As well as heroes of the box office, there have to be zeros.
The minimum target for any film is to make back what the cost, and unfortunately the following selection just didn’t make the cut. To honour and slightly humiliate at the same time, FemaleFirst did the number crunching and found the biggest box office bombs of 2009.
Number 1 – Outlander
Aliens, spacemen 
and Vikings sounds like a great combination right? It would seem not, as this bizarre sci-fi adventure that has James Caviezel (Passion of the Christ) crash land on to Earth right in the middle of Viking Scandinavia, unwitting unleashing a deadly alien on them also crashed spectacularly in the box office.
Despite costing a rather meaty $50m, it only made $6.2m worldwide, easily topping our list of box office busts for 2009. Support for the film was nearly nil, with very little advertising and word of mouth alone being the sole reason why ii made anything at all.
The film itself wasn’t actually too bad, despite the mad as a hatter premise. As long as you like Vikings though. Which, obviously not very many people seem to do.
Number 2 – Taking Woo
dstock
Heralded director Ang Lee decided to go back to comedy this year, with his crack at hitting the offbeat comedy train that’s taken Michael Cera among others to fame, in Taking Woodstock.
Set around the iconic music festival in 1969, Taking Woodstock is based off a book describing the decision to hold the festival of love.
Despite a number of positive reviews, audiences dismissed the film off hand, and in it’s time on the big screen only earned the film $7.4m, not even making a quarter of it’s $40m budget.
Suffering from near on no hype at all, and suffering from a real lack of star power, Taking Woodstock was a classic example of a film often praised by critics, but had no one to applaud it in the cinemas.
Number 3 – Band Slam
This one can kind of be let off the hook though. Even with two of the High School Musical alumni in its ranks, the Disney marketing machine never really got rolling with Band Slam, the latest in its line of musicals.
It gave us the story of how a bunch of kids, led by the geeky new kid Will, set up their own band to take on a regional musical competition called Bandslam to win a recording contract and give Will his shot of meeting his hero David Bowie.
The problem with Bandslam was that although it was in the same vein as High School Musical and Camp Rock, Disney’s two other massive successes; they were made for a straight to DVD audience, and weren’t trying to barge there way in at the box office.
Despite costing the studio a hefty $20m to make (nearly double that of High School Musical 3), Bandslam simply didn’t find its crowd to play to and only grossed a tiny $11.2m.
Number 4 – The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnasus
This is a film that has been let down by the suits.
The latest creation of truly visionary, and highly bizarre, director Terry Gilliam, Doctor Parnassus shows the immortal Doc bringing his ‘Imaginarium’,
a mystical travelling show with a mirror that allows you to enter different worlds, to the streets of London.
Parnassus made a deal with the Devil to be able to guide people’s imaginations, and now he’s come to collect. With the Doctors’ daughter (model Lily Cole) on the top of his wish list, the workers of the show must enter the mirror to save her, alongside a mysterious stranger, played mainly by the late Heath Ledger.
Having faced an uphill battle to get the film finished after the tragic death of Heath Ledger during filming, Doctor Parnassus has still not finished with its problems.
Yet to be released in the U.S, and still looking unlikely to happen on the scale it would need, as even though it has been a success at the box offices, it’s only been released in five countries, so has failed to make it’s fairly lavish $45m budget, have garnished $12m so far.
Number 5 – Whiteout
This uninspiring thriller unsurprising flopped massively when it hit our screens earlier this year.
Starring Kate Beckinsale (Underworld) as U.S Deputy Marshall Carrie Stetko who after being moved to a base in Antarctica finds a dead body frozen in a block of ice and must unravel the mystery before the oncoming snow storm arrives at the base.
Based off a little comic book of the same name, Whiteout didn’t prove a hit with audiences here, and despite Beckinsale’s name being attached to it, it only proved semi-popular in the U.S and Russia. Funny that Russia likes a snow based mystery…
With absolutely no publicity and a trailer that promised nothing new, original or in particularly thrilling, the figures of a total gross of just over $12m shocking nobody, not even making back half of the $35m it cost to make.
Number 6 – Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li
This was a film that proved so unsuccessful that it hasn’t even been released in this country yet; The Legend of Chun Li was both universally panned
by critics and shunned by audiences.
