The recent box office debacle of Todd Phillips' Joker: Folie à Deux has reignited the debate about big-budget films bombing at the box office. Every year, the budgets of Hollywood studios' tentpole films increase by millions of dollars. And while many succeed, a few continue to fall short of expectations.
These box office bombs lose tens, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars. At the top of this dubious list is a 2012 release that flopped so badly that the studio head lost their job. ( Also read: Made in ₹ 45 crore, earned just ₹ 60k, India's biggest box office bomb sold 500 tickets ) Hollywood's biggest box office bomb In 2012, director Andrew Stanton, best known for his work on animated classics Finding Nemo and WALL-E, took charge of a live-action spectacle - John Carter .
Based on A Princess of Mars, the first book in the Barsoom series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter followed the titular hero on an adventure across an inhabited Mars. Made on a production budget of over $300 million, John Carter boasted of big visual effects and was one of the most expensive films made at that point. A huge publicity campaign from Walt Disney Studios saw the film's landing cost balloon further.
However, John Carter was a massive box office disappointment, earning only $284 million gross worldwide. After deducing tax and expenditure, the net earnings for the producers was even lower. In 2013, the Los Angeles Times reported that the film had a notional loss of aroun.
