Summary
Thesuperhero movie genrewouldn’t be where it is today without some big hits at the box office. Movies likeTheAvengers,The Dark Knight, andX-Men: Days of Future Pasthave all come out and proved popular with audiences, and therefore, they have all made big money at the box office. Then there are the movies that haven’t been quite as fortunate.
For a movie to become profitable for a studio, it generally needs to make double its production budget or more. This is because the studio also has to pay to market the movie - which usually costs the same amount as the movie’s production - and the theaters that show the films keep one third of the profit for themselves. As a result, history is full of superhero movies that inevitably flopped. It isn’t always due to quality, though, as plenty of great movies have hit screens that deserved to succeed but didn’t.
6Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer
The 2007 Sequel To Fox’s First Stab At A Cinematic Fantastic Four
The Fantastic Four have had a complicated movie history. As one of the first properties that Marvel sold to Fox Studios to avoid bankruptcy, the first movie featuring the team of explorers was made in the 90s, but never saw the light of day due to it being written off as a tax return. Then, Fox finally broughtThe Fantastic Fourto movie theaters in 2004, in a movie directed by Tim Story to help capitalize on the recent successes of theX-MenandSpider-Manmovies.
The movie performed well enough, financially to warrant a sequel in the form of 2007’sFantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. With their origin out of the way, the creative team were free to tell any story they wanted in this universe, and so chose to depictthe arrival of The Silver Surfer and Galactus to Earth. Despite the movie only being rated 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, this sequel is still considered to be the best Fantastic Four movie so far. Sadly, the underwhelming plot of the first movie, and poor reviews of the next one, meant that many fans stayed home and watched the movie flop.
5Birds Of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn)
Harley Quinn’s DC Spin-Off
Although the Suicide Squadmovie from 2016 wasmet with largely negative reviews, the movie did make more than enough at the box office to be considered a win. One of the bright spots in that dismal movie, though, was Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Harley Quinn, so it made sense for the studio to focus more on her character in a spin-off movie.
Birds of Preysaw Harley break up with The Joker and start her own legacy by assembling a team with other popular DC characters, such as Huntress and Black Canary. Sadly, this premise wasn’t enough to make viewers forgetSuicide Squad, and so they did not return to theaters to see Harley Quinn again, even though this movie reviewed far better than the previous movie in the series. Plus,Birds of Preyalso hit theaters one month before major markets started shutting their cinemas due to the Covid pandemic. As a result,Birds of Preydid not make as much money as it should, or could, have under better circumstances.
4Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm
An Animated Attempt At Bringing Batman Back To The Big Screen
Warner Bros and DC have always been certain of the fact thatthe character of Batman will sell movie ticketsin any form he appears in. Sadly, that was not true of the 1993 animated movie,Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.
TheBatmanfranchise was riding high at the time of this movie’s release, asBatman 89had lit up the box office in live action, andBatman The Animated Serieswas currently running on TV. Therefore, releasing a feature-length Batman movie set in the same universe as the TV cartoon seemed like a recipe for success. However, this was not the case, as the movie flopped, mostly due to its animated nature. Many adult members of the public were not interested in seeing an animated movie in theaters, and anyone who hadn’t seen the cartoon show felt left out. Despite that, this interesting movie has found a cult following in the modern era, and is considered one of the better representations of how Batman’s love life should play out.
3The Marvels
The MCU’s First Failure
There was a time shortly after the release ofAvengers: Endgamewhere it seemed that there was no chance of an MCU movie flopping at the box office. However, in 2023The Marvelsbecame the first movie in the franchise’s history to not make its money back. However, the movie’s quality is not the reason this movie flopped on arrival. The movie debuted with a 62% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and is largely successful as a small-scale, fun team-up movie in the MCU.
Sadly, compounding factors emerged to hurt this movie’s potential. For starters, several of the movies and TV series set in the MCU before this movie had dipped in quality from the MCU’s standard. Therefore, the people who disliked these properties did not rush out to see another one. Plus,the sheer amount of Marvel contentthat has been released over the years meant that most people felt that they had to watchCaptain Marvel. WandaVision, andMs Marveljust to understand the plot of the new movie. Add to all this the fact that the screen actors' strike meant that the stars were unable to promote the movie at the time of release, and it leftThe Marvelswith little chance of succeeding.
2The Suicide Squad
A Confusing Sequel/Reboot
Disaster struck Marvel in 2018 when the higher ups at Disney fired the director and writer of theGuardians of the Galaxymovies. Marvel’s loss was DC’s gain, though, as the studio offered Gunn the chance to produce his own movie in their current DCEU. Gunn decided to take onThe Suicide Squad, creating a sequel/reboot of the team with his own vision after the failure of the DCU’s 2016 attempt.
The movie itself introduced some great new characters to the franchise, and even founda way to incorporate old favorites from the 2016 movie into their new world.The result was a great, fan-pleasing action movie. Sadly, the poor reception of the first movie in the series, and the ongoing pandemic, prevented many people from actually going to see the movie in theaters, and its box office gross suffered as a result.
1Dredd
One Of Hollywood’s Most Tragic Flops
When movie studios look at some of the most iconic superheroes, they tend to find that the most popular ones belong to either Marvel or DC. That is why it was seen as a strange move when Buena Vista decided to release a Judge Dreddmovie in 1995 from publisher IDW Comics. Although the movie starred a highly bankable actor in Sylvester Stallone, it was not a huge success at the box office and remains a poorly reviewed mess that did not stick to the source material. The 2012 reboot,Dredd, is a different story.
Starring Karl Urban as a more grizzled version ofthe futuristic freedom fighter, fans of the source material finally got a true adaptation of the character in a gritty crime movie. The results of this movie have led many fans to call for a sequel, but sadly, the box office results did not call for one. Poor trailers and marketing meant thatDreddwas largely ignored upon release, and so it now remains a forgotten classic, despite the praise of many who saw it.
