What’s an “Alien” movie without Xenomorphs?
How many doomed reboots has Universal attempted?
And how does Uwe Boll keep getting jobs?
There's nothing like a good scare to get moviegoers excited, but these horror movies prove that
you can’t buy success with a big budget.
Guillermo Del Toro's 2015 gothic romance Crimson Peak is a lush, haunting love story with sumptuous
special effects and a killer cast.
Those things aren't cheap, of course, and the film was made using a decent-sized $55
million budget.
Crimson Peak was marketed as the next great horror film from one of the genre's finest
minds, but that marketing likely hurt the film instead of helping it.
Fans expected screams, but they instead got a slow-burning story of dread with a few ghosts
tossed in for flavor.
The film only brought in $31 million in the United States.
It went on to make back its budget worldwide, but was a pretty major disappointment overall.
It's a shame, too, because Crimson Peak is a phenomenal film.
The cast is filled with bona fide stars and the premise is fascinating, but most audiences
just weren't interested in a Victorian-era horror story that stays true to its gothic roots.
Indeed, Crimson Peak feels as if an entire semester of Victorian literature has been
crammed into its two hour runtime, giving viewers a taste of all the genre has to offer,
from Robert Louis Stevenson to Mary Shelley.
The central romance is appropriately restrained for much of the movie's runtime, too, something
21st century audiences might not have the patience for.
If Crimson Peak had been marketed as a twisted gothic romance instead of a standard horror
film, it might have still had poor box office returns, but at least people would have known
what they were in for.
As it stands, though, Crimson Peak is Del Toro at his best, and this ghostly tragedy
deserves to be treasured.
If A Cure For Wellness was another knife in the heart for mid-budget studio movies, then
at least it made its lavish $40 million budget count.
Gore Verbinski's hypnotic tale opens in the way that many early horror stories did: with
a pale young bureaucrat sent to a grand old building in a remote location, where dark
secrets lurk inside its walls.
There he becomes entranced by a girl who is as pale and unhealthy-looking as he is: Hannah,
the youngest long-term patient at a sanitorium.
A Cure For Wellness is very much the sister film of Crimson Peak, which was released a
couple of years previously.
Both are big, indulgent, melodramatic Gothic horror tales with a delightfully nasty edge.
Both are woefully underrated, too, and both bombed at the box office.
A Cure For Wellness ultimately grossed a mere $26.6 million, well below what it cost to
make, never mind the costs of marketing and distribution.
Part of this box office disaster might be attributed to competition in the horror genre
from Jordan Peele's Get Out, which released a week after A Cure For Wellness and eventually
made nearly ten times as much money.
And while it's also true that anticipation for Get Out may have eclipsed interest in
A Cure For Wellness, the similar downfall of Crimson Peak suggests that general audiences
just really weren't in the mood for old-fashioned spooky stories at the time.
If you missed out on it, though, A Cure For Wellness is well worth a visit.
It may come as no surprise to you that the Shining sequel Doctor Sleep didn't do so hot
at the box office — but the 2019 film has nevertheless garnered a reputation as a widely-liked
movie with a strong following.
This installment follows Ewan McGregor as a grown-up Danny Torrence as he recovers from
alcoholism and returns to his gift of "shine"; it was made on a $45 million budget, but the
film only grossed $72 million total for its entire theatrical run.
Considering how much money was spent on the project, those returns come up short in comparison
to what producers were undoubtedly hoping to make.
It's clear the team behind the movie was banking on the iconography of The Shining to carry
the film to the bank.
Sadly, it seems that audiences were initially put off by the fact that key characters, such
as Jack Nicholson's Jack and Shelley Duvall's Wendy, were recast for flashbacks and other
pivotal scenes.
Because of this, the film failed to shine at the box office.
That doesn't mean it's not worth your time, though.
Despite failing with general audiences, you'd be hard-pressed to find a cinephile who doesn't
go to bat for this picture, between the top-notch acting, the expansive world-building, and
the tantalizingly Kubrickian callbacks.
"Great party, isn't it?"
Some would even argue that Doctor Sleep stands as one of the best sequels in the horror genre.
When it comes to totally unjustified box office flops, no recent example feels more fitting
than The Empty Man.
