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Deadline has taken stock of the five biggest movie flops of 2019, keeping the blockbusters’ marketing and production costs up against the film’s earnings in world cinemas.
And while it may be entertaining to see how many millions Hollywood once again have misplaced, last year’s biggest disappointments can be a useful lesson in the difficult times that many moviegoers and producers after the corona-crisis face.
Here are the 5 movies in question.
First place is sad enough for the last movie in the X-Men franchise, ‘Dark Phoenix’, which had Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner in front.
After various release dates were in play, the female-run ‘Dark Phoenix’ was released in June last year, four months later than first planned. The film not only set the stage for the X-Men universe, but also for 20th Century Fox as an independent studio after the production company was acquired by Disney.
Fox’s breakup unfortunately meant that many of the ‘Dark Phoenix’ promoters were fired during the film’s marketing campaign.
It cost the film dearly, and even after numerous re-shoots, the Phoenix never really got on its wings. The movie cost over $ 200 million to produce. And even though ‘Dark Phoenix’ made $ 252 million, the failed marking campaigns and the postponed release date gave the movie a $ 133 million loss.
Second place goes to ‘Terminator: Dark Fate‘, which had Tim Miller (‘Deadpool’) in the director’s chair and James Cameron on the sidelines, as the film’s producer.
Although Cameron brought Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger back to the ‘Terminator’ universe, it turned out that Miller would have probably rather been without Cameron’s close interference. In retrospect, the two filmmakers should have had some creative discrepancies in the editing process.
Although the reviewers were otherwise quite happy with the disputed result, ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ ended up losing $ 122.6 million, possibly due to the upcoming movie, ‘Terminator: Genisys’, whose poor reception four years before, still threw a long shade.
And now for 2019’s most hated movie: Tom Hooper’s freak show ‘Cats’.
Even some of the entertainment industry’s most cool cats and kittens (James Corden, Judi Dench, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Sir Ian McKellen and Taylor Swift) couldn’t save the movie, whose $ 113.6 million loss proves itself.
Number four of the flops goes to Ang Lee’s double-action action drama ‘Gemini Man’ with Will Smith, whose expensive technology and lead actor made a loss of $ 111.1 million.
Finally, the studio behind ‘Coraline’, Laika, lost $ 101.3 million on the stop motion movie ‘Missing Link’.
The title of 2019’s best-earning movie, on the other hand, did not surprise ‘Avengers: Endgame’, which recorded over $ 2 billions dollars worldwide. A figure that makes the movie – which $ 356 million dollar budget also secured the award as one of history’s most expensive – the greatest box office success ever!
Photo: Universal Pictures