John Carter has been the center of the talk over the past couple of weeks in the movie business, so far making $114.6 million with a budget over $250 million. Just to help you comprehend – A movie doesn’t even out by matching the budget in box office gross. It needs to make much more than that, and the Disney Film is definitely going down as one of the biggest flops in Cinematic history.
In terms of money lost, John Carter is probably not going to reach the top of the list, with complete and utter failures like Cutthroat Island, The Alamo and The Adventures of Pluto Nash on this list, but it’s place in the ring of honor is certain, and the ones who should really get most of the poison arrows are the studios who actually spent a quarter of a Billion dollars on Taylor Kitsch to star in a relatively unknown franchise sci-fi which no one really had a clue what was about.
We rounded up some of the more colossal failures in Hollywood over the years, giving those with biggest net losses with adjust inflation the spotlight.
Cutthroat Island –
The film cost $115 million to make back in 1995, and after taking in only $18 million in the box office, Carcolo Pictures filed for bankruptcy. In a recent interview, director Renny Harlin spoke about the fact that the studios were already going under before the film was released, and the problems at MGM caused that there was no real marketing campaign. With adjusted inflation, the film lost $147 million.
The Alamo
About 44 years after the original film, depicting the Battle of the Alamo during the Texas Revolution, someone thought that spending nearly $150 million on Dennis Quaid and Billy Bob-Thornton, that someone being Imagine Entertainment, with Ron Howard as producer. Howard actually wanted a $200 million budget!! The movie flopped, of course, holding a 30% at Rotten Tomatoes. It lost $146 million after adjusting inflation.
The Adventures of Pluto Nash
Widely regarded by critics as one of the worst movies ever, although so few people saw it it’s hard to say. With a budget of $100 million, basing their entire hopes that Eddie Murphy can somehow turn into a box office draw again, studios were literally slapped in the face with a $7.1 million box office gross. The movie has a 6% score on RT, and lost about $145 million in adjusted inflation.
Sahara
Like John Carter, who’ll probably go on to make around $200 million, Sahara did bring in a decent haul at the box office, $122 million. Still, the budget was blown to an incredible $241 million, with bribes to the Moroccan government included in that somewhere. It lost $144 million after adjusting inflation.
Mars Needs Moms
Robert Zemeckis didn’t direct this one, “only” produce, but his finger prints are all over it. A motion capture animated sci-fi film was bound to fail in my opinion, as the genre of motion capture seems arty and fun for directors, but usually is forced and half-assed scripts and story line ideas. The film, with a budget of $175 million in 2011 made less than $40 million in the box office, losing around $140 million.