A heady, heart-pounding slice of supernatural horror, the film packs ample style and substance
throughout its 137-minute runtime — but it was just met with too many obstacles to
truly thrive.
Based on the graphic novel of the same name, The Empty Man is the feature directorial debut
of David Prior, who previously directed supplemental documentary shorts for DVD releases of everything
from Panic Room to Zodiac.
Though the film adaptation was green-lit in 2016 with Prior attached to direct, it would
take well over four years before the film hit theaters due to a litany of issues.
Set to complete principal photography in the early winter months of 2017, the final week
of shooting was pushed back due to inclement weather and executive vice president Mark
Roybal's departure from 20th Century Fox.
Shooting finally resumed and concluded in the fall of 2017, but the imminent Disney/Fox
merger only pushed The Empty Man back further.
Unceremoniously released in theaters on October 23rd, 2020 after one final pandemic-related
delay, The Empty Man grossed less than $5 million worldwide — not a lot to show for
roughly 56 months of work and a $16 million dollar budget.
Despite all of this, The Empty Man has cemented itself as a horror cult classic, heralded
by genre enthusiasts as an inventive, intelligent and incredibly scary gem that couldn't be
smacked down — no matter how bad things became.
Given how it's now widely regarded as one of the greatest horror movies of all time,
you might be surprised to learn that John Carpenter's The Thing was not a box office
success upon its initial release.
Made with a budget of $15 million and largely filmed on location in Alaska and British Columbia,
The Thing landed quietly at the box office.
It debuted at #8 in its opening weekend and grossed just $19.6 million at the North American
box office by the end of its run.
How could such a now-acclaimed horror movie have performed so poorly?
Well, both critics and audiences at the time kind of hated it.
In an interview with Creative Screenwriting, Carpenter recalled:
"The critics thought the movie was boring and didn't allow for any hope.
That was the part they really hammered on."
But the director knew in advance that the movie was in trouble when Universal Pictures
did test screenings for The Thing, and the reaction was less than positive.
As Carpenter explained:
"There was one young gal who asked, 'Well what happened in the very end?
Which one was the Thing, and which one was the good guy?'
And I said, 'Well, you have to use your imagination.'
And she said, 'Oh, God. I hate that.'
[...] We were dead. Dead in the water.
Dead. Horrible."
Fortunately, things don't always stay dead in the horror genre.
Like many '80s horror movies, The Thing found its audience in the blossoming market of home
media, where avid genre fans enthusiastically shared recommendations for "video nasties."
There, the gruesome special effects and ambiguous ending that had alienated general audiences
instead became a selling point, and The Thing finally thrived.
“Why don’t we just wait here for a little while… see what happens.”
Paul W.S. Anderson's name may be popularly associated with the Resident Evil franchise, but it's
Event Horizon that gets the director the most full-throated praise among modern horror fans.
That certainly wasn't true when the movie premiered in 1997, however, as the $60 million
film took in only $26.6 million at the domestic box office.
The cosmic horror tale of a starship that disappears in its maiden voyage and comes
back full of hellish mystery, this mind-bending film was lambasted by critics at the time,
but has since received wider positive reappraisal.
When Event Horizon was in production, Paramount's co-produced movie Titanic was running over-schedule
and over-budget, and the studio needed to put a film in its summer slot.
To make the deadline, instead of the DGA-guaranteed 10 weeks of editing, Anderson agreed to six
weeks... which, in practice, became four.
The resulting 130-minute cut shocked both test audiences and the studio with its rampant
violence and bloated runtime.
Paramount then overcorrected, forcing a 90 minute cut that removed a number of major scenes.
The bungled theatrical cut was matched by the studio's choice to market it as a slightly
darker Star Trek, leading audiences to expect much different things from the mind-bending,
bloody theatrical release.
"The reality is much, much worse."
The film's post-theatrical reappraisal began almost immediately, however, with a successful
DVD home release, and the movie's reputation has only improved as the years have passed.
After a series of successes with Total Recall and Basic Instinct, filmmaker Paul Verhoeven
was hit by a set of critical and box office duds. 1995's lurid Showgirls underperformed
at the box office, while 1997's widely misunderstood Starship Troopers only did a little better.
