A legacy prequel nobody asked for, a bunch of movies nobody will see, and a Nic Cage
vehicle… that actually sounds kinda cool? Here are the most likely box office bombs of 2023.
In A Man Called Otto, Tom Hanks portrays Otto Anderson, a widower who has become a
grump after the loss of his wife. Soon, though, he finds a new sense of purpose when a young,
lively family moves into the home next to him. Per the movie's official premise,
the family's witty matriarch forms a unique friendship with Otto. On the surface,
this storyline might sound a little like a live-action version of Up, minus the balloons.
This movie is also based on an international bestseller. A Man Called Ove was written by
Fredrik Backman and, in fact, has already been made into a movie,
back in 2015. All of the above might make A Man Called Otto sound like a surefire
box office hit — if it were 2003, rather than 2023. Tom Hanks is a great talent,
but his long-lived reputation as the nicest guy in Hollywood makes it hard to see him as anything
but — just look at the critical reception to his turn as Colonel Tom Parker in Elvis.
And while that film earned $282 million worldwide, Hanks' box office record has been spotty lately,
sans his outings as Woody in the Toy Story franchise. Finally, A Man Called
Otto is an adult-skewing dramedy that may be too adult for kiddos but too sweet for seniors,
and it's scheduled for nationwide release in the box office winter of January. In this
current climate, A Man Called Otto is a movie made more for streaming
than anything else. A theatrical release might just spell its doom.
Spider-Man has one of the best rogues galleries in pop culture, and Sony has spent years trying
desperately to mine it for gold. The latest victim of this trend will be Kraven the Hunter,
star of the upcoming movie… Kraven the Hunter. So why will it probably bomb? One word:
Morbius. The 2022 pseudo-Spider-Man spin-off bombed not once, but twice,
when Sony Pictures mistook the phrase "It's Morbin' time" trending on Twitter
for actual box office potential and decided to re-release it for the sake of a glorified meme.
Yes, Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage collectively earned
$1.3 billion at the worldwide box office... but that's Venom, arguably the most popular
comic book supervillain whose name doesn't start with a J. Kraven is a B-list villain
at best in the Spider-Man franchise, and in no way does he warrant his own movie.
And while you may be thinking that Black Adam is also a B-list villain — one who recently
made a whole bunch of money — you've got to remember that that character
was played by Dwayne Johnson, arguably the most bankable star in Hollywood. And
that movie still had a tough time breaking even on its staggering $200 million budget
and marketing costs. Kraven The Hunter stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson,
best known for playing Kick-Ass, that one guy in Godzilla, and Quicksilver in the MCU.
"You didn't see that coming?"
But hey, we'll always have the memes.
"Gerard Butler vs. Insert-Disaster-Here" has been a pretty reliable sub-genre at the box office,
whether that disaster is terrorists taking over a national landmark or simply a load
of out-of-control weather. Butler's last disaster film, Greenland, found
him battling an apocalyptic asteroid hurtling toward Earth, and, to the movie's producers,
"Gerard Butler vs. Armageddon" must have sounded like a license to print money. It wasn't,
though. Greenland only managed a measly $40 million at the worldwide box office. Yes,
it was released smack dab in the middle of the pandemic and wasn't released in North America
at all — but $40 million is still pretty bad for a would-be mid-level blockbuster,
and it spells impending doom for Butler's latest disaster flick, Plane.
In Plane, Butler plays Captain Brodie Torrance, a commercial pilot who narrowly avoids a terrible
storm, only to land on an island battleground run by a separatist militia — which, according to the
trailer, is so dangerous that even the Philippine army won't go there anymore. Okay, so Plane
obviously sounds delightfully cheesy and exactly the kind of movie that would dominate on, say,
Netflix. Alas, the theater-going audience doesn't always go for concept-driven, star vehicles like
this anymore; take the recent failure of Moonfall as an example. Because these headwinds will be set
against it, it's probably fair to assume that Plane will crash and burn at the box office.
"You're making too many movies Nic, you're working too hard Nic, you have to have the audience miss
you more Nic, I mean, hello, it's my job, I pay my bills, I feed my family, you're annoying."
Nobody chews scenery like Nicolas Cage, and, in 2023's Renfield,
he'll finally get to do some literal chewing — as the iconic star will be taking on the role
of Count Dracula. In this horror-comedy from Chris McCay, Cage plays the Count,
though the focus is presumably on Dracula's henchman, the eponymous Renfield,
who is played by Nicholas Hoult. Now, let's not kid around, here: Cage playing Dracula
in a movie about his lackey sounds pretty great. But that doesn't mean it won't bomb.
For example, everyone thought that Nicolas Cage playing Nicolas Cage sounded awesome,
but The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent tanked with only $29 million worldwide on a $30 million
budget. Nicolas Cage saving his pet pig also sounded awesome, but Pig bombed with $3.8 million,
as did Nicolas Cage going in a trippy, fever dream revenge fantasy in Mandy. Now,
Cage is arguably in the most creative parts of his career, and many of us would rather watch these
types of films than endure another Ghost Rider sequel, but there's no denying that moviegoers
aren't buying what he's been selling. His movies are there for movie nerds and Cage aficionados
to obsess over to their hearts' contents. General audiences, though? Not so much.
