Hollywood is fond of trying to hit a home run. The result is either a timeless classic making huge money or a disastrous failure going up in flames so spectacularly that it becomes a movie legend. These are not just regular flops but the sort of money pits that made the studios shudder and left the executives wondering what they did wrong. Below are five of the most astonishing Hollywood box office failures that failed to even come close to recouping their big budgets: projects that aimed high, had a huge budget, and ended in a way no one could have figured out (except maybe the accountants).
5. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)
If there was ever a film that soared too high, this was it. Catching the trend of the wildly popular Final Fantasy video game franchise, The Spirits Within sought to revolutionize the game—literally. Its creators hoped to make hyper-realistic CGI characters and reinvent the world of animation. What they produced was a movie that, although visually groundbreaking, put people off. The characters were nearly human.
But not quite, giving everyone a dose of that eerie “uncanny valley” feeling. Add a bloated budget and a storyline that confused fans and newcomers alike, and you’ve got a financial disaster. The losses were so bad, the studio behind it—Square Pictures—shut its doors not long after. A bold experiment, sure. Just not one anyone wanted to repeat.
4. The 13th Warrior (1999)
All of The 13th Warrior’s ingredients seemed to add up to a recipe for success—adapted from a Michael Crichton novel, featuring Antonio Banderas, and helmed by the man who gave us Die Hard. And yet. What went wrong? Essentially. Everything. Production was stalled, rewrites took forever, expensive reshoots were a necessity—name it.
The movie couldn’t seem to get its act together: historical drama? Supernatural thriller? Action extravaganza? It attempted to be all of the above and wound up being none. By the time it was released, audiences were already turning off, and the film slipped into box office ignominy quietly. Even Omar Sharif, who played in it, was so dismayed that he briefly retired from acting. That speaks volumes.
3. Mortal Engines (2018)
In theory, this should have been a visual treat. A post-apocalyptic landscape with massive moving cities? Yes, please. Supported by producers who were involved in The Lord of the Rings and adapted from a bestseller, Mortal Engines had everything going for it to become a huge success. But for some reason, it just didn’t work.
The promotion failed to indicate what the film was about, and the film—though creative—failed to resonate on an emotional level. It opened poorly, fell rapidly, and was gone from theaters in no time. Though it had big-budget visual effects and a distinctive location, it never gained an audience. It’s one of those unfortunate instances where ambition exceeded execution.
2. Cutthroat Island (1995)
If you desire a behind-the-scenes nightmare tale of Hollywood excess and bad fortune, look to Cutthroat Island. This pirate adventure film was meant to revive the genre with a vengeance—and perhaps even rescue its struggling studio to boot. Rather, it plunged like a cannonball. The movie endured endless script revisions, changes of cast, on-set catastrophes, and a budget that ballooned wildly out of control.
Geena Davis and Matthew Modine were substitute lead actors, brought in at the last minute, and by the time the film was completed, the studio had essentially spent its marketing budget. It flopped big time, lost millions, and even made it into the record books as one of the greatest financial failures in history. The icing on the cake? It took down its studio with it.
1. John Carter (2012)
And here it is—the granddaddy of them all: John Carter. This had it all: a gigantic budget, a renowned director off the success of Pixar, and source material that quite literally spawned half of contemporary sci-fi. And yet, for whatever reason, the puzzle never fit together. The film had no title to speak of, the advertising was incoherent, and the film itself never quite established its tone. By the time it was released, no one knew what John Carter was supposed to be about—and nobody went to see it. Even with some decent world-building and action going on, the losses were immense. It was one of the biggest budget flops in film history and a reminder that even Disney, with all its resources, can sometimes get it totally, completely wrong.
So what’s the lesson here? Huge budgets, huge stars, and huge ideas aren’t always going to equal huge success. Even with all the ingredients for disaster, sometimes a movie just goes entirely off the rails. These movies weren’t just box office flops—they were warning signs. Evidence that in the cutthroat game of Hollywood, nothing is ever a sure thing. And a blockbuster fantasy can become a money pit quicker than you can say “reshoots.