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Top 10 movie flops of the decade! |
Fatal Rocko Willis
Fleet Admiral
Fatal Squadron
Joined: March 01, 2003
Posts: 1336
From: Kentucky
|  Posted: 2009-11-27 18:35
I am once again reporting the news normally left out in the cold! Come one, come all and follow me on this adventure called...
Rocko's Random News Service!
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Movie flops aren't just about losing money. Yes, big budgets that go bust are one consideration. But flops are also about lofty expectations dashed and high profiles brought low. They trigger embarrassing catcalls from the peanut gallery and a general whoever-thought-that-was-a-good-idea-in-the-first-place bewilderment.
Any judgments of flopitude are necessarily subjective, but here are 10 movies from the past decade that made those few moviegoers who saw them cringe. Disagree? Talk among yourselves.
10. THE SPIRIT
* Release date: December 25, 2008
* Estimated cost: $60 million
* Domestic gross: $19.8 million
Frank Miller, the man who created the comics "300" and "Sin City," and who redefined Batman and Daredevil for the modern age, directed this adaptation of Will Eisner's comic-strip hero. Starring Samuel L. Jackson and a bevy of beauties, it may have looked good on the page. But onscreen, the heavily stylized, nearly black-and-white results were disastrous. The expensive movie was killed by comic fans, who wanted Miller to go back to comics, and critics, who trashed the movie's over-the-top tones and aesthetics. Consequently, the partners at the company behind the production, Odd Lot Entertainment, parted ways after 23 years together. It even killed plans for a Miller-directed version of "Buck Rogers."
9. GRINDHOUSE
* Release date: April 6, 2007
* Estimated cost: $67 million
* Domestic gross: $25 million
Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez managed to turn twice the filmmaking firepower into half the box office (and a third of the critical praise). With "Grindhouse," what began as an explicit exercise in joyous B-movie cinema homage -- a double bill of '70s-style schlock, one film from each director -- ended up aping its scuzzy genre ancestors a little too closely in the receipts department. After the three-hour-plus "Grindhouse" opened to a mere $11.6 million, Harvey Weinstein split the film's two parts -- "Death Proof" and "Planet Terror" -- and shuttled them to international markets individually. While that recouped a little of the Weinstein Co.'s money, it incurred the wrath of purists who were angry that the original film had been corrupted. Tarantino and Weinstein are famously loyal to each other, and while the writer-director eventually made good on the losses with the $120 million-grossing "Inglourious Basterds" this year, "Grindhouse" was one instance where loyalty nearly brought down the house.
8. ROLLERBALL
* Release date: February 8, 2002
* Estimated cost: $70 million
* Domestic gross: $19 million
Norman Jewison's 1975 comment on violence, corporatism and spectacle has its place in the paranoid '70s-era cult film pantheon. John McTiernan's remake, on the other hand, would be totally forgettable if it weren't so spectacularly misconceived in every way. The cast -- Jean Reno, Chris Klein, LL Cool J and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos -- was a C-list mishmash closer to reality TV than big-budget studio moviemaking. McTiernan had long since dented his box-office bona fides with "Last Action Hero" and "The 13th Warrior." And the studio releasing it -- MGM -- was so aware of its bomb-worthiness that it pushed the release back four times, out of the summer 2001 field and into the barren wasteland of February. In a last act of desperation, the movie was also re-edited from an R to a PG-13 rating, sabotaging any last chance it had at an audience. Ultimately, it pretty much wrecked McTiernan's career (he has directed only one film since).
7. THE INVASION
* Release date: August 17, 2007
* Estimated cost: $80 million
* Domestic gross: $15.1 million
Nicole Kidman couldn't have started the decade any hotter, scoring with "Moulin Rouge," "The Others" and "The Hours." But after 2002, her career went cold in the U.S. ("Stepford Wives," "Bewitched," "Australia" and "The Golden Compass"); it's as if the actress was abducted by some sort of soul-draining body snatcher. But wait, isn't that what she's fighting in "The Invasion," Hollywood's latest remake of the 1956 film "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"? This time around, the eerie premise, based on a novel by Jack Finney, failed to catch fire. The Wachowski brothers' second unit director, James McTeigue, was called in to shoot additional scenes written by the "Matrix" whiz kids after original director Oliver Hirschbiegel was sent packing, having filmed the bulk of the movie. In an omen of things to come, Kidman suffered an on-set fender-bender during the reshoots. When the film arrived in theaters more than a year late, Kidman's regal bearing took another dent.
