Mummies, wolves, Vince Vaughan — it takes a lot to scare people these days, and a horror movie rarely makes for a guaranteed hit. Of course, it doesn't help if you break the bank making it.
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00:00 Mummies, wolves, Vince Vaughn. It takes a lot to scare people these days, and a horror
00:05 movie rarely makes for a guaranteed hit. Of course, it doesn't help if you break the
00:10 bank making it.
00:11 Tom Cruise is one of the most reliable box office draws working today, but it turns out
00:16 his formidable star power isn't always enough to turn a profit. In 2017, Cruise starred
00:21 in a reboot of Universal's iconic mummy franchise. It seemed like a smart bet, too. In the movie,
00:26 Cruise plays Nick Morton, an army sergeant who plunders ancient treasures and sells them
00:30 for cash. During their travels, Nick and his partner accidentally awaken a powerful ancient
00:35 Egyptian princess. Looking at the box office numbers for the film, it might seem like the
00:39 mummy made a good deal of money, earning over $400 million at the international box office
00:44 on a budget of $125 million. But those numbers don't tell the full story. According to Deadline,
00:50 the movie may have actually lost Universal $95 million. That's because, while the film's
00:56 budget was $125 million, the total production investment was around $345 million, covering
01:02 production, prints, marketing, and more. In short, the mummy marked a huge loss for the
01:08 studio.
01:09 You'd be forgiven for never having heard of the 2010 Wolfman movie, because it seems to
01:13 have left basically no mark on the culture at large. The film is a remake of the 1941
01:18 picture The Wolfman, and it stars Benicio Del Toro as Lawrence Talbot, an aristocrat
01:22 who returns to his ancestral home after hearing word that his brother has gone missing. Lawrence
01:26 soon reunites with his father, Sir John, who may hold the key to some deadly family secrets.
01:32 Wolf stuff ensues. With an enormous budget of $150 million, the film wasn't able to recoup
01:42 enough money at the box office, earning only $139 million worldwide. Like many movie flops,
01:48 the film experienced numerous production troubles. Mark Romanek was originally hired to direct,
01:52 but left due to creative differences. Joe Johnston arrived as his replacement. Though
01:57 initially budgeted at $85 million, it blossomed to nearly twice that cost by the time production
02:02 finished. The film was then cut down by 30 minutes, which meant Danny Elfman's score
02:06 had to be totally reworked. The result of all this drama? Former Universal Pictures
02:11 head Ron Meyer called it one of the worst movies they had ever made, and everybody decided
02:15 to forget it had ever existed.
02:18 David Cronenberg films aren't for everyone, so it's not particularly surprising that
02:22 he's not exactly the king of the box office smash. The Fly remains one of his most profitable
02:27 films, but most of his other projects haven't fared nearly as well. Case in point? Cronenberg's
02:32 2022 film Crimes of the Future, which took in a mere $4.5 million globally on a $27 million
02:38 budget. A pretty typical Cronenberg film in terms of the themes it explores, the movie
02:43 was generally well-received by critics.
02:45 Veteran Cronenberg collaborator Viggo Mortensen plays Saul, a man who holds the ability to
02:50 grow totally new organs. Saul and his partner Caprice take advantage of his condition in
02:55 their work as performance artists. It's certainly not the most grotesque of Cronenberg's films.
03:00 Even so, Crimes of the Future clearly didn't resonate with audiences. And while the movie's
03:04 low box office performance isn't unique in Cronenberg's filmography, the fact that it
03:08 was also one of his highest-budget films means it can be safely counted as a straight-up
03:11 flop.
03:13 Horror movie remakes are a contentious topic among cinephiles, and more often than not,
03:17 they're not received especially well. Take Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake of Psycho, for
03:21 example, an infamous horror dud. It's a pretty ballsy move to remake what is often regarded
03:26 as the most influential horror film of all time, but not everyone was convinced. The
03:31 biggest criticism of Psycho centers on the fact that it is basically a shot-for-shot
03:35 remake of the original, which is absolutely true.
