Flopping at the box office doesn't necessarily dictate a flop in our hearts, as sometimes poor marketing or a bad choice of opening weekend has held back many a film from achieving its true worth in box office returns. Something as simple as an esoteric movie title like The Shawshank Redemption can mean the difference in millions of dollars at the gate, where movie-goers are often making decisions based on nothing more than a poster or a short trailer. Even when big-name directors or actors are attached to a film, it may need the benefit of a prominent home page placement on a streaming platform for viewers to even know it exists, so saturated with content are today's avenues for movie viewing.

Update July 31, 2023: This article has been updated with even more great films that were box office bombs.

2023 has been rough for many films. From the outright bomb of The Flash to the disappointing box office for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, and Fast X, there are many films that might be considered flops but will find their audiences later. Some films that flopped big have found new life once making it to the small screen, and with many films these days skipping over theatrical releases entirely, it's fun to harken back to the combination of factors that led great films toward the infamy of being box-office duds. The following are the greatest movies to ever flop at the box office.

25 Tenet

John David Washington and Robert Pattinson in Tenet 
Warner Bros. Pictures

Director Christopher Nolan was so determined for Tenet to be watched in cinemas as he intended, rather than on a streaming platform, that he let the film be released, despite many COVID-19 restrictions still being in place. As a result, Tenet made a disappointing $365 million against a $205 million budget. While that would seem like a hit, most of that money came from international markets where the box office returns are split differently with studios thus, making it a box office bomb.

Related: Christopher Nolan: Comparing and Contrasting His Strongest and Weakest Films

Christopher Nolan's films tend to do well, and it would be interesting to know how much money the film would've made if it was released outside the pandemic. After all, it's likely that most people chose not to see this movie out of fear for their own health rather than any opposition to its content. It didn't help, though, that those who did see the film initially found it overly confusing and underwhelming compared to other entries in Nolan's filmography. The dust has now settled, and cinema is back to its pre-pandemic status, meaning that more and more people are rewatching Tenet and viewing it with more favorable eyes.

24 The Man from U.N.C.L.E

Henry Cavill in The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Warner Bros. Pictures

Back in 2015, it was hoped that Guy Ritchie's spy film, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., would be a hit that could lead to a franchise to rival the likes of Bond and Mission: Impossible. An update of the 1964 television series of the same name, the film follows a CIA agent (played by Henry Cavill) and a KGB operative (played by Armie Hammer) who team up to take down a mysterious criminal organization that is intent on building a nuclear weapon. The film had all the ingredients to work; a well-known director, an all-star cast, and plenty of action.

Unfortunately, it wasn't to be, as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. ended up being a financial disappointment, earning just $107 million at the box office and ensuring any plans for a sequel were quickly shelved. Audiences may not have turned up to watch it at the time, but The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is regarded favorably, with Rolling Stone magazine even listing it as the 45th greatest action film of all time.

23 Hugo

Asa Butterfield and Chloë Grace Moretz in Hugo (2011).
Paramount Pictures

2011's family adventure film, Hugo, was a big departure for director Martin Scorsese, who has gained a reputation for his gritty gangster films and adult-oriented dramas that deal with heavy themes. Based on Brian Selznick's 2007 book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, it tells the story of an orphan boy in Paris in 1931 who lives in the walls of the Gare Montparnasse train station and who finds himself embroiled in a mystery involving his late father and an automaton.

Featuring an impressive cast comprised of Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jude Law, Christopher Lee, and many others, the film received critical acclaim when it was first released. Perhaps it was the rather obscure source material that kept audiences away. Or maybe it was to do with the idea of Scorsese directing a kids' film. Whatever the case, Hugo made only $185 million on a $160 million budget. It did, however, win five Academy Awards from eleven nominations at the 84th annual ceremony and has gained retrospective admiration from audiences.

22 Lightyear

Pixar's Lightyear
Disney/Pixar

Pixar's first box office bomb came as a shock as Lightyear seemed like it was destined to be a box office hit. It was a reimagining of the popular character Buzz Lightyear, and Toy Story is one of the biggest franchises in film history. Disney seemed to have more faith in it as they gave it a theatrical release date after sending the previous three original Pixar films to Disney+.