6. CATWOMAN
* Release date: July 23, 2004
* Estimated cost: $100 million
* Domestic gross: $40 million
It was inevitable after Michelle Pfeiffer stole scenes as Catwoman in "Batman Returns" that her black-latexed anti-heroine would get a spinoff of her own. But when the inevitable occurred in 2004, this time with Halle Berry playing the character, audiences tried hard to cover up the kitty litter. No one involved with the movie came out unscathed. Not Berry, who just two years earlier had won an Oscar for "Monster's Ball"; not Sharon Stone, who chewed up the scenery as the movie's villainess; and not Pitof, the French filmmaker making his American directorial debut. He went back to his native land and hasn't directed a theatrical feature since. The movie is another example cited by studios in their long-held contention that female superhero movies just don't work.
5. TOWN & COUNTRY
* Release date: April 27, 2001
* Estimated cost: $90 million
* Domestic gross: $6.7 million
Twenty-five years after he seduced audiences in "Shampoo," Warren Beatty decided the time was ripe for another sex comedy, albeit one with a somewhat older circle of friends. He somehow persuaded New Line, which usually concentrated on the youth market, to foot the bill. And what a bill it was: With the script still furiously going through rewrites, Peter Chelsom began shooting in June 1998; 10 months and take after take after take later, the film was still shooting. That's when co-stars like Diane Keaton and Gary Shandling had to leave to fulfill other commitments. A full year later, the whole cast regrouped to finish the shoot, which had escalated to more than twice its original $44 million price tag. The completed film was actually something of a tepid affair. Beatty dithers as a New York architect who cheats on his wife with several women; Shandling's his best pal trying to come out as gay. And then there's Charlton Heston, playing against type, as a gun nut.
4. GIGLI
* Release date: August 1, 2003
* Estimated cost: $54 million
* Domestic gross: $6.1 million
If the course of true love rarely runs smoothly, then "Gigli" is an object lesson in how rocky it can get. As the new century dawned, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez -- tabloid code name: Bennifer -- were the couple of the moment. With an Oscar for writing "Good Will Hunting" and starring roles in "Pearl Harbor" and "The Sum of All Fears," his movie career was in high gear; she could boast a solid-gold music resume and rom-com appeal in movies like "The Wedding Planner" and "Maid in Manhattan." Onscreen romantic sparks seemed made to order. So what went wrong? Start with that title, "Gigli," that no one was sure how to pronounce. Add lots of lovey-dovey media appearances that erased a bit of their mystique. And then there was Martin Brest's film itself: a low-rent-mobster-boy-meets-enforcer-chick tale complete with a kidnapping, severed thumbs and Al Pacino in high dudgeon. Bennifer split in 2004, just before sharing the bill in another film not too far away on the flop-o-meter, "Jersey Girl."
3. LAND OF THE LOST
* Release date: June 5, 2009
* Estimated cost: $100 million
* Domestic gross: $65 million
Producer/puppeteers Sid and Marty Kroft were masters of the weird and cheesy; their old Saturday morning TV show, "Land of the Lost," is remembered fondly by kids who grew up in the '70s. But the material experienced something of a time warp when director Brad Silbering tried to give it a hipster spin this summer with the help of Will Ferrell, playing a paleontologist who journeys to a parallel universe where he meets the Sleestaks. Normally, any movie with a rampaging Tyrannosaurus (see "Journey to the Center of the Earth," "Night at the Museum") can't miss, but "Lost" was, well, lost in translation. The movie's PG-13 rating wasn't a comfort to many families when word got around of its toilet humor. Older moviegoers weren't interested, and Kroft purists weren't amused. Over the years, Disney and Sony had both held remake rights, but ultimately this hot potato landed at Universal, where it was one of the factors that resulted in the ouster of the studio's two top executives in October.
