(Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2019 and has been updated with new posts.)
No filmmaker has made it to the top of Hollywood—and stayed there—without surviving the occasional fall. Everyone from Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino to Martin Scorsese and Denis Villeneuve has released a movie that, for whatever reason, didn’t resonate with audiences the first time it was released. Filmmaking is a fickle industry – if you make enough movies, one is bound to go wrong.
While many flops are simply bad, there are many other reasons why a film can lose money at the box office. Plenty of great movies have fallen victim to bad timing, ineffective marketing campaigns, or simply being too “out there” for the general public. Fortunately, disappointing box office performance doesn’t have to be a death sentence, and many flops are re-appreciated as classic films in their own right. Read on to see 45 of our favorite movies that bombed at the box office.
Zack Sharf and Ryan Lattanzio contributed to this story.
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