The 15 biggest box-office flops of all time

Box office flops come in all shapes and sizes: comedies, dramas, sci-fis and more can all be afflicted by low worldwide gross sales.

The films that are generally affected do have one thing in common, though: large budgets. Big-budget films are a risk for studios, with millions of dollars thrown into a product that might not end up resonating with audiences.

Some fail due to stereotypical plots; others due to bad critic reviews; others due to stiff competition from films that appeal more to moviegoers.

Whatever the reason for failure, the fact of the matter is that a big box office bomb can result in a tens of millions of dollars hit against a studio which can set back their yearly earnings, and sometimes result in bankruptcy. Movies fail all the time, but some of them fail big.

Here are the 15 biggest box office flops of all time:

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15. "Jupiter Ascending"

Sci-fi films from the Wachowski siblings have a history of doing well, with The Matrixseries and V for Vendetta both achieving critical and commercial success. However, 2015’s Jupiter Ascending did not follow the same path.

The film, which starred Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Sean Bean, and Eddie Redmayne, followed an interplanetary warrior and a cleaning woman who finds out that she is galactic royalty. The film received general negative reviews, with the only part earning praise being the most expensive: the visual effects. The film crafted entire worlds, requiring expensive sets, costumes, make-up, and prosthetics.

Because of the film’s expensive requirements and huge star power, it racked up a budget of $176 million, meaning that it needed to make a lot in order to be a box office success. Unfortunately, with lukewarm reviews and high competition from The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water and American Sniper, the film was not able to recoup its large budget. Jupiter Ascending made slightly over $47 million domestic with an additional $136.6 million in foreign countries for a total of almost $184 million, not nearly enough to make up the film’s budget and marketing. It is estimated that the film lost Warner Bros. over $80 million.

14. "Evan Almighty"

Evan Almighty, the Steve Carrell-starring follow up to Jim Carrey’s Bruce Almighty, was the most expensive comedy of all time at the time of its production (it would later be surpassed by other high-budget films like Men in Black III). The reasoning is the film’s plot: the story follows Carrell’s Evan Baxter as a surrogate for the biblical Noah trying to prevent a flood in his city, but, eventually, the very expensive CGI flood, complete with very expensive CGI animals, does happen.

The film wound up with a $175 million budget (over original projections of $140 million), hitting more than $200 million after marketing. The film’s money was ill-spent, as it received generally negative reviews from critics and even earned a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Prequel or Sequel (although it lost out on the honor to Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Daddy Day Camp). The film ended up earning $173 million worldwide and is estimated to have lost studios over $88 million.

13. "Green Lantern"

Green Lanternis one of the most notorious super movie flops around. The film, which starred Ryan Reynolds as the titular hero and also featured Blake Lively, Angela Bassett, Mark Strong and Peter Sarsgaard, was one of the first superhero projects that future Arrow-verse creator Greg Berlanti worked on, and, needless to say, there were still some kinks to be worked out. Star Reynolds even went on to make fun of the film in his future, much better received superhero film Deadpool.

Green Lantern was filmed on a $200 million budget, not including marketing costs, with The Hollywood Reporter estimating that, in order for the film to be a success for the studio, it would need to gross over $500 million. It didn’t come anywhere close, earning a worldwide total of $219.8 million. But hey, at least this film gave us Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively’s marriage.