2. BATTLEFIELD EARTH
* Release date: May 12, 2000
* Estimated cost: $75 million
* Domestic gross: $21 million
Blame it on the Thetans if you want, but John Travolta's space oddity "Battlefield Earth" virtually imploded on the launching pad. Travolta's career was enjoying a resurgence in the wake of "Pulp Fiction" when he wagered a big chunk of his newfound credibility, as well as some of his own coin, on this passion project. "Battlefield Earth" was based on a 1972 sci-fi novel by Scientology guru L. Ron Hubbard, which Travolta promised would be "like 'Star Wars,' only better." Studios shied away, but Travolta found financing from Franchise Pictures, which would later be sued by investors for overstating the movie's costs as $100 million. Originally, Travolta hoped to play the young hero who leads a rebellion against the alien race that enslaves Earth, but the film took so long to assemble he ultimately opted instead to don dreadlocks and platform shoes to play the villain, barking lines like "Execute all man-animals at will, and happy hunting!" A planned sequel, which would have covered the second half of the novel, never materialized. "Some movies run off the rails," observed Roger Ebert. "This one is like the train crash in 'The Fugitive.'"
1. THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH
* Release date: August 6, 2002
* Estimated cost: $100 million
* Domestic gross: $4.4 million
Eddie Murphy is some kind of miracle. Five of his recent films lost more than $250 million, and yet he not only still gets hired but also commands his salary quote. But on the flop-o-meter, one Murphy title towers above even "Meet Dave," "Showtime" and "I Spy": Trumpets, please, for "The Adventures of Pluto Nash," whose release was delayed for 14 months. It instantly became the "Cleopatra" of our age. A sci-fi gangster comedy, complete with robot sidekick, set on the moon, "Pluto" was neither fish nor fowl -- but mostly foul. But unlike most stars who are tarnished by a mega-flop, Murphy -- who did take time off from broad comedies to redeem himself with his Oscar-nominated turn in "Dreamgirls" -- just keeps going and going and going.
This article can be found at....
http://movies.yahoo.com/news/movies.reuters.com/top-10-movie-flops-decade-reuters
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Manowar
1st Rear Admiral
Praetorian Wolves
Joined: July 14, 2005
Posts: 34
From: Idaho Falls, ID
| Posted: 2009-11-28 10:40
and to think of all the money that went into making those movies could have been better spent in other directions...
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Pakhos[+R]
Chief Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: May 31, 2002
Posts: 1352
From: Clean room lab
| Posted: 2009-11-28 21:02
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On 2009-11-28 10:40, Manowar wrote:
and to think of all the money that went into making those movies could have been better spent in other directions...
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to develop darkspace?
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kenetiks
Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: November 21, 2001
Posts: 1130
From: Bandcamp
| Posted: 2009-12-07 19:19
10. THE SPIRIT
Never even heard of it before I found it in bargain bin.
9. GRINDHOUSE
To say that I'm NOT a fan of Tarantino would be a travesty of the truth.
8. ROLLERBALL
Little off the wall but still watchable.
7. THE INVASION
Never watched it.
6. CATWOMAN
Anything with Halle Berry in it I'll watch and I'll even watch it awake.
5. TOWN & COUNTRY
First I've heard of this one.
4. GIGLI
Title killed any desire to watch.
3. LAND OF THE LOST
This is the only Will Ferrall movie I've ever been able to get all the way through without trying to tear my eyes out and screaming in great mental agony.
2. BATTLEFIELD EARTH
Loved it.
1. THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH
I FREAKING LOVED this movie. I can't help it if the rest of the planet is simultaneously uncultured.
Edit: Typo
[ This Message was edited by: kenetiks on 2009-12-07 19:20 ]
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Phellan
Grand Admiral
Joined: February 27, 2007
Posts: 220
From: Red Light District
| Posted: 2009-12-07 19:33
If we could go back in time, get rid of only one movie, I know what I would choose. Hands down, Highlander: The source!
Being a fan of the franchise, or at least the somewhat more reliable series, I had high hopes for this movie since Adrian Paul was stepping up. It should have continued where the last movie ended since there had(for once) been no victor of the quickening. Yet it starts off somewhat in the future, with Duncan involved with a totally differant love interest than the last movie. Very quickly we see familier faces(yay!) but then you begin to wonder, "Hey, shouldn't Joe be dead by now?" The majority of the movie was even decent; I especially loved the idea of a group of immortals going hellbent to find the source, making for some great group battles. Very quickly my hopes were dashed though by the final fight when the two survivors used some bastardization of bullet time to fight.
On the other hand, it continued Highlander's fine tradition of violating established stories and rules, alienating or killing off any character but the hero, and generally poor sword fights. SO yay I guess...Can't wait for the next one, maybe we'll find out weeman is an immortal.
