Even as Star Wars: The Force Awakens shatters records across the globe, it wasn’t all glory for the 2015 box office. There were plenty of films – some highly anticipated, others dead on arrival – that didn’t quite justify their worth in the eyes of movie-goers.
With 2015 winding down, we thought we’d take a look back on the biggest flops of the year (box office data as of December 16):
Production Budget: $37 million
Box Office: $21.1 million (domestic); $26.3 million (worldwide total)
Cameron Crowe’s Aloha will probably best be remembered as the movie that controversially casted Emma Stone as a one-quarter Hawaiian woman. The film's impressive A-list cast also includes Rachel McAdams, Bill Murray, Alec Baldwin, and Bradley Cooper (fresh off his turn in the acclaimed American Sniper). It’s got a fairly dense (sometimes incomprehensible) story about a defense contractor sent to Hawaii to oversee a new project, while falling in love with the Air Force officer that is assigned to oversee him. Whitewashing controversy aside, Aloha is an inconsistent and bland effort that our review said was “more Elizabethtown, less Jerry Maguire.”
Production Budget: $70 million
Box Office: $8 million (domestic); $19.6 million (worldwide total)
Michael Mann’s tech-crime thriller starring Chris Hemsworth was one of 2015’s first box office flops, debuting against American Sniper and landing at a measly #10 on its opening weekend. Pretty much dead on arrival, the story of an imprisoned hacker released to help the authorities stop a global tech catastrophe didn’t fare well with critics either. Our 5.4/10 review said “If there’s one thing that Blackhat demonstrates it’s that Michael Mann has nothing left to say.”
Production Budget: $50 million
Box Office: $1.2 million domestic; $13 million (worldwide total)
A grim thriller peppered with A-list Hollywood talent like Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman, Child 44 is the tale of an exiled Soviet soldier tasked with hunting down a serial child killer. It’s a serious affair that our review said “captures the dreary atmosphere of Stalin-era Russia quite nicely,” and as far as movies of these sort go, is adequate. But therein lies its problem: it should be much better than it is given the talent involved. Quality aside, neither Hardy nor Oldman could draw ticket-buyers, as Child 44 bombed big at the box office, totaling a mere $13 million worldwide on a budget of $50 million.
Production Budget: $55 million
Box Office: $31.1 million (domestic); $74 million (worldwide)
Another under-performing but well-reviewed Guillermo del Toro genre flick, the gothic horror Crimson Peak struggled to find is footing despite a holiday-appropriate release right before Halloween. Perhaps the confusion about what the movie was supposed to be impacted its box office; it’s more of a throwback to the gothic romances of old than it is an out-and-out horror movie. Whatever the case, Crimson Peak wasn’t able to capture the international market that was Pacific Rim’s saving grace, and bowed at a fraction of its predecessor’s worldwide gross.
Production Budget: $120 million
Box Office: $56.1 million (domestic); $168 million (worldwide total)
2015’s Fantastic Four is a classic case of the making of the film being far more interesting than the film itself. The troubled production suffered its share of problems, from director Josh Trank’s reported erratic behavior on set, to painfully obvious reshoots, to the blame game that followed in the wake of its dismal reception. Standing at a truly rotten 10% on Rotten Tomatoes, the intended reinvigoration of the Fantastic Four wound up only souring the Fox franchise further. Our own review stated: “Aesthetically drab and dramatically inert, this reboot of Fantastic Four manages to actually make the previous two FF movies seem better in hindsight.” Fantastic Four did manage to make back its production budget, but when marketing is thrown into the cost, its losses stand at around $80 million.
Production Budget: $40 million
Box Office: $10.7 million (domestic); $13.6 million (worldwide total)
Despite an impressive cast boasting Sean Penn, Idris Elba, and Javier Bardem, The Gunman – directed by Taken’s Pierre Morel – failed to make an impression in 2015. Penn stars as a retired black-ops merc that finds himself the target of a hit squad seeking retribution for an assassination he performed years earlier. While we thought the movie was “Okay” with a score of 6.8, The Gunman lost big at the box office, falling short of its $40 million budget by more than half.
Production Budget: $14 million
Box Office: $12.3 million (domestic); $13.1 million (worldwide total)
The fact that a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine – starring John Cusack, no less – made enough money to warrant a sequel is amazing in and of itself. The fact that the original movie was actually pretty good is even crazier. Unfortunately, HTTM 2 is a failure on all accounts, its lack of Cusack removing the cohesiveness of the first film and its general lack of laughs and innovation making it insufferable. While not as big a flop as some other movies on this list, HTTM 2 still lost money and – as one of IGN’s worst-reviewed movies of 2015 – lost two hours we can never get back.
Production Budget: $100 million
Box Office: $13.5 million (domestic); $54.5 million (worldwide total)
Much like other renditions of classic novels that have a place on this list – Pan and Victor Frankenstein – In the Heart of the Sea looks at a literary classic from a new perspective. Based on the non-fiction book of the same name, Ron Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea is the tale that inspired Herman Melville to write Moby-Dick, but unfortunately the result is quite dull. Our review called it “uninspired” and the box office numbers seem to indicate that the audience agreed. Perhaps a more straight-forward, big budget rendition of Moby-Dick itself would have proven more lucrative.
Production Budget: $5 million
Box Office: $2.2 million (domestic); $2.3 million (worldwide total)
The big screen debut of Jem, Kimber, and Aja has the unfortunate distinction of being the worst box office opening of 2015, debuting at just $1.4 million in more than 2,000 theaters. Universal opted to pull the movie from theaters entirely just two weeks later. Based on the memorable glam-rock cartoon of the 1980s, the marketing of the film made it seem like a far cry from the series we remembered, perhaps negatively impacting the nostalgia factor that would’ve brought people to the theater. Our review was more favorable than most (the film holds a 19% on Rotten Tomatoes), but still said that Jem and the Holograms was “not the adaptation fans were hoping for.”
Production Budget: $176 million
Box Office: $47.4 million (domestic); $183.9 (worldwide total)
While The Wachowskis' latest box office spectacle barely squeaked by into the black, its reputation as one of the most incoherent sci-fi movies ever made is perhaps even more damaging than its financial disappointments. While the movie can certainly be enjoyed for its massive scale, big ideas, and its swinging-for-the-fences mentality (in fact, our review of the movie was relatively positive), it’s still a hard pill to swallow knowing that where once The Wachowskis delivered The Matrix, we’ve only gotten a series of increasingly disappointing visual spectacles for the last ten years.
Production Budget: $90 million
Box Office: $27.3 million (domestic); $108.2 million (worldwide total)
IGN’s review of the Vin Diesel vehicle The Last Witch Hunter proclaimed it was “like a cheesy, bargain bin graphic novel come to life.” After starring in Furious 8, one of the year’s biggest hits, Diesel slummed it in this D&D-lite yarn with paper-thin characters and less-than-stellar special effects. Maybe if The Last Witch Hunter had been a SyFy original it would’ve fared better – or would have at least been forgiven for its shortcomings – but as is, it’s a painfully mediocre affair.
Production Budget: $60 million
Box Office: $7.7 million (domestic); $47.3 million (worldwide total)
Based on a series of novels written by Kyril Bonfiglioli starring the titular character, Johnny Depp’s latest eccentric caricature failed to captivate. Charlie Mortdecai is a pompous art dealer enlisted by MI-5 to recover a precious painting that may be a map to hidden Nazi treasures. Unfortunately, Mortdecai grows old quickly. Our review likened it to “a three-minute SNL sketch unfurled into a feature-length snooze” and based on the poor box office return, it seems that audiences agreed.
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