2018 was a landmark year for films. Box office record-breakers like Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, and Incredibles 2, made massive headlines. It also bred some of the most significant commercial disasters. Nobody intentionally sets out to make a box office bomb. These movies, some made by top-notch directors, were surprise failures. With names like Shane Black, Robert Zemeckis, and Ron Howard feeling the sting of being on this list, that further underscores how fickle American box office tastes can be.

Update November 30, 2023: This article has been updated with further reflection on these 2018 box office bombs and the impact they have had on the film industry.

2023 has seen its fair share of box office disappointments, from The Flash to Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One to The Marvels. Looking to the past box office failures might paint a picture of how we got here. To quote another 2023 film, The Holdovers, "history is not simply the study of the past but an explanation of the present."

Here is a look back at some of the biggest box office bombs of 2018 in order of release. Explore why they might have been disappointed at the box office and if they have had any lasting legacy on the film industry that can be observed five years later. Here are some of the biggest bombs of 2018 and why they were.

10 A Wrinkle in Time (March 9)

a wrinkle in time
A Wrinkle In Time
PG
Family
Adventure
Fantasy
Sci-Fi

A Wrinkle in Time is a young adult science-fiction flick about a high school girl who explores the wonder of space and time travel with her younger brother Charles and her friend Calvin. Their mission is to rescue her father from the impending danger of evil forces that hold him prisoner on another planet. With a cast like Reese Witherspoon and Oprah Winfrey, the high expectations for this one sadly met rock bottom. The movie was considered a box office bomb following its worldwide return of $133.2 million against a combined $250 million spent on production and advertisement.

What Makes It a Flop?

Some movies wear their hearts on their sleeves. A Wrinkle In Time attempted to be all heart but unfortunately ended up misfiring in the process. The film was clearly the work of auteur filmmaker Ava DuVernay, which sometimes means bold creative swings can be embraced or dismissed. The movie's dismissal by critics, many of them male, had major repercussions as it was this movie that inspired Brie Larson to speak out about how much film criticism is dominated primarily by white men. This comment led many to turn on Larson and begin a hate campaign against her and Captain Marvel that continues to this day.

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9 Tomb Raider (March 16)

tomb raider
Tomb Raider
PG-13
Director
Roar Uthaug
Release Date
March 5, 2018
Main Genre
Adventure

Tomb Raider is another movie about a daughter looking to unravel the secrets behind her father's disappearance. Lara Croft is the fierce troublemaker daughter of Lord Richard Croft, who vanished years earlier. With nothing but hope and determination to find him, Croft embarks on a perilous journey to his last-known destination. Truthfully, Tomb Raider is really only a misfire in the US. It was made for $94 million, and it only made $58 million in the US and Canada.

What Makes It a Flop?

Maybe people can only see Angelina Jolie in the role of Lara Croft. It was, after all, the role that established her as an actor who could carry an action movie on her own. It is certainly a huge performance to live up to. Besides, franchise reboots are generally tricky ground with all the comparing and contrasting attached to them. It also didn't help that it was released only a month after the box office hit Black Panther.

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8 Solo: A Star Wars Story (May 25)

solo
solo
PG-13
Action
Adventure
Sci-Fi
Release Date
May 15, 2018
Director
Ron Howard
Main Genre
Action
Runtime
135
Studio
Walt Disney Pictures / Lucasfilm
Tagline
Never tell him the odds.

The bar for the box office must be in an insane place when Solo: A Star Wars Story grosses $400 million and is still considered either a flop or a misfire. The movie is supposed to be a dazzling spin-off about one of Star Wars' most famous characters (Han Solo) and his excitingly dangerous adventure to save his beloved Qi'ra. He forms an unlikely alliance with a Wookie named Chewbacca, who helps him get to where he needs to be. This tale of how Han Solo became Han Solo was supposed to be massive. Instead, it was a $250 million problem child.

What Makes it a Flop?

Solo: A Star Wars Story is by no means a bad film. It just doesn't feel like anybody's film. The original directors were let go, and even the brilliant Ron Howard couldn't save it. The movie's box office underperformance can be attributed to many factors, from a late marketing campaign to opening three weeks after Avengers: Infinity War. Disney might have been pushing out too many Star Wars films as the film opened just five months after The Last Jedi, the shortest period between Star Wars films. This was a movie whose failure led Lucasfilm to rethink its approach to Star Wars. However, despite its commercial failure, enthusiastic fans kept pushing the studio for a sequel. The #MakeSolo2Happen campaign didn't make its desired impact. As Director Ron Howard confirms, the project is nowhere near the studio's priorities.

