MovieChat Forums > 47 Ronin (2013) Discussion > The biggest Flop in Box office history??...

The biggest Flop in Box office history???

posted 11 years ago by Smackdown735
10 replies | jump to latest

I just read a fact that this was the biggest flop EVER!!! losing $149 million!

How is that? This movie wasn't THE BEST, but it was decent enough. I can name tons of movies worse than this, how did this do so bad?

Any Questions??

[–] TrevorAclea 11 years ago

Not even close. Disney admitted to writing off $200m on John Carter.

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[–] Waynecampbell1 11 years ago

A really bad story for a really bad movie.

[–] mvksmall 10 years ago

How about "Waterwold?"

[–] HowYaLikeDemApplesWill 10 years ago

People always think of Waterworld or even Ishtar when they think of some of the biggest box office bombs of all time..but actually Waterworld cost a bloated $175M to make (in 1995 dollars no less), but at least grossed $264M worldwide. Considering all the marketing money they surely paid it still lost money, but nowhere near the scope of 47 Ronin, which also cost $175M to make yet made about $150M worldwide.

So clearly 47 Ronin lost money, a lot of money in fact...but nowhere near the worst flop of all time.

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[–] Balibari 10 years ago

I think people confuse the reputation's of Waterworld and The Postman. The latter only took about $30m on an $80m budget.

John Carter is similar to Waterworld. Terrible rep and people think it was a financial disaster, but it actually grossed $284m on a $250m budget. Obviously the marketing costs were huge though, so it made a big loss.

Wikipedia have a good page on movie bombs, they seem to incorporate (presumably estimated) marketing costs into the production budget. As a result they price 47 Ronin at $225m, which sounds about right to me. $50m isn't that much for marketing of a big release, but it didn't get much marketing.

For what it's worth, this is the Wikipedia 'top' 5 with estimated loss in brackets:

1. 47 Ronin ($149,518,763)
2. Mars Needs Moms ($130,503,621)
3. The 13th Warrior ($69,150,551—129,150,551)
4. John Carter ($121,630,450)
5. The Lone Ranger ($94,748,943—119,748,943)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_box_office_bombs

[–] TrevorAclea 8 years ago

For what it's worth, this is the Wikipedia 'top' 5 with estimated loss in brackets:

4. John Carter ($121,630,450)

Which is way off target. John Carter's budget was $306.6m (verified by the UK treasury, who publish final budgets of all films eligible for UK tax breaks), and its marketing costs another $100m on top of that. Before it finished its theatrical run, Disney announced to investors a minimum $200m loss on the film (based on a higher closing gross than it actually achieved), the highest ever recorded.

By comparison, 47 Ronin cost $130m less and had a much smaller marketing spend because Universal basically dumped the film. It's pretty clear what the bigger money loser was of the two. But then Wiki also has the $85-90m budgeted The 13th Warrior costing $160m to make it appear an even bigger flop than it was.

"Security - release the badgers."

[–] dos_azn 10 years ago

Sorry but it wasn't decent, it was awful, and it deserved to bomb hard. I was a big supporter of this film before it came out too.

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[–] Arthur-Spooner 9 years ago

LOL pluto nash I remember that sorry movie. $100 mil budget, made $7 mil hahah

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[–] Yanyawa 9 years ago

Anything with Johnny Depp in it is starting to be a box office bomb these days. The Lone Ranger immediately came to mind

[–] nameOff 8 years ago

I think RIPD was a better flop