Biggest Box Office Bombs of the Decade

Every year, studios will make a movie they thought everyone would go see but then nobody does. Sometimes they deserve it, sometimes they don’t. Then sometimes a movie will flop so hard it kills a franchise dead in the water and in some cases derails entire careers. Now it’s impossible to know exactly how much money a film lost as studios prefer to keep that real hush-hush but these are our best estimates and, rest assured, absolutely nothing on this list got a sequel. These are the 10 Biggest Box Office Bombs of the Decade.

2010: How Do You Know

TOTAL LOSS: $71 Million

How Do You Know was a romantic dramedy starring Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd, and Jack Nicholson. It did so bad at the box office that Jack Nicholson retired from acting, and director James L Brooks hasn’t made a movie since.

2011: Mars Needs Moms

TOTAL LOSS – $111 Million

A lot of people forget that Mars Needs Moms was a Disney animated film. Probably because it’s the worst Disney-branded animated box office bomb in history, doing so poorly that co-writer and director Simon Wells hasn’t directed a movie since.

2012: John Carter

TOTAL LOSS – $200 Million

Remember when I said Mars Needs Mom was the worst Disney animated film in history? That’s because John Carter lost more money for Disney than any other movie they’ve ever made. In fact, John Carter lost so much money it led to Rich Ross resigning as head of Walt Disney Studios. After this and Battleship that same year, and Taylor Kitsch’s career still hasn’t fully recovered.

2013: The Lone Ranger

TOTAL LOSS – $140 Million

Poor Disney. Three years in a row with the biggest flops at the box office. Thank God for Marvel and Star Wars, right? The Lone Ranger should have been a smash hit considering it reteamed Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinkski with Johnny Depp. But Depp’s controversial casting as Tonto gave the film a bad buzz and it never recovered, despite the fact that Quentin Tarantino included it in his top ten movies of the year.

2014: Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return

TOTAL LOSS – $71 Million

Did you even remember this animated sequel to The Wizard of Oz was a thing? Because I didn’t, which is a sure fire sign you’ve got a major box office disaster on your hands.

2015: Pan

TOTAL LOSS – $125 Million

The Peter Pan origin story where Hugh Jackman sings covers of Nirvana songs didn’t do well? Who’d have thunk it? To be fair, 2015 was a ROUGH year for a lot of studios with disasters like Fantastic Four, Jupiter Ascending, Tomorrowland, and The Good Dinosaur all losing piles of money.

2016: TIE – Ben Hur / Monster Trucks

TOTAL LOSS – $120 Million

Remember the 1959 Academy Award winning epic Ben-Hur? Of course, classic! The 2016 remake starring Jack Huston? Nope. But it’s not alone as some movie Nickelodeon made called Monster Trucks lost roughly the same amount of money. Add Ghostbusters and Gods of Egypt to the mix, and 2016 lost a LOT of cash.

2017: King Arthur Legend of the Sword

TOTAL LOSS – $150 Million

Guy Ritchie was clearly the wrong choice for this fantasy epic, though luckily he’s rebounded with Disney’s live-action Aladdin and The Gentleman (which seems to be much more his style).

2018: Mortal Engines

TOTAL LOSS – $175 Million

Producer Peter Jackson was clearly swinging for the fences when he bought the rights to this one, hoping for another sprawling epic like he delivered with The Lord of the Rings. Instead, he got lumped with one of the biggest box office bombs of all time.

2019: Dark Phoenix OR Terminator Dark Fate

TOTAL LOSS – $100 Million +

It’s still up in the air as far as who will take the crown this year since Dark Fate is technically still earning money, if you can call it that, but both will lose over 100 million by the time it’s all said and done. While Terminator: Dark Fate was praised as a better sequel than some of the other Terminator sequels, it appears it’s too little too late. Meanwhile Dark Phoenix was just not a good movie at all with Jennifer Lawrence notably phoning in her performance as Mystique and fans ready for Marvel and Disney to take a fresh crack at the X-Men.