The 10 Biggest Money Losing Movies of All-Time

These box office bombs lost fortunes for their distributors and production companies and the respect of anyone who actually did see them.


1. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Guy Richie is perennially on the verge of making good movies – everyone has so much hope for him, yet he keeps turning out garbage (with the exception of Sherlock). His latest flick, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, follows the trend. With a production budget of $175 million and a marketing budget of $100 million, it earned a grand total of $39.2 million in the US and Canada, and $107 million in other territories. That’s a loss of about $164 million.


2. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. Despite the all-star voice cast of Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Joseph Fiennes, DreamWorks pictures lost $125 million on this film, nearly bankrupting the company and caused the company to shift from traditional animation to computer animation.


3. John Carter. This big, flashy science fiction flick was an absolute stinker at the box office, pulling in $284 million, which sounds pretty good – but the total production and marketing costs were $350 million. It was a rare miss for Disney.


4. Monster Trucks. This film about a high schooler who finds a monster living in his truck grossed $33.4 million in the US and Canada and $31.1 million in other territories, netting $64.5million. Due to its $125 million budget as well as its promotional budget, the Los Angeles Times called it a box office bomb.


5. Titan A.E. was another animated movie that had a wonderful cast, including Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, JaneaneGarofalo, Bill Pullman and John Leguizamo, but flopped at the box office. It was the final film for Fox Animation Studios and lost about $100 million for the company.

6. Mars Needs Moms, a computer animated picture, is about a boy who has to rescue his mom after she’s abducted by aliens. It made $39 million on a budget of $150 million. Ouch.

7. The Lone Ranger. Almost from the start, this Johnny Depp vehicle was doomed. It suffered production delays and budget problems requiring all four headlining starts to reduce their salaries by 20% just to keep production on track. The opening weekend was soft as Dairy Queen ice cream, grossing $2 million on opening day. It improved a bit, ultimately grossing $89,302,115 in the US and $171,200,000 in other countries for a worldwide total of $260,502,115. However, the film cost $350 million to produce and market. After all the accounting was done, Disney lost up to $190 million.


8. Gigli. Production bosses hoped the off-screen romance between Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck would lead to box office sales but that didn’t pan out. The movie was largely ridiculed from the moment it hit theatres. It set a record that stands to this day for the biggest second-weekend drop in box office gross of any film in wide release. By the third weekend 97% of theatres had pulled it. The film ultimately grossed $6,087,542 domestically and $1,178,667 internationally for a total of $7,266,209 on a $75.6 million production budget. It was one of the largest box office bombs in history.


9. Tomorrowland received mixed reviews from critics but customers largely stayed away. The film grossed $209 million, and Disney took a write-down of $140 million.


10. The Adventures of Pluto Nash received nearly unanimous negative reviews and became famous for being one of the biggest flops in history; not even the charming Eddie Murphy could save it. It had a worldwide gross of $7,103,973 and cost $100 million to make.

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