10 Biggest Box Office Bombs Of All Time (2024)

Avatar, Avengers: Endgame, Titanic, and Top Gun Maverick are just four of the highest-grossing films ever made. While the critical reception of “box office smashes” may vary, if a movie makes $800 million, $900 million, or even a billion dollars, that’s nothing short of a tremendous accomplishment.

Regrettably, not all movies are so fortuitous. In fact, there is a torrent of films with substantial marketing and production budgets that flopped hard. Even good movies can sometimes miss the mark regarding box office numbers. Whether it be from abysmal reviews or a general lack of enthusiasm, these movies are evoked in infamy as box office duds.

10 Pan

Estimated $170 - 180 Million Dollar Loss

Everyone knows the tale of Peter Pan. The fable of the titular flying boy’s adventures in Neverland has seen sundry different film adaptations. 2015’s Pan tried taking the legend of Peter Pan and giving it a blockbuster makeover.

Despite big-named star power and excessive budget, Pan earned poor reviews and grossed $128.4 million worldwide. While that’s not chump change when measured to its estimated $300 plus million costs, suffice to say, Pan didn’t breathe new life into the Peter Pan character.

9 Mars Needs Mom

Estimated $180 - 190 Million Dollar Loss

When 2004’s The Polar Express came out, many people saw its computer animated style as cutting edge. With its success came other movies trying to utilize the visual technique. Mars Needs Moms is just one of those films, but is also the biggest fiasco of them all.

Much like The Polar Express, Mars Needs Mom’s animation was expensive, so it was even more paramount for the movie to find great monetary prosperity. Alas, the film lost an estimated $180 - $190 million, more than enough to see this animation aesthetic fade away.

8 Battleship

Estimated $191 Million Dollar Loss

During the late 2000s and early 2010s, The Transformers movies were Hollywood’s premiere blockbuster franchise. It didn’t matter that the films were mostly terrible; each entry was a dependable box-office smash. So Hasbro sought to turn another of its toys into a great action feature film.

Battleship might’ve had the look of a sci-fi action summer flick, but looks are all it had. Between its dreadful writing, poor direction, and nonsensical plot, Battleship was both a massive critical and commercial failure, losing nearly $200 million for Hasbro and Universal Pictures.

7 Strange World

Estimated $197 Million Dollar Loss

It’s fair to say that Disney’s animated productions aren’t what they once were. Even if you ignore the soulless live-action remakes of their beloved classics, many of their original animated films just don’t hold a candle to their best pictures from prior decades.

2022’s Stange World seemed like a harken back to Disney’s glory days, but it was just another piece of Walt Disney Animation’s downward spiral. Despite positive reviews, the film grossed a meager $73.6 million worldwide, not even in the ballpark of its estimated cost.

6 Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas

Estimated $199 Million Dollar Loss

Turns out it’s not just Disney which is prone to releasing animated films that fail to turn a profit. DreamWorks Animation not only put out a commercial defeat, but one that nearly bankrupted their entire studio. Step right up Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas.

Even though Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas is far from being an awful movie, its poor box office numbers proved highly damaging to DreamWorks. Not only that, but the film was DreamWorks’ last feature to use hand-drawn and traditional animation.

5 Cutthroat Island

Estimated $202 Million Dollar Loss

Before the Johnny Depp starring Pirates of the Caribbean films exploded onto the scene, the world of pirate movies was full of peaks and valleys, some good and some bad. Yet there was no swashbuckler adventure more infamously unpalatable as 1995’s Cutthroat Island.

Directed by Renny Harlin, Cutthroat Island utterly soured Hollywood’s opinion on pirate films for years and it’s clear to see why. Not only did Cutthroat Island lose over $200 million, but was panned the world over by everyone who saw it.

4 Mortal Engines

Estimated $204 Million Dollar Loss

The amount of young adult novels turned into feature films during the 2000s is staggering. Most of these adaptations might not have been the cream of the corp, but could typically at least get a wealth of moviegoers into theaters. Mortal Engines is unquestionably the anomaly.

Despite extraordinary visuals, the 2018 adaptation of Phillip Reeve’s sci-fi novel was criticized for its writing, storytelling, and performances. At just $84 million, Mortal Engines didn’t even come close to matching its enormous production budget.

3 The 13th Warrior

Estimated $220 - 227 Million Dollar Loss

The Disney of the late 1900s mostly stuck to what they were known for: animated and adventure movies geared towards a young audience. When they wanted to do something more “mature” they did so under the Touchstone Pictures name.

The 13th Warrior was an ambitious historical action flick which is mostly remembered nowadays for its status as an astronomical box office disappointment. Despite being directed by action movie legend John McTiernan, The 13th Warrior limped out of theaters after surrendering over $200 million worldwide.

2 The Lone Ranger

Estimated $230 - 240 Million Dollar Loss

The success of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies quickly spurred an onslaught of films based on properties looking to start their own billion dollar franchise. Without question, the golden goose of these misguided productions is The Lone Ranger.

Even with reuniting director Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp from the Pirates of the Caribbean series, this 2013 Western action origin story of the exemplary gunslinger failed to make a mark. In the end, Walt Disney Pictures lost nearly $240 million for their troubles.

1 John Carter

Estimated $250 - 255 Million Dollar Loss

Even for all its box office success, the Disney moniker is just as prominent on the list of box office bombs. Top among Disney’s mountain of economic feature missteps is the big screen version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, John Carter.

While John Carter is far from a poorly made movie and, in fact, does quite a few things well, it will forever remain one of the biggest box office bombs in history. At over $250 million in loss of revenue, John Carter rules both the red planet and the leaderboard of feature picture commercial catastrophes.