03:43 Much has also been said about the casting, as rather unexpectedly, Vince Vaughn was cast
03:47 to play Norman Bates. But a more appropriate star probably wouldn't have helped. Audiences
03:52 at the time weren't sold on Van Sant's experiment, and it grossed $37 million globally on a $60
03:58 million budget. God knows what Hitchcock would have said.
04:02 2016's The Cure for Wellness was a moderately pricey horror film that swung for the fences
04:06 — and missed. Directed by Gore Verbinski, the film follows a young stockbroker who is
04:11 sent to fetch his boss from a wellness center in the Alps. The spooky old building is not
04:15 what it seems, of course, and he soon finds it nearly impossible to leave. Despite its
04:20 intriguing premise, A Cure for Wellness wasn't able to turn a profit, grossing only $26 million
04:25 globally on a $40 million budget.
04:28 Though $40 million might not seem like a huge number when you consider the price tag on
04:31 blockbuster films these days, it is a pretty hefty budget when it comes to horror, a genre
04:36 that has historically produced inexpensive content. Apparently, this just wasn't the
04:40 time for theatrical gothic horror, as Crimson Peak had also disappointed at the box office
04:44 the year before. It also didn't help that Get Out, one of the most successful horror
04:49 films of the last decade, opened just a week after A Cure for Wellness. It would seem the
04:53 world simply wasn't ready for a film that features Mia Goth taking a bath with eels.
04:59 In recent years, Event Horizon has become something of a cult classic. At the time of
05:03 its release, however, audiences didn't much care for it. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson,
05:08 Event Horizon is a sci-fi horror film that is equal parts strange and disturbing. Sam
05:13 Neill plays William Weir, the creator of a spaceship called the Event Horizon that mysteriously
05:17 disappears and then reappears in orbit around Neptune. Weir joins Captain Miller and his
05:21 crew as they investigate the ship, unaware of the horrors that await them.
05:25 "The reality is much, much worse."
05:30 This is a more gruesome movie than you might think, too. Sci-fi horror isn't always the
05:35 goriest of genres, but Event Horizon turns that assumption on its head. By far the scariest
05:40 scene in the film involves the team recovering footage that depicts what happened to the
05:43 Event Horizon's crew, and, well, let's just say we can't show it here. As the legend
05:50 goes, the scene was actually more brutal to begin with, but had to be cut for the theatrical
05:54 release. Still, it seems you can't draw a crowd with gore, because this $60 million
05:59 movie only grossed $26 million at the domestic box office, and it failed to recoup the rest
06:04 of the budget internationally.
06:06 Out of all the filmmakers working today, Uwe Boll might be the one most known for consistently
06:11 putting out flops. The German filmmaker rose to infamy crafting video game adaptations
06:15 such as House of the Dead and Far Cry, and almost all of his films have been critically
06:19 panned box office failures. His biggest flop thus far is the 2005 film Blood Rain, which
06:25 grossed an abysmal $3.6 million globally against a $25 million budget. Based on the video game
06:31 of the same name, the movie follows Rain, a human-vampire hybrid who intends to kill
06:36 her vampiric father. The film's financial failure was due, in part, to a botched release
06:40 strategy. After going into business with Billy Zane, who also starred in the film, Boll was
06:45 promised that the film would screen in 2,000 theaters. However, it was reported that Blood
06:50 Rain was only sent to 985 screens, some of which never even screened it. But even if
06:56 the release hadn't been fumbled, it's unlikely the film would have been a rousing success.
07:01 Screenwriter Gwynevere Turner has said that Boll is a nightmare to work with, pointed
07:04 out that he scrapped 80 percent of her script, and described it as the worst film ever made.
07:09 The failure of Blood Rain is far from an anomaly for Boll. His other 2005 film, Alone in the
07:14 Dark, grossed $12.6 million globally on a $20 million budget, and is also often considered
07:20 one of the worst movies ever made. How's that for flop central?
07:24 Jimmy Lee Curtis may be an iconic final girl, but that doesn't mean every horror film she
07:28 stars in will be a guaranteed success. One of the biggest flops of Curtis' career was
07:33 1999's Virus, which, for the most part, has been totally forgotten by pretty much everyone.
