We’re only at the start of March but Lionsgate’s Gods of Egypt is already a frontrunner for the year’s biggest flop.
Hollywood filmmaking is known for its competitiveness and not every film can be the next Deadpool. However, a lot of films are initially written off as flops on opening weekend only to find big profits over the long run.
Check out seven of the most surprising below.
Pacific Rim
Guillermo del Toro’s films have a pretty rocky box-office record and the director’s man-in-machine-versus-monsters action flick Pacific Rim looked to be the same old story when it landed with only $37 million in earnings compared to its $190 million budget. Fortunately, the film proved to be a massive success in foreign markets, raising worldwide earnings to a respectable $411 million.
Terminator: Genesys
Even within a franchise that hasn’t found a friend in critics since 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Terminator: Genesys felt like a disaster for the franchise. However, despite all this, the numbers for Genesys are actually surprisingly strong. The film only earned $89 million of its $155 million budget back from American audiences, with the film taking an additional $350 million overseas.
Green Lantern
2011’s Green Lantern was one of the biggest fizzles in recent comic-book movie history. Starring Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordon, the film bombed pretty hard, scraping together only a quarter of its $200 million budget on opening weekend. The movie was critically and popularly panned, quickly disappearing into the annals of flop-history. However, it actually ended up recouping those losses and making a profit thanks to the foreign box office.
The Matrix Revolutions
Though the third Matrix film has a pretty savage Rotten Tomatos score of 36% and is widely-regarded as a terrible conclusion to the trilogy, it made a staggering amount of money for Warner Bros and the Wachowskis. Revolutions only took $110 million to produce but raked in $420 million through the box-office then another $116 million through its DVD release. In some ways, it’s a miracle that we haven’t gotten a Matrix reboot yet.
Crimson Peak
Another Guillermo Del Toro production, Crimson Peak bombed pretty hard on release. The American gothic only made back about $15 million of its $55 million budget in opening week. Despite a mixed critical-reception, the film managed to stay in cinemas long enough to raise its takings to just shy of $75 million. All in all, another modest success for Del Toro.
Battleship
This 2012 adaption of the classic board game did about as well as you could hope on its opening weekend, bringing in $55 million worldwide. However, it eventually overcame critical and commercial flop status to soar past its $200 million budget and left cinemas with just over $300 in box office takings.
Pixels
When Adam Sandler‘s Pixels debuted to only $25 million, some speculated that perhaps Sandler’s ability to make bank no matter how terrible the quality of hsi movies was beginning to wane. However, the numbers have shown that this sadly wasn’t the case. Wherever the film went, critical disdain followed. Fortunately for Sandler, the film released in enough markets that it’s meager takings eventually surpassed the film’s $88 million budget and soared to total of $243 .6 million.
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