After this row of surprising failures, Verhoeven took a foray into horror with 2000's Hollow
Man, a movie starring Kevin Bacon as a scientist who volunteers to be the test subject of an
invisibility serum.
The film ended with a profitable but tepid $191 million outing on a $90 million budget.
It certainly hit nowhere near his string of box office home runs, and also received a
notoriously poor critical reception.
To this day, Hollow Man remains the first of his movies that Verhoeven says he should
not have made.
So what went wrong?
At their best, Paul Verhoeven films are best thought of as high-concept "id" films, loaded
with sex and violence with a fun and intelligent edge.
By contrast, Hollow Man is a relatively bland and straightforward film, markedly different
from the creative and engaging sci-fi outings for which the director had become known.
He stated in later interviews that the film was studio-dominated and admittedly lacked
his personal touch.
Gone are the intelligent extravagances of his more characteristic films, thanks largely
to studio interference.
The end result is a film lacking Verhoeven's style that feels comparably forgettable by contrast.
The 2017 Tom Cruise vehicle The Mummy bombed so severely that it effectively killed a franchise
before it could get off the ground.
Though the title will lead most movie fans to think of the 1999 film starring Brendan
Fraser and Rachel Weisz, the monster itself was part of the first iteration of Universal's
horror slate, initially appearing in the 1932 movie of the same name.
"For heaven's sake, what is it?"
"He went for a little walk — you should have seen his face!"
However, with the overwhelming success of franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
Universal thought they'd whip up their own interconnected universe, dubbed the "Dark Universe."
Unfortunately, they chose a bloated, action-heavy, and horror-light Mummy movie to kick things off.
Though the film ended up grossing $329 million internationally, the overall box office turnout
stopped this would-be Monster Mash well before the party started.
The Mummy teases characters clearly connected to other horror tales, and there were several
other high-profile names preemptively associated with the "Dark Universe" — such as Javier
Bardem, who was set to play Frankenstein's monster.
Now, though, with the success of Leigh Whannel's Universal Monster remake The Invisible Man,
Universal has chosen to team up with Blumhouse to create low-budget, artistically driven
reimaginings instead.
Hopefully it goes a little better.
There was palpable excitement in 2012 as Prometheus — the movie that saw director Ridley Scott
returning to the Alien franchise after more than 30 years — hit theaters.
But the results left audiences divided, as the actual Xenomorphs, the trademark aliens
of the franchise, don't really appear in the movie.
Despite that, Prometheus did pretty solid business, grossing $403 million at the global box office.
So Fox opted to pursue a sequel with Scott once again in the director's chair.
The script for what would eventually be called Alien: Covenant went through several iterations
. Earlier in the film's development, Scott had referred to it as Alien: Paradise Lost,
but the film's title soon changed along with the story.
In the end, we got a movie that did indeed deliver Xenomorphs with a marketing campaign
that leaned heavily on their appearance.
This was being sold as a proper Alien movie through and through.
Be that as it may, the final film failed to capture the attention of the masses when it
hit theaters in the summer of 2017, taking in just $240 million worldwide against a budget
of $97 million.
While there are certainly more disastrous outcomes financially, this fell well short
of expectations and left the theatrical viability of the franchise in question.
To this day, fans have yet to see a sequel, despite Covenant ending on a cliffhanger.
Sadly, audiences may have felt a little burned by Prometheus, and the lack of must-see reviews
from critics just didn't help the case for Covenant — despite the best efforts of Scott and Fox.
2004's Van Helsing was given a whopping $170 million budget and, thanks to a solid performance
internationally, managed to bring home over $300 million at the box office.
While these numbers would typically indicate a sign of success, the dollar amount wasn't
high enough to fulfill Universal's plans to reboot their Universal Monsters universe,
especially after being met with relentlessly horrible reviews.
Hugh Jackman stars as famed monster slayer Gabriel Van Helsing, who is sent off to Transylvania
to defeat Count Dracula.
Unfortunately, Kate Beckinsale's Anna Valerious informs him that Dracula has formed an alliance
with Dr. Frankenstein's monster, and the duo must team up to defeat them before they can
enact a centuries old curse on the Valerious family.