Sadly Lightyear disappointed at the box office in a big way. It grossed $226.4 million worldwide against a $200 million budget. It only brought in $118.3 million domestically, and has since been passed at both the domestic and worldwide box office by Elemental, the Pixar film with the lowest opening weekend but one that has held incredibly well during the summer of 2023. As it is, though, Lightyear is an incredibly fun science-fiction action film and one that is easy to buy as Andy's favorite movie.

21 Steve Jobs

Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs
Universal Pictures

For those of you who saw a trailer for Steve Jobs (touting screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, director Danny Boyle, and the acting talents of Michael Fassbender) and opted to skip over it — may the movie gods forgive your sins. The film's box office failure owed more to audiences veering away from stage-play-style films going back to Glengarry Glen Ross, another film with such expertly crafted dialogue it went over the heads of too many an audience.

Related: Best Movies Written By Aaron Sorkin, Ranked

Like David Mamet was for Glengarry, Sorkin is the real star of this film, crafting a virtually unbroken line of dialogue that demonstrates all the genius of the Apple founder, while giving voice to the family he left behind to bring the 21st Century's greatest tech innovations into the pockets of half the planet. The release of Jobs, starring Ashton Kutcher, two years prior couldn't have helped this film's commercial prospects either.

20 Blade Runner 2049

A scene from Blade Runner 2049
Warner Bros. Pictures

Denis Villeneuve had big shoes to fill in, replicating the success and creative vision of the original Blade Runner, not to mention the grand task of turning around a $185 Million budget. The over-funding approach to the production smacked of Waterworld, another film with production budget overruns that painted it into a financial corner from which it couldn't escape. In this case, the massive budget made for arresting cyberpunk visuals and neon-bathed cityscapes to provide all of the sumptuous science fiction of Ridley Scott's original film.

While Ryan Gosling's at-times-laconic delivery in Blade Runner 2049 made the film a bit of a crawl, its slick aircraft and smog-choked agro wastelands successfully updated the franchise to the day's visual effects capabilities while staying inside the universe of Philip K. Dick's original novel.

19 The Last Duel

Jodie Comer staring into the distance
Scott Free Productions

Ridley Scott himself experienced a box office failure in recent years in the form of 2021's The Last Duel. A historical action, the film revolves around the events leading up to a duel between two medieval knights (played by Matt Damon and Adam Driver) and the contradictory accounts of those involved. The all-star cast also includes Jodie Comer, Ben Affleck, and Harriet Walter.

The big names, both in front of and behind the camera, weren't enough to draw audiences in, though, as The Last Duel went on to make a measly $30 million, less than a third of its $100 million budget. This is a shame, as The Last Duel is a well-crafted film that is beautifully shot, excellently directed, and superbly acted. Ridley Scott released two films in 2021; one was The Last Duel, and the other was House of Gucci. Only one of them was a box-office success. Unfortunately, it was the wrong one.

18 The King of Comedy

The King of Comedy
20th Century Fox

Plenty of ink has been spilled on the topic of Martin Scorsese's pivot to two strange comedies, ​​​​​​​The King of Comedy and After Hours, after the tremendous critical success of Raging Bull in 1980. Robert DeNiro played out of type as Rupert Pupkin, and Scorsese veered away from his usual subject matter to create a twisted kidnapping plot by a failed comic. The fact that it was Scorsese making this film likely had a lot to do with its poor reception, ironic because that peculiarity is part of what's made it a cult film since. Had The King of Comedy come along at a time other than the year when E.T. suddenly changed the type of movies audiences were suddenly clamoring to see, it may have fared better.

Related: Martin Scorsese's 10 Highest-Grossing Movies

17 The Hudsucker Proxy

The Hudsucker Proxy
Warner Bros. Pictures

The Coen Brothers' hyper-stylized art deco comedy The Hudsucker Proxy fell on deaf ears, despite the presence of Paul Newman, who was on a tear in 1994 with this role and an Oscar nomination for Nobody's Fool — all while regularly stocking America's refrigerators with Newman's Own lemonade. It was a time in Hollywood when he and Joanne Woodward had become the spiritual father and mother of the film business, covered graciously in Ethan Hawke's HBO Max limited series The Last Movie Stars. Newman used this era to make films with the likes of Martin Scorsese (The Color of Money) and the Coen Brothers, giving a throwback performance to his own film era in Hudsucker. The movie saw the Coens pay homage to all their film school heroes, from Busby Berkeley to Fritz Lang.

