compiled a list of the 42 movies that, versus their production budgets, lost the most at the box office. 

We came up with our Hollywood hall of shame by culling through The Numbers' rundown of the most expensive movies ever made, focusing on 508 movies with reported budgets of $90 million or more. From this group, we zeroed in on the films that failed to make back their budgets at the worldwide box office. We eliminated titles that had no reported grosses because they debuted on streaming (a la Will Smith's "Bright"). We also eliminated films (such as "Call of the Wild" and "Tenet") that were released in 2020 amid the theater-shuttering coronavirus outbreak. 

In the end, we came up with a list that includes movies that have competed at the Oscars and been mocked at the Razzies. Read on for the list, ranked from the smallish-sized bombs to the biggest. (The Numbers stats were current as of September 6, 2020.)