The 10 Biggest Bombs of the Year

Written by Vince Mancini / 11.15.12

Forbes just released their list of the year’s 10 biggest flops (defining loss here as a percentage of budget, rather than total loss), which you can see below. The year is almost over, so there aren’t many films left that can out-bomb these bombs. All that’s left are Anna Karenina, Life of Pi, Twilight, Red Dawn, Rise of the Guardians, Silver Linings Playbook, Hitchcock, Killing Them Softly, Lay the Favorite, Playing for Keeps, The Hobbit, Hyde Park on the Hudson, The Guilt Trip, Zero Dark Thirty, Jack Reacher, Les Mis, Django, and Promised Land. Phew, okay, that’s actually a lot. But I believe in you, Red Dawn.

We used data from Box Office Mojo to see which films earned the smallest percentage of their budgets at the box office. Keep in mind that to begin to even imagine breaking even a film needs to earn at least twice its production budget at the box office. These 10 films didn’t come close. [Cloud Atlas is still in theaters, so it doesn't technically count yet, but I included it anyway.]

1. “The Oogieloves,” (Box office: $1 million; production budget: $20 million)

2. “A Thousand Words,” (Box office: $20 million; production budget: $40 million)/ “Cloud Atlas” (Box office: $24 million; production budget: $100 million)

3. “Dredd” (Box office: $28 million; production budget: $50 million)

4. “Big Miracle” (Box office: $25 million: production budget: $40 million)

5. “Wanderlust” (Box office: $21 million; production budget: $30 million)

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The Oogieloves has the worst opening ever

Written by Vince Mancini / 09.04.12

The Oogieloves in the BIG Balloon Adventure (as if “big” was the word that needed emphasizing in that phrase) narrowly edged out your mom’s crotch to become the worst opening of all time this weekend, earning just $445,000 on 2,160 screens. The only two things I knew about this film before today were that the producer was apparently inspired by people yelling at the screen during Madea Goes to Jail (no, really), and that the character on the right up there would kill my parents if I told anyone where she touched me.

It was pretty obvious that Oogieloves in the BIG Balloon Adventure wasn’t going to do well, but no one expected it to open this low. The movie earned an estimated $445,000 from 2,160 locations this weekend; that tops 2008′s Delgo ($511,920) for the worst debut ever for a movie in more than 2,000 theaters. It also had the second-worst per-theater average for a movie in nationwide release at just $206. To put that in perspective, if each location played Oogieloves five times a day on one screen at an average ticket price of $7, that would translate to fewer than two people per showing. [BoxOfficeMojo]

The fourth worst opening ever was for Major League: Back to the Minors, so you can understand why when Charlie Sheen was running his mouth about making another Major League movie a year or so ago, they were all calling it “Major League 3,” just ignoring the fact that there already was a Major League 3. And why not? It’s not like people were really looking for continuity in the Major League franchise. They already replaced Wesley Snipes with Omar Epps and just acted like they were the same person. Anyway, I digress. The Oogieloves trailer is after the jump, in case you want to feel like you’re tripping balls for a couple minutes.

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Battleship Opens Worse Than John Carter

Written by Vince Mancini / 05.21.12

Let us enjoy this Brooklyn Decker gif and then never speak of this film again

I like to pretend that I’m smart and that I can predict what people are going to do, but of course I can’t, and almost every day shows me new ways that I can still be surprised by people’s stupidity. So while I’d love to say all along that I knew a movie based on a board game was a stupid idea of epic proportions, I just saw a commercial that said NCIS is the most-watched show on television, so what the hell do I know? I don’t even know someone who knows someone who watches that show. In any case, we were right this time, so let’s enjoy it: turns out Battleship really was a stupid f*cking idea. It grossed an estimated $25 million this weekend, on a budget of at least $209 million, not including marketing. For comparison, John Carter, which cost $250 million, and supposedly lost $200 million for Disney, made $30 million in its opening weekend. So, another way to put it is, Battleship got outgrossed by a movie that lost $200 million.

"More like BattleSHIT." -Gene Shalit's ne'er-do-well brother

Battleship already made $215 million overseas, and supposedly that’s going to mitigate the losses here, but I’d like to see how much they paid in advertising to make that happen. The ads were everywhere, even starstruck foreigners don’t see crappy alien movies unless you’ve beaten them over the head with it a couple million times. Any way you look at it, it looks like a loss.