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7 Gotti (June 15)

gotti
Gotti
R
Release Date
June 14, 2018
Director
Kevin Connolly
Cast
John Travolta , Kelly Preston , Stacy Keach , Pruitt Taylor Vince , Megan Leonard , Lydia Hull
Main Genre
Drama

The big issue is that Gotti seems like it only got made because it had John Travolta starring. But even a big star like him cannot ward off a boring scenario with unintentional and sometimes misplaced humor. The movie is about the exceptional life of a New Yorker raised on the streets who found his way into the Gambino crime family, and eventually climbed the 'criminal' ladder by becoming head of the most powerful and influential family in the city. Even if you wanted to sugarcoat it, the numbers wouldn't let you, as the movie certainly sank in debt, grossing only $6.1 million worldwide against a 10 million budget.

Related: John Travolta's Best Movies, Ranked

What Makes It a Flop?

One of the reasons this movie didn't receive the expected attention is that John Gotti's life has been told and retold down to the last boring detail, which left no room for the 2018 remake to be unexpected, new, or captivating. What was even worse is that Gotti got a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it one of the worst movies of the year.

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6 The Predator (September 14)

Predator 4
The Predator
R
Release Date
September 5, 2018
Director
Shane Black
Main Genre
Sci-Fi

The Predator was set up to be a major hit. Hot off Iron Man 3 and The Nice Guys, Shane Black was brought on board to relaunch the Predator franchise. It's hard to think of The Predator as a flop per se, as it grossed $160 million worldwide while the original Predator didn't even reach $100 million. However, it came close to that number, and considering the films are decades apart, that is certainly saying something. It also doesn't help that The Predator cost $208 million, and the original cost $15 million.

What Makes It a Flop?

The Predator was a mess of a movie, one that suffered from too many ideas and far too many studio notes. The movie had many alternate endings, and the third act was drastically reworked, leaving the final film a tonally confusing and expensive entry. It also did not help that the film had a late-minute cut to the movie, as star Olivia Munn became aware that Black had hired his friend and registered sex offender Steven Wilder Striegel for a brief scene in Munn's intro scene as a man trying to flirt with her. When Munn became aware of this, she went to Fox and, rightfully so, requested the scene be removed which led to her character with an awkward introduction.

The one silver lining to the film was that the film's disappointing box office led 20th Century Fox to move forward with Prey, which was pitched around the same time The Predator was filming. Prey became a hit with critics and audiences and now Prey 2 is in the works.

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5 Life Itself (September 21)

A scene from Dan Fogelman's Life Itself (2018)
Amazon MGM Studios

Life Itself teased shots of people screaming and other slow-motion images in an attempt to give this piece gravitas. The movie then turned out to be way simpler than that. It's about college sweethearts, Will and Abby, who are preparing to have their first child. However, life makes its own mind about who they meet and where they go, and they feel caught in its tricky web. Worldwide Life Itself has amassed around $7 million against a budget of $10 million, making it more of a misfire and a flop.

What Makes It a Flop?

Reviewers rewarded this effort with 14% on the Tomatometer. Critics and audiences alike expected so much more from the writer of Crazy Stupid Love, but instead, they got a messy plot with loose ends that tries, maybe way too hard, to incorporate the mysterious ways of life itself. Surely, life isn't all rainbows and unicorns, but it isn't one misfortunate event after another either, as the movie's simplistic plot suggests. Life Itself presented itself as a movie about life, but ultimately, it wasn't a life anybody really wanted to see on the big screen.

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4 The Girl in the Spider's Web (November 9)

Girl in the Spider's Web Trailer #2 Tells a New Dragon Tattoo Story

Sony Pictures looked to reboot The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo franchise with a story that had not been adapted into film before, The Girl in the Spider's Web. While the previous film from David Fincher was critically acclaimed, the studio was not happy with the box office and figured a cheaper reboot would be a safer bet. Despite a talented director like Fede Alvarez and a great star like Claire Foy, The Girl in the Spider's Web was a box office dud, grossing $35 million worldwide against a $43 million budget. For comparison, that $35 million worldwide was just a little over how much the 2011 film made in just its domestic opening.