Based of the classic fighting game, it sees Chun Li, played by Kristin Kreuk (TV’s Smallville) learning the ways of martial arts in order to get back at the evil M. Bison, who killed her family when she was young girl.
Gathering a phenomenally bad set of reviews, with web site Rotton Tomatoes claiming that only 4% of all it’s reviews had anything positive to say.
Although still managing to rake in $12.7m from the legions of Street Fighter fans in America, Spain, Japan and Malaysia, the faintly ridiculous budget of $50m, more than both District 9 and Hurt Locker cost combined, might has well just been thrown down the drain by those behind the failed project.
We could go on with the flops, but that’s perhaps enough embarresment handed out for one day. It’s clear to see though that it’s not only bad films that flounder at the ticket office, even creative movies like Doctor Parnassus can get dragged into it as well.
In an era of multiplexes and the increadible strong 2010 line up, we're sure to get many more extreme examples of money monetary maladies.
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith
As well as heroes of the box office, there have to be zeros.
The minimum target for any film is to make back what the cost, and unfortunately the following selection just didn’t make the cut. To honour and slightly humiliate at the same time, FemaleFirst did the number crunching and found the biggest box office bombs of 2009.
Number 1 – Outlander
Aliens, spacemen and Vikings sounds like a great combination right? It would seem not, as this bizarre sci-fi adventure that has James Caviezel (Passion of the Christ) crash land on to Earth right in the middle of Viking Scandinavia, unwitting unleashing a deadly alien on them also crashed spectacularly in the box office.
Despite costing a rather meaty $50m, it only made $6.2m worldwide, easily topping our list of box office busts for 2009. Support for the film was nearly nil, with very little advertising and word of mouth alone being the sole reason why ii made anything at all.
The film itself wasn’t actually too bad, despite the mad as a hatter premise. As long as you like Vikings though. Which, obviously not very many people seem to do.
Number 2 – Taking Woodstock
Heralded director Ang Lee decided to go back to comedy this year, with his crack at hitting the offbeat comedy train that’s taken Michael Cera among others to fame, in Taking Woodstock.
Set around the iconic music festival in 1969, Taking Woodstock is based off a book describing the decision to hold the festival of love.
Despite a number of positive reviews, audiences dismissed the film off hand, and in it’s time on the big screen only earned the film $7.4m, not even making a quarter of it’s $40m budget.
Suffering from near on no hype at all, and suffering from a real lack of star power, Taking Woodstock was a classic example of a film often praised by critics, but had no one to applaud it in the cinemas.
Number 3 – Band Slam
This one can kind of be let off the hook though. Even with two of the High School Musical alumni in its ranks, the Disney marketing machine never really got rolling with Band Slam, the latest in its line of musicals.
It gave us the story of how a bunch of kids, led by the geeky new kid Will, set up their own band to take on a regional musical competition called Bandslam to win a recording contract and give Will his shot of meeting his hero David Bowie.
The problem with Bandslam was that although it was in the same vein as High School Musical and Camp Rock, Disney’s two other massive successes; they were made for a straight to DVD audience, and weren’t trying to barge there way in at the box office.
Despite costing the studio a hefty $20m to make (nearly double that of High School Musical 3), Bandslam simply didn’t find its crowd to play to and only grossed a tiny $11.2m.
Number 4 – The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnasus
This is a film that has been let down by the suits.
The latest creation of truly visionary, and highly bizarre, director Terry Gilliam, Doctor Parnassus shows the immortal Doc bringing his ‘Imaginarium’, a mystical travelling show with a mirror that allows you to enter different worlds, to the streets of London.
Parnassus made a deal with the Devil to be able to guide people’s imaginations, and now he’s come to collect. With the Doctors’ daughter (model Lily Cole) on the top of his wish list, the workers of the show must enter the mirror to save her, alongside a mysterious stranger, played mainly by the late Heath Ledger.
Having faced an uphill battle to get the film finished after the tragic death of Heath Ledger during filming, Doctor Parnassus has still not finished with its problems.
Yet to be released in the U.S, and still looking unlikely to happen on the scale it would need, as even though it has been a success at the box offices, it’s only been released in five countries, so has failed to make it’s fairly lavish $45m budget, have garnished $12m so far.
Tagged in Outlander