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How Much Bigger Are the Box-Office Bombs This Year Than In Previous Years?

By Dustin Rowles | Box Office Round-Ups | March 9, 2015 |

By Dustin Rowles | Box Office Round-Ups | March 9, 2015 |


Last week, in talking about the mediocre outing of Will Smith’s Focus, I noted that this year may be the year of the box-office bomb. Someone countered, however, that the box-office is generally bad during the first two months of the year.

That is true, but I was convinced that it’s worse this year than in previous years, so I did a little number crunching. Looking at the domestic totals only (for the purposes of this exercise) and comparing them against their production budgets, I compared the five biggest bombs in January/February over the last five years.

You know what? This IS a banner year for box-office bombs, so far (and this weekend, Chappie and Unfinished Business didn’t help matters). The numbers don’t lie. Avengers: Age of Ultron and Star Wars: Episode VII are going to have to put up huge numbers to dig 2015 out of the box-office hole:


2015

Jupiter Ascending (-$127 million)
Seventh Son (-$79 million)
Blackhat (-$63 million)
Mortdecai (-$63 million)
Strange Magic (-$30 million*)

-$362 million


2014

Pompeii (-$77 million)
The Legend of Hercules (-$52 million)
Winter’s Tale (-$48 million)
I, Frankenstein (-$46 million)
Robocop (-$42 million)

-$265 million

2013

Beautiful Creatures (-$41 million)
Bullet to the Head (-$34 million)
Gangster Squad (-$14 million)
The Last Stand (-$33 million)
Broken City (-$16 million)

-$138 million

2012

Man on a Ledge (-$24 million)
One for the Money (-$14 million)
Big Miracle (-$20 million)
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (-$10 million)
Red Tails (-$8 million)

-$76 million

2011

Drive Angry (-$40 million)
Season of the Witch (-$16 million)
The Dilemma (-$22 million)
The Way Back (-$28 million)
Hall Pass (-$9 million)

-$115 million


* Conservative estimate. No budget details have been released for the George Lucas film, but we do know that it’s the lowest grossing animated wide release (over 3000 screens) of ALL TIME, and that animated films are typically costly.