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kenetiks
Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: November 21, 2001
Posts: 1130
From: Bandcamp
| Posted: 2009-12-07 19:43
Quote:
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On 2009-12-07 19:33, Phellan wrote:
If we could go back in time, get rid of only one movie, I know what I would choose. Hands down, Highlander: The source!
Being a fan of the franchise, or at least the somewhat more reliable series, I had high hopes for this movie since Adrian Paul was stepping up. It should have continued where the last movie ended since there had(for once) been no victor of the quickening. Yet it starts off somewhat in the future, with Duncan involved with a totally differant love interest than the last movie. Very quickly we see familier faces(yay!) but then you begin to wonder, "Hey, shouldn't Joe be dead by now?" The majority of the movie was even decent; I especially loved the idea of a group of immortals going hellbent to find the source, making for some great group battles. Very quickly my hopes were dashed though by the final fight when the two survivors used some bastardization of bullet time to fight.
On the other hand, it continued Highlander's fine tradition of violating established stories and rules, alienating or killing off any character but the hero, and generally poor sword fights. SO yay I guess...Can't wait for the next one, maybe we'll find out weeman is an immortal.
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The one that really pissed me off was the one where they came from another planet.....Was that the source? I don't remember I stopped watching highlander a long time ago over it's incoherent storyline butchering.
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MrSparkle
Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001
Posts: 1912
From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2009-12-07 20:23
As a gigantic fan of Highlander the first movie and the TV show (not The Raven, I own the whole series minus the last season because of that), yeah The Source sucked, the 2nd movie sucked, the 3rd movie was OK but lacked something, Endgame was also OK but lacked something.
The first movie is great, the TV show is great, and I hear they're remaking the first movie? They're remaking so many things!!!!
The sword fights aren't poor though, not in the first movie and TV show. They're choreographed by F. Braun McAsh, who knows what he's doing. Je made the duels look flashy and elegant the way an immortal who depended on swordfighting for survival would have learned.
[ This Message was edited by: MrSparkle on 2009-12-07 20:32 ]
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kenetiks
Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: November 21, 2001
Posts: 1130
From: Bandcamp
| Posted: 2009-12-07 20:31
Quote:
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On 2009-12-07 20:23, MrSparkle wrote:
As a gigantic fan of Highlander the first movie and the TV show (not The Raven, I own the whole series minus the last season because of that), yeah The Source sucked, the 2nd movie sucked, the 3rd movie was OK but lacked something, Endgame was also OK but lacked something.
The first movie is great, the TV show is great, and I hear they're remaking the first movie? They're remaking so many things!!!!
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Remaking the original? Now that'd be awesome.
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MrSparkle
Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001
Posts: 1912
From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2009-12-07 20:39
I don't think it will be awesome. You can remake Connor Macleod, but nobody will ever be able to step into Clancy Brown's shoes as The Kurgan.
Forgot that Anthony De Longis was involved in some of the Highlander TV show choreography, and even had a role. No wonder those fights were fantastic!
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Nax
Marshal
Joined: May 12, 2005
Posts: 768
| Posted: 2009-12-08 17:47
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10. THE SPIRIT
There was a movie called The Spirit?
9. GRINDHOUSE
Loved this. Was really awful but the movie was exactly what it was supposed to be. Yeah, I dig Quentin.
8. ROLLERBALL
As far as it went, it was ok just not real good. Recently *chose* to watch it.
7. THE INVASION
There was a movie called The Invasion?
6. CATWOMAN
Like another, it had Halle Berry in it. I likey.
5. TOWN & COUNTRY
There was a movie called Town & Country?
4. GIGLI
I'm a Kevin Smith (director) fan but I still haven't seen this...or more than a couple minutes worth.
3. LAND OF THE LOST
I've been avoiding Will Farrell for awhile and I guess if it's on TV, might watch it out of curiosity.
2. BATTLEFIELD EARTH
Butchered. Still hoping Syfy will remake it like they did Dune.
1. THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH
This one looks funny but I'd never made the time to watch it. Maybe one day.
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Coeus
Grand Admiral
Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: March 22, 2006
Posts: 2815
From: Philly
| Posted: 2009-12-08 19:42
Seriously Kenny? Hell son... I thought even a mother trucker like you woulda had better taste! 
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