And I’m sure there will be plenty of blame to go around, from Peter Berg to Taylor Kitsch (the poor bastard who managed to star in BOTH Battleship and John Carter), even though it’s not their fault. All to avoid the obvious truth: this was a really, really, really stupid f*cking idea for a movie. Like, really stupid. From the very beginning. But of course I’m biased. I don’t want Peter Berg to take the blame for this, because I would miss interviews like this one. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, Peter Berg should direct ALL of Hollywood’s idiotic, destined-to-fail crossover ideas. HURRRR, THESE FIG NEWTONS HAVE GREAT NAME RECOGNITION, SOMEONE OPTION THIS SNACK DRAWER.

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Avengers averages more per screen than Miley Cyrus’ LOL’s entire gross

Written by Vince Mancini / 05.08.12

"Whatcha thinkin' bout?" "Mmmm, I dunno, fake pot."

Even before Miley Cyrus’s LOL hit theaters this weekend, people were preparing for a bomb. Lionsgate basically never gave it a chance, shelving it for two years (it was shot in 2010), and throwing it up at 105 locations with no promotion. It probably would’ve gone direct to DVD if not for a contract provision with foreign distributors saying it had to be released on at least 100 screens domestically. The result? The film’s entire opening weekend gross came to $46,500. By comparison, The Avengers, whose actual weekend gross of $207 million exceeded the already-record-breaking early estimates, earned $47,698 per theater. Yes, more than LOL‘s entire run. Aw, I hope this doesn’t mean we won’t still get to see Miley in Allan Loeb’s I’m Like, So Undercover (yes, that is a real movie).

Some math: LOL‘s per-screen average was $440. Divide that by $11, which is about your average ticket price, and it comes out to 40 people per theater who saw LOL this weekend. The closest theater to me showing LOL had five showings per day. If we take that as about standard, multiply that by three days, fifteen showings, and that’s 40 people into 15 screenings, meaning, if my math serves (and I fully acknowledge that it might not), that the average screening of LOL had LESS THAN THREE VIEWERS (2.667). Holy shit, you could have a Yanomami take attendance at those.

There undoubtedly would’ve been more viewers if Lionsgate had actually promoted the film at all, but considering it was a movie called “LOL,” in which Miley Cyrus’s character was named “Lol,” and whose stated goal was to LOL (MOVE OVER, TYLER PERRY!), pretending it never happened was probably the smartest thing they did the entire process.

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Disney expects to lose $200 million on John Carter – the biggest movie loss ever

Written by Vince Mancini / 03.20.12

John Carter, following a refreshing dip in the tears of his investors

Rumors of what it cost to make an market John Carter ran as high as $350 million. Daily Beast said it would have to make $400 million to break even, and so far has only made $180 million worldwide. Still, hardly anyone expected it to be the biggest money loser of all time, with Disney projecting a loss of 200 million Earth dollars.

“In light of the theatrical performance of John Carter ($184 million global box office), we expect the film to generate an operating loss of approximately $200 million during our second fiscal quarter ending March 31. As a result, our current expectation is that the Studio segment will have an operating loss of between $80 and $120 million for the second quarter. As we look forward to the second half of the year, we are excited about the upcoming releases of The Avengers and Brave, which we believe have tremendous potential to drive value for the Studio and the rest of the company.”

Disney’s $200M write down for John Carter appears to be the biggest loss to date for a single film — exceeding the inflation adjusted $147M deficit from Cutthroat Island, the 1995 film that starred Geena Davis and proved to be the last straw for Carolco Pictures which went out of business. [Deadline]

Ouch. It’s a bummer, because while the marketing was amazingly terrible, and focused mostly on the title, which was awful, I thought the movie was actually pretty fun. And in case you were wondering how this would effect Disney, since the health of vaguely evil, multi-national corporations is always of paramount concern, don’t be. Deadline points out the film division accounts for only 7% of its profits, and that Disney shares were only down 1% after the announcement. Still, a $200 million loss is a lot to absorb. At this rate, they might have to have James Cameron pawn one of the yachts he uses to hunt people for sport.

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