16 The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

The 1988 adventure fantasy film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Columbia Pictures

Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was a stage play on acid, including all the visual frontality of his Monty Python cartoons. The film was one of Uma Thurman's earliest motion picture roles, and garnered a completely demented performance out of Robin Williams, creating a mosaic of production design and outlandish acting — a sort of opera with hilarious sopranos like the inimitable Oliver Reed, and a lovably aloof character from Python Eric Idle.

Add in some sets that recall Georges Méliès early silent films, and you've got yourself a cult classic. Actor John Neville was apparently Gilliam's curse, as he lead the director's two most infamous follies, this film and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, the latter of which became the focus of Lost in La Mancha, a documentary about Gilliam's project imploding despite all the talent attached.

15 Showgirls

Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls
MGM/UA Distribution Co.

Is it just us, or does Showgirls just get better with every passing year? The chain of events that led to one of Saved By the Bell's favorite cast members playing stripper Nomi Malone in the campy exploitation film still boggles the mind, as Elizabeth Berkeley forever burnished her take-no-crap persona onto film history in the completely bonkers Paul Verhoeven film. Gina Gershon rose to the occasion, as well, as the timeless Cristal Conners, a matriarchal Vegas showgirl whose love/hate relationship with Nomi creates the super-fun plot device that drives the film. If it's 8pm and Showgirls strolls across your streaming feed, you might as well kiss the rest of your evening goodbye — you likely won't have more fun than this watching experience.

14 Big Trouble in Little China

Big Trouble in Little China
20th Century Fox

Ok, so Big Trouble in Little China gets a little cringey in the cultural appropriation department. That said, we hope that Chinese-American actors Dennis Dun, James Hong, and Victor Wong agreed to act in the film due to John Carpenters attempts to incorporate Chinese culture in homage more than in jest, as this campy comedy-thriller is one of our favorite Kurt Russell performances ever. Add to that his adversarial love affair with Kim Cattrall, and we have the stuff that magic is made out of, as Big Trouble became one of the most worn out plastic sleeves on the shelves of Blockbuster Videos from San Diego, California to Portland, Maine in the 80s and 90s.

Related: A Look at Big Trouble in Little China's Lasting Influence on Pop Culture

13 Solo: A Star Wars Story

Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Star Wars films tend to make a lot of money. In fact, every Star Wars movie since the 1977 original has been a box office success. All except one: 2018's Solo: A Star Wars Story. Set prior to the events of the original trilogy but after the prequel films, Solo tells the story of a young Han Solo and how he came to be the dashing smuggler-cum-hero we know and love. From his initial encounter with Chewbacca to his very first flight in the Millennium Falcon, the movie goes to great lengths to portray how the few details we do know about Han's life came about.

However, it seemed most people were perfectly happy not knowing how the character came to be, as the film made just over $390 million on a $300 million budget. The thing is, while the film does often get wrapped up a bit too much in fan service, it's actually a pretty solid story and includes an excellent lead performance by Alden Ehrenreich, who rises to the challenge of emulating Harrison Ford. In the years since its release, and with it being added to Disney+, Solo: A Star Wars Story has undergone somewhat of a reevaluation among fans. While most still wouldn't put it within the top tier of Star Wars outings, most agree it's not as bad as many first thought.

12 Ishtar

2768
Columbia Pictures

Long-known as Hollywood's biggest financial flop, Ishtar got some reprieve when Waterworld and John Carter later broke its records for box office infamy. This movie easily could have been made for a fraction of the budget, and Roger Ebert didn't mince words in his assessment, calling Ishtar "a truly dreadful film, a lifeless, massive, lumbering exercise in failed comedy." Oof. Real '80s film buffs couldn't care less, as Ishtar's prime Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman and its floptacular outcome have only added to its legend and watchability. While we shouldn't expect a Criterion release anytime soon, Ishtar will always hold a place in the hearts of audiences as interested in Hollywood's history as its financial outcomes.

