Sometimes, a movie is destined for the dollar bin — and even Hollywood's biggest stars, directors,
and producers can't polish it into something worth paying to see. These cinematic flops
just didn't leave the impact studios hoped they would. So, say it with us: Bombs away!
There was a time when the name Robert Zemeckis was up there with the likes of George Lucas and Steven
Spielberg. The director of such classics as "Back to the Future," "Forrest Gump," and "Cast Away"
then fell in love with the possibilities of computer-generated imagery — or CGI.
His fascination with the technology/art form made sense; Zemeckis was an early
adopter of similar innovations on "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?," but aside from
2004's "The Polar Express" — which made big bucks at the box-office but to this
day remains infamous for its creepily lifeless animation — his big-budget
CGI takes on "Beowulf" and "A Christmas Carol" debuted and disappeared quickly from theaters.
"Bah… Humbug!"
In 2011, Zemeckis produced "Mars Needs Moms," with protege Simon Wells writing and directing.
But when it came to the uncanny valley factor, the off-putting effect was the same.
This late in the CGI game, there was really no excuse for the motion capture animation in "Mars
Needs Moms" to look so ugly and unsettling. James Cameron's "Avatar" had wowed audiences two years
earlier, and other breakthroughs had taken the medium a long way since "Polar Express."
Ticket buyers didn't connect with the title, the story,
or the central characters. In a post-mortem, studio executives concluded that boys weren't
interested in a movie about mothers — and younger children may have been scared off
by the premise. "Mars Needs Moms" became one of the biggest box office bombs of its time,
making less than $40 million worldwide, resulting in a loss of more than $100 million.
The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Cats" was a record-breaking hit on Broadway,
where it ran from 1982 until 2000. Its massive success was something of a surprise, a practically
narrative-less show, based on the poetry of T.S. Eliot, that is really just a sequence of songs
and dances about a list of fictional cats with names like Bustopher Jones and Jennyanydots.
But because "Cats" made so much money in one format, executives at Universal were willing
to bet that it could do it again. Never mind that musical adaptations had been struggling
in the decades since "Chicago" had raked in 10 times its budget and won Best Picture.
And never mind that "Cats" was thought to be among the trickiest Broadway smashes to adapt.
Tom Hooper — the man behind the 2012 film version of "Les Misérables" — signed on to direct,
and a star-studded cast was assembled that featured everyone from Jason Derulo and
Taylor Swift to Idris Elba, Judy Dench, and Ian McKellen. Fans of the musical sensation
wondered how realistic the "Cats" movie would be — as the stage show simply isn't. Then,
about five months before the film was set to premiere, a trailer gave those fans
their first glimpse of the titular animals, and many were horrified by what they saw.
These cats — Macavity, Old Deuteronomy, Mr. Mistoffelees — were disturbing human-feline,
CGI-live action hybrids. It was too late to change course. Audiences hoped for a movie
that might be so bad it could rise to the level of camp pleasure. Unfortunately, the
pandemic derailed any possibility of rowdy, ironic screenings and "Cats" never recouped its cost.
Jack London's trim but powerful 1903 novel "The Call of the Wild" is required reading
at middle schools all over America. An anthropomorphic allegory about a hulking
mixed breed dog who must evolve from beloved pet into fearsome pack leader in order to survive,
it has been adapted for the screen multiple times,
but isn't exactly the type of story that lends itself to straightforward cinematic retelling.
For one thing, there isn't much of an overarching, linear narrative to the journey of the dog,
named Buck. For another, it's told entirely from the perspective of the big mutt,
while other characters — humans and canines — simply pass through. Despite the fact that it's
so regularly assigned to children, "The Call of the Wild" is also unceasingly brutal. It's
basically 200 pages of dogs ripping each other apart ... not the best choice for
what 20th Century Fox intended to be a big budget, family-friendly Christmas release.
The original, densely literary novel aims to claw away at the facades of civilization and
capitalism, revealing the grim, nihilistic truth underneath. Instead, viewers got this:
"You've been sleeping for two days. …In my bed."
From the trailer, fans of London's could tell they were getting a sanitized version,
while the general public wasn't exactly begging for yet another remake of a 120 year old book.
Harrison Ford was in-between reprising his roles in "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones"
and was very much back in the zeitgeist. But the real stumbling block was Buck,
a far-too-artificial-looking — and expensive — CGI creation that undermined the entire effort.
In the end, the studio took a roughly $50 million ice bath on "The Call of the Wild."
One could argue that Robert Downey Jr. was the biggest movie star in the world at the end of
2019. He was the centerpiece of "Avengers: Endgame," the extraordinarily profitable
capstone to the first three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Audiences "loved him 3000,"
and couldn't wait to see what he would do with his post-MCU career. No one expected it to be this:
"Chee-Chee, brow."
"My brow as well, when you've got a second."
"Right. Sorry."
First up for Downey was 2020's "Dolittle," ostensibly a family film based on the second
of author Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle books. The fact that "Dolittle" had been delayed until
January — a time when studios typically dump what are predicted to be losers — was worrying. Still,
Downey's presence and the stellar voice cast, which included Emma Thompson, Tom Holland,
Selena Gomez, and Ralph Fiennes, just to name a few, gave Universal and audiences reason to hope.
But the trailer seemed to confirm everyone's worst fears. Viewers couldn't help but notice
that Downey's accent was, to put it mildly, a bit odd. If the best jokes were in the trailer,
they caught wind of the fact that the film's sense of humor might fall flat.