Blending the worlds of two of Universal's most prized monsters, and featuring many more
to boot, felt like a license to print money.
But the hype was destroyed when audiences showed up to the theater and were met with
an overuse of CGI and Richard Roxburgh's laughably bad accent as Count Dracula.
"Oh Gabriel…
Welcome to my summer palace."
While Van Helsing's heart was clearly in the right place, the movie is a chaotic mess of
too many ideas thrown together, and not even the charm of Hugh Jackman could save it.
Boasting a 24% on Rotten Tomatoes, Van Helsing was so poorly received that it scared off
Universal from pursuing their monster-verse, realizing how lucky they were to have turned
a profit on such a stinker.
Virus sounds like a 1999 horror movie madlib: an invading alien attacks a Russian space
station and beams itself aboard a Russian research vessel in the South Pacific, then
uses electricity to turn all of the people aboard into cyborg slaves.
A tugboat crew composed of Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland, and William Baldwin discovers
the vessel and sneaks aboard to scavenge any sellable parts.
What happens next is pure mayhem.
Of course, Curtis is a horror household name, and the story is just weird enough to work,
so why did Virus only make around $30 million worldwide on a $75 million dollar budget?
Well, sometimes, a bad movie is just a bad movie.
Virus is a mostly incomprehensible mess that even received one of Roger Ebert's most negative
reviews of all time.
The cinematography and lighting are haphazard, making entire scenes difficult to see.
Even Curtis has been outspoken about just how bad Virus is, telling IGN in 2003:
"Virus is so bad that it's shocking...
That would be the all time piece of s---.
It's just dreadful."
While some fans over the years have defended Virus as a cult classic, the kind that's "so
bad it's good," it turns out most folks are in Curtis and Ebert's camp and think this
one's just a sinker.
Remakes are nothing new in Hollywood, but they can be especially dangerous when tackling
a piece of legitimate cinema history.
Such was the case with Universal's 2010 remake of The Wolfman, which starred Benicio Del
Toro and Anthony Hopkins in one of the most expensive horror movies ever produced, with
a reported production budget of $150 million.
The result was also one of the most notable box office disasters of the last 15 years,
if not ever.
Mark Romanek had been scheduled to direct the movie up until the very last minute, but
he became embroiled in debates with the studio, in part over the amount of time needed to
make the film.
Joe Johnston was subsequently brought in to handle things, and the Rocketeer filmmaker
found himself in an equally messy situation.
Constant script changes kept necessitating reshoots and changes during the editing process.
Cuts were made in an attempt to save money that, in the end, ended up costing the studio
more money due to necessary reshoots and retooling.
Against a wave of negative reviews, the movie earned a grand total of just $139 million
globally, failing even to recoup its budget.
Despite having Oscar-winning visual effects and an A-list cast, the mess behind the scenes
ultimately led to financial ruin.
Much like the Wolfman himself, this one seemed to be straight-up cursed.
Uwe Boll has sustained an impressive run of box office bombs without suffering any repercussions.
His obsession with video game adaptations has become something of a signature, such
as the critically detested shoot-em-up House of the Dead.
But that's not even his mightiest box office failure.
Christian Slater's and Tara Reid's star power wasn't enough to save 2005's Alone in the
Dark from a worldwide whimper of $10 million on a $20 million budget.
"That's because they don't know the truth."
Things only got worse with Boll's adaptation of the fantasy vampire franchise BloodRayne.
This monumental flop cost more money to make than Alone in the Dark, but made just $3 million
at the global box office.
Alone in the Dark is a more straightforward case of atrocious reviews dooming a release
that Lionsgate inherited after purchasing Artisan Entertainment.
BloodRayne's failure is a little more complicated, given how Boll went into business with supporting
cast member Billy Zane, who had just opened the distribution company Romar Entertainment.
They promised Boll BloodRayne would screen in 2,000 theaters, but reports indicate that
Romar Entertainment only managed around 985 screens and that a few hundred of those establishments
didn't even play the film due to miscommunications with Romar.
BloodRayne is officially the only botched release for Romar Entertainment, too, because
the company closed its doors shortly after.
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