Box Office Bombs

Almost Famous

2000

Budget $60 million

Box office $47.4 million

Office Space wins this thread.

Austin Powers comes in second.

Showgirls.

The Room.

Worst movie ever made. Became a cult hit because of just that. The director was so clueless he never even understood that people went to see it to make fun of it.

Shawshank and Big Lebowski

"It's a Wonderful Life"

"The Wizard of Oz"

Both were not box office hits when first released, but are now considered iconic classic films.

Fight Club

The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The very definition of a cult hit.

It Takes a Thief

Banacek

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Blade Runner

John Carpenter's The Thing

R6 But only in the US. Mention "George Bailey" to someone abroad and you'll hear only crickets from them.

Almost Famous is mawkish sentimental crap that's only favored by wannabe groupie whores and nostalgic boomers. People were right the first time about it.

I don't remember those being what one would consider bombs, r5.

Xanadu

Death Becomes Her

A Christmas Story

John Waters says that while Hairspray did ok in theatrical release, it became hugely popular on video, oddly enough, at children's birthday parties!

Hocus Pocus wasn't a hit in theaters, but has a following now. Just this evening, Bette Midler reconvened the cast for restoration charity.

Heathers

The Craft

Austin Powers (the first one--was a bomb until it went to video, and then became a huge hit)

Napolean Dynamite

Donnie Darko

"The Stepford Wives" (1975)- earned $4 million at the box office, got middling reviews. But spawned a remake and is constantly referenced in pop culture.

Blade Runner

Mean Girls

Xanadu

All became more famous after their first release.

On a budget of $400,000 "Napoleon Dynamite" made $46 million at the box office. It's a sleeper, not a bomb.

I don't understand Napoleon Dynamite, don't think it is funny.

R25=Pedro

gee that poster at r22 for The Stepford Wives gives a way a major plot point. (the best friend etc.)

R26. Yup. Still don't get it.

The Stepford Wives film itself is not what become iconic, it's the title that encapsulates a certain kind of woman. A weirdly perfect, icy cool trophy wife, that has something off about her. We've all seen them.

Mommie FUCKING Dearest, you little homosexual boys.

Flash Gordon

Huge afterlife compared to box office:

Shawshank Redemption

Dazed and Confused

Austin Powers 1

Showgirls

Casino

Fight Club

Usual Suspects

Waterworld. International gross was $175,972,000, making it just able to break even with production costs. Also became somewhat of a cult classic.

Because it's Halloween...

Monster Squad did horribly in the theaters, but found a second life on cable. It's now become a cult classic in the horror genre.

Treat r treat

Trick r treat

Starship Troopers

Idiocracy. Didn’t even really get released. And yet now it’s a prophetic guidebook to American culture, 485 years sooner than expected.

Alien (1979)

Defending Your Life with Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep. Barely on the public's radar for a couple of weeks in 1991. Then it did decent business as a rental. Now it's streaming almost everywhere.

Silent Running with a young Bruce Dern.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, a quirky British film that did awful business on release but has become a cult favorite. With Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt.

The Ghost Writer, a Roman Polanski film, also with Ewan McGregor

R23 Mean Girls? The title of the thread is “Box Office Bombs” not “Mainstream Hits”. Mean Girls was a hit film that remained culturally relevant.

Office Space didn't do well initially but became a cult film after airing repeatedly on Comedy Central.

R42, couldn’t even get to the second reply, huh?

Heaven's Gate. Was released twice and bombed both times but is still considered a masterpiece.

^by whom?

Anything by Mike Judge: Office Space, Idiocracy, Beavis and Butthead do America.

The Wizard of Sox (not a bomb, but disappointing first theatrical run).

Return to Oz

R47. Oz, not Sox. Damn autocorrect

But we knew that all the way back at R6.

Vertigo

Repo Man

Troop Beverly Hills

[quote] Vertigo

Vertigo didn’t do well in the box office? I’m genuinely surprised at that since it was an Alfred Hitchcock picture. I never knew that. I assumed he didn’t have any flops.

American Psycho

Bladerunner surely owns this thread - a critical and box office failure on release which grew to become one of the most influential and loved films of all time, spawning not just myriad other movie imitators but having a direct influence on the visual and tech culture that we now all live with.

Strange Brew, the Mackenzie Brothers movie. I saw it in the theater when it was released, being a major SCTV fan. There were TWO other people there. It made about 17 cents in theatres but became a huge hit on HBO and home video.

Good one, r56. I’d forgotten about that one.