07:39 With a $75 million budget, Virus only scared up $30 million at the box office. Here's the
07:44 lowdown. Robert Everton is a tugboat commander who comes across an abandoned vessel that
07:48 could be salvaged for a hefty profit. Although they're caught in a typhoon, Everton and his
07:52 crew decide to board the vessel and investigate. What do they find? Uh, aliens.
07:58 "You don't recognize me. What's wrong?"
08:05 It's not too hard to guess why Virus performed so poorly at the box office. It's a truly
08:10 terrible movie. Roger Ebert hated it more than almost any other film he ever reviewed,
08:15 and Jimmy Lee Curtis has nothing good to say about it, either. In 2003, she told IGN,
08:20 "Virus is so bad that it's shocking. That would be the all-time piece of s---."
08:25 2007's The Invasion is one of the most ill-fated remakes of the 21st century, grossing only
08:31 $40 million at the global box office on a whopping budget of $80 million. The fourth
08:35 adaptation of the 1954 book The Body Snatchers, The Invasion attempts to stylishly illustrate
08:40 the particular problems of the 2000s, with little success. The film stars Nicole Kidman
08:45 as Carol Bunnell, a psychiatrist living in Washington, D.C. After a space shuttle crashes
08:50 into the Earth, Carol notices that everyone around her seems to have turned into emotionalist
08:54 drones. Though the film was originally pitched as a straight remake, David Kajanek wrote
08:58 a script that was meant to take the story in a new direction, hence the shortened title.
09:02 The studio was unhappy with the first cut of the film, however, and hired the Wachowskis
09:06 to rewrite the script. V for Vendetta filmmaker James McTeague was later brought in to direct
09:11 reshoots. The resulting film doesn't add anything fresh to this well-worn story, despite
09:15 everyone's best efforts. The constant references to the Iraq War are both repetitive and uninspired,
09:21 and poor Kidman does her best with a script that lacks any emotional logic.
09:25 The 2000 film Supernova endured a long road to the big screen, a process that may be to
09:30 blame for the movie's financial failure. The film follows the crew of a medical ship in
09:33 the 22nd century who answers a distress call from a distant galaxy. Their rescue mission
09:37 turns dangerous when they encounter alien technology, forcing them to contend with the
09:41 mysterious intentions of the man they rescued.
09:43 "There's no opportunity here, and there is no us."
09:47 Walter Hill, credited under the pseudonym of Thomas Lee, directed the first cut. He
09:51 eventually disowned the film. The budget was slashed and Hill quit, so MGM tapped Jack
09:55 Scholder, who'd previously been in contention to direct, to oversee reshoots and edits.
10:00 MGM executives, also displeased with Scholder's cut, asked Hill to return. But when they refused
10:05 Hill's proposal for reshoots, Hill quit a second time.
10:08 Finally, Francis Ford Coppola was hired to re-edit the film, resulting in the final cut
10:12 we see today. Coppola made a number of strange editing choices, including digitally replacing
10:18 actors' heads during a sex scene. That didn't much help things.
10:22 In the end, Supernova grossed only $14 million at the domestic box office against a staggering
10:27 $90 million budget.
10:29 1998's Fear was a sci-fi thriller that didn't offer much new to the genre. Dustin Hoffman
10:34 stars as Norman Goodman, a psychologist who authored a government report detailing how
10:37 to deal with the arrival of aliens. When a spaceship is discovered under the ocean, Goodman's
10:42 plan is put into action, and he and his team are sent to investigate. Underwater mischief
10:46 ensues and the team discovers something that changes their understanding of time and space.
10:51 Critics at the time noted that themes explored in the film had been better executed by other
10:54 side projects, while the script isn't especially coherent. It's a shame, really, because with
10:59 a stellar cast and intriguing concept, a better script might have helped along a truly great
11:04 deal. Audiences were as underwhelmed with the film as critics, however, and the movie
11:07 topped out at $50 million at the international box office on a budget of $73 million.
11:12 Big swings in sci-fi tend to fall the hardest, and Sphere just couldn't hack it in the majors.
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