11 John Carter

Taylor Kitsch John Carter
Walt Disney Pictures

Speaking of ginormous studio flops, the mother of all big-budget-busts remains John Carter, Disney's initial, ill-fated foray into the fast-burgeoning comic book movie realm. In true Disney style, they based their approach to this genre on a lofty science-fiction novel rather than adapt a tried-and-true comic book franchise. Oopsies...it turned out John Carter couldn't live up to the hype of its exorbitant $300 million budget. One can only feel for Taylor Kitsch, who found himself on the business end of this fail-a-palooza and that epically unwatchable season two of True Detective. Not exactly bad calls by his agent, but definitely not good ones! Budget aside, John Carter is still a great rewatch, with breathtakingly expansive Western landscapes created by its well-funded CGI team.

10 Idiocracy

Luke Wilson and Terry Crews ride in Idiocracy
20th Century Fox

Mike Judge's prescient romp, Idiocracy, outlined all the American political futures we hoped would never come true but kinda did during Trump's political rise. Speculating about how well-endowed a presidential candidate was seemed a bridge too far upon this film's release in 2006, only to be a major talking point during the 2017 campaign season, as Idiocracy's prophecies became all too true. This film lacked the marketability of some of Judge's other franchises, but was still a memorable comedy that turned a stern eye on capitalism-gone-awry, becoming another feather in the Beavis and Butthead creator's hat when we realized how predictive it turned out to be.

9 Office Space

Office Space
20th Century Studios

Another Mike Judge film, another look at the pratfalls of a commoditized society, as Office Space was made from the point-of-view of bored office workers who plot financial revenge against their employers. Despite Jennifer Aniston lending her talents at the peak of her popularity, the film was poorly marketed and didn't translate while in theaters, earning only $12.2 million at the box office against a $10 million budget. The film got a second life on DVD and cable, becoming the cult classic of today thanks to unforgettable performances by Stephen Root and Gary Cole and some eminently quotable bits about staplers and copy machines.

8 She Said

Kantor, Twohey, Corbett, Baquet, Purdy and another NYT journalist about to publish the article.
Universal Pictures

You could write a War and Peace-length book about all the reasons She Said failed at the box office, grossing a paltry $13.9 million against a $32 million dollar budget. The fact was, the film was released five years into #MeToo, and the public's psychological exhaustion with revelations about Harvey Weinstein's perverse exploits, plus the ongoing restraints of theatrical releases in the pandemic era, meant this would always be an uphill climb. That is truly a shame because Maria Schrader's expertly crafted biopic about intrepid journalists Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) belongs right alongside All the President's Men as one of the great American films about the role of journalism in effecting societal change.

Weinstein's twisted statement that the film's poor commercial outcome was somehow linked to his innocence only highlighted the importance of this story being told, and the impediments to the film's success were a mirror of all the pushback these courageous reporters received in trying to expose a story that many didn't want to be told.

7 The Insider

The Insider
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Another film with the unenviable task of telling a story about the importance of journalism and whistleblowers, The Insider cast Russell Crowe as Jeffrey Wigand, a former vice president of research and development at Brown & Williamson, who sought to expose the tobacco industry's criminal suppression of information. Michael Mann's film expanded on the Vanity Fair article that first brought Wigand to the general public's attention, showing the exhaustive and somewhat perilous attempts of Wigand and reporter Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) to bring the tobacco industry to justice for gainfully putting millions of lives at risk. Though the film couldn't make back its budget at the gate, its seven Academy Award nominations put to rest any notion that this film was anything but first-rate.

6 The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption
Columbia Pictures 

It's hard to remember that, once upon a time, The Shawshank Redemption earned only $16 million during its initial theatrical run — so beloved has the film become over time. This was likely due to a release that competed with Pulp Fiction and Forrest Gump and some ambiguity caused by its curious title and adaption from a Stephen King novel. That failure to launch was only temporary, as the film garnered some Oscar nominations and a more successful second theatrical release and home video run. It then became one of the most-viewed properties of all time on cable television, bringing it to a large enough audience to properly place it in the annals of the 90s greatest films.

Related: Here Are Some of the Greatest Prison Escapes in Movie History