I saw it on HBO only (and enjoyed it).

The Office and 30 Rock are the TV version of this.

Uh, movies that did poorly at the box office?

R58, huh?

R59 Did you finish reading the sentence?

L.A. Confidential

I did, r60, but it still doesn’t make any sense.

A TV version of a movie that didn’t do well at the box office but gained a cult following?

Helen Lawson in Lady Godiva's Way.

R22, thanks for reminding me of the Stepford Wives. I’ve always thought the husband was hot – exactly my type. The actor who played the role, Peter Masterson, was the father of Mary Stuart Masterson.

I'm not sure it was just the movie that entered popular culture. The film is based on a bestselling book by Ira Levin, who also wrote A Kiss Before Dying and Rosemary’s Baby, among other books-to-movies. Levin is compulsively readable and popular still today; the book was famous well before the movie was made.

"Vertigo" did fine at the box office: made $7.3 million on a $2.5 million budget, and Hitchcock was nominated for the Directors' Guild Award too.

Hitchcock's films rarely bombed

Tron

Fight Club wasn't a box office smash

R43, I must have R2 blocked

I thought Vertigo was a bomb and Hitch blamed James Stewart being too old.

R39 Alien was a huge hit when it was released.

There are some films that were big at the box office in the US but internationally were failures like 48 Hours & National Lampoon's Family Vacation. However, their respective sequels were big hits internationally because the first films got discovered on VHS.

Newsies

the musical sequences in Heaven's Gate - the prologue and the rollerskating scene are spectacular. It made me wonder why nobody offered Cimino a musical to direct but i guess everyone was afraid he would go crazy over-budget again.

"Liquid Sky" (1982) was a low-budget art film that still resonates. It made about a million, but every film fan knows of it, and it influenced pop culture and dozens of other films.

Actually, Cimino was supposed to direct Footloose r74. But it didn't work out.

R75 Can an independent art film that would never be expected to have mainstream success be considered a bomb?

Overboard

Clue (though I was never a fan myself)

Lake placid became a big cult movie.

Drop Dead Gorgeous would be another one.

Most people here stopped reading OP's post at "bombed at box office" and obviously didn't make it to the "extremely influential/culturally important" part

R32 Definitely Dazed and Confused. I read that Universal didn't promote it very much because they didn't think it would do well. It's a great movie and I'm so glad it became a cult hit. Here's a table read by the whole cast just 2 weeks ago. Rory Cochrane (Slater the stoner guy) seems off.

R81 here. Not the WHOLE WHOLE cast, but pretty much all the main players.

Carpenter's The Thing didn't perform well at the box office when it came out, and initially got bad reviews. It also unfortunately came out around the same time as E.T. though.

Donnie Darko was horrible timing for a release date, having come out shortly after 9/11.

Being John Malkovich, if I recall. Only released in independent theaters but has had some effect culturally and is a cult classic.

Velvet Goldmine. Did not get nearly enough attention when released but Michael Stipe was also a producer of this one too and was loosely based on David Bowie’s life. Is a cult classic now.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch OWNS this thread, though. The movie barely made a ripple when it came out but is extremely popular now as a Broadway hit and had a had a big effect culturally. It was as if John Cameron Mitchell was just one decade or so ahead of his time when he made the film and audiences weren’t quite ready for it then.

Showgirls owns this thread. It was a huge hit on the rental market.

Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale deserved to be a bigger hit but I think it was too "arty" for the general public. It bombed but did amazingly well via rentals.

I want to rub the front of your trousers, r46!!!

Oh sorry, wrong thread

Drop Dead Gorgeous and Jennifer's Body both came out and bombed hard, but are now considered cult classics. Funny how that works, isn't it?

I've often wondered if movies like this are ahead of the time or if they just weren't what people wanted to see at the time or maybe mismarketing? That certainly seemed the case with Jennifer's Body. It was marketed to teenage boys who wanted to see Megan Fox naked and were probably pissed off that she barely showed anything at all. The marketing should have been geared to women and gay men.

Halloween was a bomb during its first run. No one went to see and the reviews weren't great, but it took a rave from The Village Voice to reignite the film and the next runs were very successful.

Bonnie and Clyde was a flop after a scathing New York Times review by Bosley Crowther. Then Pauline Kael gave it a rave and turned everything around and Bosley got fired for being out of step with the times.