Few genres suffer as much of a quality gap as original sci-fi. At one end you have Avatar,
Star Wars, and The Matrix, and on the other,
you have movies like Jupiter Ascending, Sunshine, and, we suspect, Distant.
According to the film's official website, Distant follows a "low-level mining engineer"
who crash-lands onto a dangerous planet and has to beat the odds to find another survivor. In other
words, it's some sort of mix between The Martian and The Grey. And while that might sound cool,
it's also the exact kind of movie that needs a bona fide Hollywood legend to anchor it.
Conceptually, Distant sounds like the kind of movie that would benefit
tremendously from proven box office heroes like Dwayne Johnson or Will Smith. Instead,
the movie stars an ensemble of talented yet lesser-known names such as Anthony Ramos,
Naomi Scott, and Zachary Quinto. Worse still, Distant's constantly shifting
release dates and endless delays don't inspire much optimism in its quality.
What do you do when there are no stories left to tell in a franchise? You make a prequel! In 2023,
we will finally get an answer to the question literally nobody was asking:
What was Willy Wonka doing before the events of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory? Yes,
if you've ever laid awake at night wondering how a young Willy Wonka met the Oompa-Loompas,
then Wonka is the movie for you. Whoever you are.
"You lose! Good day, sir!"
Back in 2005, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory earned $475 million worldwide,
but that was the same story as the beloved book and 1971 adaptation,
and it starred Johnny Depp during the height of his post-Pirates star power. This is a
prequel and stars Timothée Chalamet, who may get fawning praise on the awards circuit,
but isn't always a massive box office draw — more than one-third of his all-time worldwide career
earnings is due to a small part in Interstellar. But Warner Bros. got greedier than Veruca Salt
and gave this concept a greenlight. Will it work out? Probably not. Expect to see the Oompa-Loompas
showing up at Warner Bros. HQ for a jaunty song about how making this movie was a huge mistake.
Adam Driver in a jungle surrounded by dinosaurs doesn't sound too enticing,
which could be a bomb in the making. Apparently 65 takes a route similar to Planet of the Apes,
but with Driver playing an astronaut who lands on prehistoric Earth where dinosaurs reign supreme.
65 is co-written and co-directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods,
who co-wrote A Quiet Place with John Krasinski. The sci-fi/horror thriller also stars Adam Driver,
who, despite starring in one of the most commercially successful trilogies of all time,
doesn't tend to be much of a box office draw when he's not playing people named Kylo Ren.
Perhaps 65 is one of the rare original sci-fi films that can break out based on a modest budget?
Or maybe not. The movie is estimated to cost $90 million, which might be somewhat modest by modern
Hollywood standards, but it's also 30% more than the $61 million budget for A Quiet Place Part II
and more than five times the budget of A Quiet Place. The Quiet Place series was a surprise
success, but those movies' relatively small budgets didn't exactly hurt either. Making back
this kind of investment is a whole different ball game, however. You'll no doubt see 65's
marketing material making a big fuss over the writers' connection to A Quiet Place,
but the truth is that the difference between those movies and this one might as well be
night and day — something that will likely be reflected in its box office returns.
Nobody would blame you for doing a double take when you saw that a
Haunted Mansion movie is being released in 2023. The Haunted Mansion — one of Disney's
biggest live-action failures of all time? The movie that pretty much killed Eddie
Murphy's career as an above-the-title box office draw? That Haunted Mansion?
-"Dad?"
"Yes, son?"
"I see dead people."
Yes, it's true. Given Disney's endless parade of sequels, prequels, remakes, and reboots,
some might suspect the creative well is running dry at the Mouse House, but even this is a shock.
Apparently, Disney is once again trying to make "movies based on theme park rides" a thing,
likely because it worked with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. For a while, at least.
According to Disney, the film is directed by Justin Simien of Dear White People and stars
Rosario Dawson as a doctor and single mother to a nine-year-old who moves to New Orleans and finds
herself in — you guessed it — a haunted mansion. She then turns to some paranormal experts,
including a psychic and a historian, for help vanquishing the house's spooky specters.
Unfortunately, there's a good chance that the only thing Haunted Mansion will vanquish is Disney's
money. While it's slated for theatrical release, given the lackluster reception to the first
go-round, the chances are good that audiences won't be happy to wait in line for this one.
In 2018, Searching made $75 million worldwide on an $880,000 budget. Even multi-million
dollar blockbuster movies would kill for that kind of profitability, let alone movies with
budgets smaller than the catering tab on a Marvel movie. However, most people these days have to go
searching for Searching, as the movie has pretty much vanished from the public consciousness.
Undeterred by this short shelf-life, five years later, Sony Pictures is giving the movie a sequel.
According to Vulture, the sweet spot for sequels is two to four years — unless it's a legacy sequel
to a beloved franchise. Missing misses that mark by a whole year. Will the audience show up for
the sequel? It's hard to see it happening. Of course, Sony Pictures probably didn't drop a
ton of dough on this film, so it still may be profitable based on its low budget alone,
but it's almost certainly not going to come anywhere near its predecessor's impressive
box office takings. And, whether it manages to make a minor profit or not, it's a safe
bet that Missing will be conspicuously absent from the year's top 50 worldwide grossing films.