The expensive CGI-heavy visuals also didn't do much to inspire a sense of
wonder in prospective audiences. In short, "Dolittle" looked to be a disappointment.
Once critics and families got to see the final product, word got out about just how
bad Downey's supposedly Welsh affectation was, and the film ultimately came to be
known for an in-poor-taste extended fart joke. "Dolittle" made $251 million dollars,
but it was so pricey to produce and market that it still ended up costing Universal money.
Not two years after "Cats" crashed and burned,
Universal tried again with the contemporary Broadway musical "Dear Evan Hansen."
The play, about a high school student struggling with mental illness, had gained a loyal following,
thanks in part to catchy music penned by Benji Pasek and Justin Paul of "The Greatest Showman"
fame. Rather than wait two decades, Universal got to adapting "Dear Evan Hansen" so immediately,
the same actor who'd originated the role in New York was set to reprise it for the
forthcoming film. But once the trailer aired, even those loyal fans began to doubt that the
27-year-old Ben Platt was the right choice to portray 17-year-old Evan.
It wasn't just that Platt had aged four years — it was how he was styled and
how differently the character came off in those intimate close ups. What had
seemed emotionally honest on a stage suddenly seemed cringy when translated to the screen.
There was also the matter of what "Dear Evan Hansen" was about. Broadway shows only have a
single theater's worth of seats to fill, but the movie had to sell tickets at more than
3000 cinemas across the country. Bad buzz out of the Toronto Film Festival,
where it premiered, didn't do it any favors.
The curtains closed early on the film adaptation of "Dear Evan Hansen," which
made a paltry $17 million worldwide in its three weeks of wide release.
Back in 1995, the artists and storytellers at Pixar dreamt up a simple but satisfying
premise for a children's movie: What if toys came to life when we weren't looking? That
premise spawned four well-received films, one of which — "Toy Story 3" — was even nominated
for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The franchise's dynamic duo, Woody and Buzz,
became icons. Then Disney announced a fifth film focused on the latter
that complicated the original premise so thoroughly and unnecessarily that
fans literally didn't understand what the studio was trying to do. It was a real drag.
"Good luck, captain. We're all counting on you!!!"
"Roger that."
Adding to the confusion was the fact that Chris Evans, as opposed to Tim Allen,
would be voicing the character. This change alone angered some,
who speculated that Allen had been passed over because of his political beliefs. Spoiler alert:
He wasn't. Evans tried to do damage control, tweeting:
"Just to be clear, this isn't Buzz Lightyear the toy. This
is the origin story of the human Buzz Lightyear that the toy is based on."
But that turned out not to be true, either.
2022's "Lightyear" wasn't about a toy astronaut that doesn't realize he's a toy astronaut,
nor was it about a fictional but supposedly real astronaut from Andy's world. Even after trailers
dropped and announcements were made at Disney Investor Day and CinemaCon, prospective audiences
were still scratching their heads. It took a title card tacked to the beginning of the film
to finally clear things up; it read: "In 1995 Andy got a toy. That toy was based on a movie.
This is that movie." But by then, audiences had already lost interest in "Lightyear."
Not so long ago, an R-rated romantic comedy — especially one produced by Judd Apatow — could
do well enough at the box office to justify its existence. By and large, that time has passed.
It's been an eternity since a comedy, let alone a rom-com, has landed in the top
ten highest grossing films of the year. The last one to do so was 2011's "The Hangover:
Part II," and the last true RomComs to break that ceiling were 2005's "Wedding Crashers" and
"Hitch." Suffice it to say, the odds were stacked against "Bros" from the start, but they were
stacked even higher because it was the first major studio rom-com that centered around a gay couple.
After "Bros" fizzled out, co-writer and star Billy Eichner infamously took to twitter to
express his displeasure, blaming homophobia for his film's poor performance. While there
could be some truth to his theory, given the current political climate,
it likely underwhelmed for reasons in addition to its subject matter.
While Eichner has fans from his Funny or Die show "Billy on the Street" and from his time on
"Parks and Recreation," he's not as familiar to a broader audience. Nor is his co-star and love
interest, Luke McFarlane, best known for appearing in Hallmark movies. Also, there wasn't any
urgency to see it on the big screen as "Bros" was available to stream within days of its release.
"Nothing lasts forever."
Even fans of the DCEU will admit it has never found the same level of consistency
as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 2019's "Shazam!" was a bright spot.
It got better than decent reviews and made better than decent money,
and — compared to the often dour films about Superman and Batman — was charming in a way
that some of the best MCU movies had been. Of course, there was going to be a sequel.
As was the case with the majority of films that went into production in 2020,
the pandemic caused stops and starts. Nevertheless, fans remained optimistic since
star Zachary Levi and director David F. Sandberg were both returning. Then, Warner Bros. announced
that it had hired James Gunn and Peter Safran to reboot its DC comics universe, which meant
"Shazam! Fury of the Gods" no longer felt like it had a place in the universe's overall continuity.
Another strike against the "Shazam" sequel? "Black Adam." The Dwayne
Johnson vehicle should've tied into the "Shazam" storyline, since the characters
are so closely connected in the comics. Instead, Johnson interfered in a way that
hurt both films and Warner Bros. ended up with not one but two box office bombs on their hands.
"Shazam! Fury of the Gods" never captured the previous film's magic, lost the original's
lighthearted tone, and poor word of mouth and bad marketing ultimately extinguished Shazam's flame.
Reviews weren't quite as gut punching to Zachary Levi as they were to Dwayne Johnson, but they
weren't good. "Shazam 2" became an afterthought of a movie that few people felt the need to see.