Mulholland Drive — critics saw vision, audiences just saw Lynchian weirdness

Only Lovers Left Alive — A unique take on the vampire genre, but moviegoers didn’t want to watch a glass of milk in heels for two hours

The Iron Giant — a beautiful story, but it looked too retro

Grindhouse — despite the irritating awkward dialogue in the second half, and way too much Tarantino onscreen, this has two fabulous action tales, but all anyone could think was, how much do I really want to see Rosario Dawson’s feet tickled?

All bombed, all went on to be enduringly popular, praised movies.

^^ Grindhouse was an epic boxoffice failure

Jennifer's Body is a cult fave? According to whom?

R95 this is no cutter! Guess what it’s used for??

Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Came to say Hocus Pocus r18.

Wasn't successful upon release, but now a beloved Halloween classic.

Newsies

R18 & R98 : Hocus Pocus bombed because some geniuses at Disney decided to release it in the middle of summer (July 13, 1993). It also didn't help that it was released the same day as Free Willy. Thank the media gods for home video and cable TV -- a few years earlier and no one would have ever heard of it.

The Wicker Man

Hocus Pocus has stood the test of time more than Free Willy has. So many people who are younger today know Hocus Pocus. How many even give a rats ass about Free Willie?

Hocus Pocus didn't really bomb that hard

Clue was a huge bomb, and is revered as a classic now.

I saw it opening weekend in a crowded theater and people booed!

Mommie Dearest is a great example. It is a film almost everyone is aware of even if they've never seen it.

Glitter.

It had the unfortunate disadvantage of being released on the weekend before 9/11.

But my lambs - my treasured Lambily - have turned into a classic.

Dahlings...

Nightmare Alley was a flop but is now considered a film noir classic.

And of course there's Citizen Kane.

The Night of the Hunter was a critical and commercial bomb when it was released in 1955 and is now considered a classic.

Poor Charles Laughton didn't live long enough to see that happen.

R83 Okay kids, we can ever see that existential body-horror that will fuck you up, or we can see that film with that cute little girl and that funny alien creature?

Either

r74 When the western town was built 6 feet too narrow, Cimino had them tear down both sides and move them back 3 feet. They could have torn down one side and pushed back 6.

My first ever job as a teenager was working in Blockbuster video for a year across 1995/1996.

Every couple of days we'd get someone coming in and saying "My friend has told me to rent a movie, I can't remember the name of the film but it's about a prison..."

There were also countless occasions of people returning the rental copy and buying their own copy in the store.

R112, around that same time, I rented Lost Highway on VHS. I honestly thought the poor video quality was done on purpose, considering it's a David Lynch film. Turns out, some dipshit before me rented it, copied it, and returned the copy to Blockbuster and kept the original. They even went as far as scanning and printing the label on their inkjet printer and gluing it to the tape.

“Somewhere in Time.” Flop in theaters. Then HBO showed it and it got a devoted audience. Now it’s a romance classic, even spawning an annual convention of devotees at that hotel in Michigan.

“John Carter” Major, classic flop in theaters. Still engenders conflicting reactions, but has developed a devoted cult following over the years.

“Rocky Horror Picture Show” Theater musical it’s based on was a hit in London, but flopped in New York. Even the movie version flopped. But, when it started to be featured in Midnite Shows, it fostered a devoted cult of repeat viewers, who ritualized it, so that now it’s iconic.

Grease 2

And we can’t forget Disney’s huge flop, “Fantasia,” so unsuccessful back in its original release in 1940, Disney could have gone bankrupt. Only wartime work saved the studio.

Even later re-releases, in 1956, and a blown-up “widescreen” version in 1964, were not big money makers. It wasn’t until 1970 that a psychedelic ad campaign, not to mention a few excisions of a racist character, and the movie finally made money. Since then, it’s a major classic, even spawning a sequel of sorts, “Fantasia 2000.”

[quote] How many even give a rats ass about Free Willie?

I do.

[quote] Grease 2

You really didn’t understand the assignment, did you, dear?

Grease 2 bombed at the box office...

No shit, Rose.

But it never [bold]subsequently became hits in rentals and reruns/extremely influential/culturally important?[/bold]

Holy fuck, r80 is right.

[quote]"Vertigo" did fine at the box office: made $7.3 million on a $2.5 million budget, and Hitchcock was nominated for the Directors' Guild Award too.

The wiki article on the film said, "While Vertigo did break even upon its original release, earning $3.2 million in North American distributor rentals against its $2,479,000 cost, it earned significantly less than other Hitchcock productions."

