5 Worst Box Office Bombs Ever, Ranked
Have you ever wondered what movies managed to lose the most money ever? Well, there you have it: no one’s managed to lose as much as these five films’ directors. Ever.
5. Cutthroat Island (1995) — $202M
Typically, you wouldn’t expect a movie as old as Cutthroat Island to be on any budget-related movie list, but this one’s an exception. For a first time, Cutthroat Island had an insane budget of almost $100M, but it only earned $10M back. If we consider inflation, the movie lost over $202M, and its production company never recovered.
4. Mortal Engines (2018) — $204M
As a wise man once said, “Timing is king.” Mortal Engines missed out on its timing by almost two decades and paid its price. When the movie hit the theaters, pretty much no one remembered the once-popular original novel, and the movie that cost up to $150M to produce earned less than $84M, losing its company $204M total.
3. The 13th Warrior (1999) — $227M
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Another massive flop from 25 years ago, this movie had all the chances to hit it big but something went horribly wrong. Despite having the Die Hard director John McTiernan and the movie star Antonio Banderas onboard, The 13th Warrior raised just under $62M against the budget of $160M… And lost around $227M in the end.
2. The Lone Ranger (2013) — $240M
The Lone Ranger, too, seemed destined to become a massive commercial success: the movie had the Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski and none other than Johnny Depp, so what could go wrong? Apparently, The Lone Ranger turned out too dark for the general public’s liking and lost over $240M at the box office.
1. John Carter (2012) — $255M
If you’ve ever wondered about which movie has lost the most money ever, there you go: it was John Carter. The film that was supposed to become the beginning of a highly-successful trilogy, John Carter had a massive budget: just its marketing cost over $100M.
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But no amount of cash-pouring saved the title and John Carter ended up losing the grand total of $255M, becoming the worst box office flop in history.
Curiously enough, the two worst movies in terms of commercial success both happened around a decade ago — and have maintained their spots over so many years.
There might just be a reason why this coincidence is not coincidental, but we can’t quite put our finger on it… Apart from “maybe don’t spend hundreds of millions of dollars on non-established franchises.”