Why It Flopped

The Girl in the Spider's Web was a sign of Sony thinking just because they had a recognizable brand, it would not translate to a box office hit. The movie lacked the star power of Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig, and being a restart instead of a sequel to the beloved 2011 film put it at a disadvantage. Combine that with the movie opening the same weekend as Illumination Entertainment's The Grinch, and the movie was quickly drowned out of the box office by holiday hits like Fantastic Beasts: The Grimes of Grindelwald (which was also a disappointment), Ralph Breaks the Internet, Creed II, and Green Book.

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3 Robin Hood (November 21)

Robin Hood Origins
Robin Hood Origins
PG-13
Release Date
November 21, 2018
Director
Otto Bathurst
Main Genre
Action

The action adventure movie Robin Hood is about the story of young aristocrat Robin of Loxley's fight against the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham who stole his family estate, and who's freely exploiting the city's resources. On a budget of $100 million, this new retelling of the classic Robin Hood story has brought in $30 million in the US. It's worldwide total was $86.5 million.

What Makes it a Flop?

In cinema, recycled materials impose a greater responsibility to be innovative. The movie simply lacked the fresh ideas and storylines that a modern audience would expect from a remake of a classic tale and instead induced a feeling of déjà vu in its bored-to-death audiences. Robin Hood is a property that Hollywood keeps trying to relaunch with little success.

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2 Mortal Engines (December 14)

mortal engines
Mortal Engines
PG-13
Release Date
November 27, 2018
Director
Christian Rivers
Cast
Robert Sheehan , Ronan Raftery , Hera Hilmar , Stephen Lang , Hugo Weaving
Main Genre
Sci-Fi

There was a time when Peter Jackson's involvement with anything virtually assured box office returns. Truthfully, his performance outside the world of Middle Earth is a bit spotty. The biggest example of that is Mortal Engines. The movie is set in a post-apocalyptic world in which cities are turned into huge giant engines on wheels fighting over resources. Politics, action, and magic are all mixed into a poorly directed two-hour runtime. Although the movie was based on a popular book by Philip Reeve, it has still grossed only around $83.7 million worldwide against a production budget of $100–150 million.

Related: 7 Apocalypse Movies to Watch Before The Last of Us

What Makes It a Flop?

The film not only received poor reviews from critics but faced stiff competition from other movies released during the holiday season, like Aquaman, Mary Poppins Returns, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and Bumblebee. Compared to those four, Mortal Engines just could not compete. If we combine that with a 28% Rotten Tomatoes score reflecting the audience's repulsion, the movie's box office disaster wouldn't be so hard to explain. On the list of the 131 biggest box office bombs ever, this movie secured a place in the middle, ranking 83rd.

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1 Welcome to Marwen (December 21)

welcome to marwen
Welcome to Marwen
PG-13
Release Date
December 21, 2018
Director
Robert Zemeckis
Main Genre
Drama

Welcome to Marwen is one of those movies that seems to have everything going for it and everything against it all at once. It was based on a true story, had a solid cast, and having the legendary Forrest Gump director Robert Zemeckis certainly didn't hurt. Then people saw the film and the reviews were pretty brutal. The movie's story was inspired by Jeff Malmberg's 2010 documentary Marwencol, which documents the main character's brutal attack that left him with serious brain injuries, and his astonishing artistic creation of soldier dolls, which helped him make sense of the traumatic event that nearly ended his life. The film's total box office revenue of $13.1 million could not begin to cover its miscalculated budget ($39 million).

What Makes It a Flop?

This tale of recovery certainly has its heart in the right place. There is no dispute about that. It's just that the execution seems odd, and thus the film feels that way. If the director's original cinematic plan was to mimic his main character's brain concussion, it was undoubtedly the wrong move. The weird plot that combined the tone of a painful story with the triviality of talking dolls made it hard for the audience to settle into a mood and connect with the movie. Expanding on the same point, The Guardian points out that, "what might have been a complicated drama plays like a dud Forrest Gump." December was a very bad month for Universal Pictures, as before it recovered from the first disappointment (Mortal Engines), it added another to the list.

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