*ASTERISK NECESSARY FOR THE WIZARD OF OZ. The notion that The Wizard of Oz was a "bomb" on its initial run is a popular misconception. It was a major hit - the 5th highest-grossing movie of 1939 during a period of peak movie attendance. The caveats are that it was so expensive that it didn't make a profile on its original run (MGM annually mounted "prestige" productions they didn't necessarily expect to make money) and that more than half its audience were children who paid 10-15 cents a ticket, as opposed to the 25 cents of a regular adult admission. It was a popular hit.

[R122] "make a profit" I meant to type

That's right: it was wasn't a huge hit, but it wasn't a box office bomb either.

R91,I read somewhere (probably here) that Halloween tanked with test groups and they went back and added that music and then tested quite well.

[R125] John Carpenter himself composed the theme music.

Right, I was going to include that, but wasn’t sure.

R85–Hedwig started as theater.

Clue is “revered as a classic?” It sucked.

Is one Clue ending revered more than another? How does one access the multiple endings when streaming? You wouldn’t want it to be “the Peacock” one and know ahead of time who the murder is going to be. Does this and Rocky make Tim Curry the king of bombs that found their way afterward?

R116, the Sega Genesis "Fantasia" game also sucked ass, coming after the amazing "Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse" which I believe Disney animators were involved with.

Heathers was a huge bomb at the time and is now considered one of the best teen movies of the 80's. Looking back, just about every dark comedy has been a box office bomb. What's up with that? Are mainstream audiences just not sophisticated enough to "get" them? Are they harder to market?

Visconti movies? Ludwig?

"Grease 2" does have a cult following, with many people saying it's not as bad as its reputation.

The King of Comedy bombed, but has since become one of Scorsese's masterpiece films.

Thank you R134. These bitches are mean around here.

We love ya, though, r136.

This is the Datalounge. It’s like throwing an infant in a river to teach it to swim.

In my experience, more infants sink than swim.

The King of Comedy is another great dark comedy people didn't know what to do with. I always feel like some people see these and think "do we laugh or cringe?" Not knowing they're allowed to do both.

Bringing Up Baby was a commercial flop upon its release, although it eventually made a small profit after its re-release in the early 1940s. Shortly after the film's premiere, Hepburn was labeled as "box office poison" by the Independent Theatre Owners of America and her career would not recover until The Philadelphia Story two years later. The film's reputation began to grow during the 1950s, when it was first shown on television.

Since then, the film has received acclaim from both critics and audience for its zany antics and pratfalls, absurd situations and misunderstandings, perfect sense of comic timing, completely screwball cast, series of lunatic and hare-brained misadventures, disasters, light-hearted surprises and romantic comedy.

In 1990, Bringing Up Baby was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant," and it has appeared on a number of greatest-films lists, ranking at 88th on the American Film Institute's 100 greatest American films of all time list.

Idiocracy

Satan Met a Lady (1936). Bette Davis said they had to sell dishes to get people to see it.

"Hocus Pocus" was a complete flop at the box office, but is now a traditional Halloween favorite.

Rain (1932). Variety said "It turns out to be a mistake to have assigned the Sadie Thompson role to Miss Crawford. It shows her off unfavorably. The dramatic significance of it all is beyond her range. ... [Director] Milestone tried to achieve action with the camera, but wears the witnesses down with words. Joan Crawford's get-up as the light lady is extremely bizarre. Pavement pounders don't quite trick themselves up as fantastically as all that. In commercial favor of Rain is the general repute of the theme and Miss Crawford's personal following, but the finished product will not help either."

"Pavement pounders don't quite trick themselves up as fantastically as all that."

Variety is an expert on how hookers dress?! I'm not even a huge fan of Crawford as an actress but I thought she was great in Rain

R67 quit trying to make Tron happen. Tron isn’t going to happen!

Sylvia Scarlett (1935) was notorious as one of the most famous unsuccessful movies of the 1930s but a Turner Classic Movies article suggested that the film's themes of sexual politics were ahead of its time and that the film's reception has improved over the years. In 1998, Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader included the film in his unranked list of the best American films not included on the AFI Top 100.

Office Space made about $10 million at the box office and became one of the top 5 selling DVD's ever for the studio. Fight Club just broke even on release and also became one of the top selling DVD's of all time.

Rupert Murdoch fired the studio head because he didnt like the anti-corporate message of Fight Club, it had nothing to do with the underwhelming box office performance.

ROADHOUSE and THE CUTTING EDGE both did break even business in theaters and then killed it on VHS and DVD.

Was the Cutting Edge the one about the hot hockey player who becomes an ice dancer?

R150, yes