It was, as you’ll have noticed from everybody talking about it constantly, and from all the lousy movies you saw, a bad summer creatively and commercially for Hollywood. Aside from “Captain America: Civil War” and “Finding Dory,” everything either sucked, or underperformed financially, or both. But in a summer of flops, what flopped hardest?
READ MORE: ‘Ben-Hur’ With Jack Huston Is Uneven, But Makes Case For Its Own Existence [Review]
Well, according to a Hollywood Reporter piece, it was “Ben Hur,” MGM’s remake of the Biblical-era classic. According to the trade, Timur Bekmambetov’s film, which opened in mid-August to pretty bad reviews, is on track to lose $120 million, an impressive feat given that its budget was $100 million (if you’re wondering how that’s possible: it costs a lot to market a movie like this, and the films’s worldwide haul of $54 million doesn’t seem to cover even that). It’s so bad that MGM have had to issue a profits warning to shareholders because of the film, and that was even after having one of the season’s most profitable movies with weepie “Me Before You.”
It seems like another nail in the coffin for remakes to us, but we’re sure that won’t be the lesson that studios take from it. Meanwhile, THR says that Disney had two of the biggest money losers this summer, with “The BFG” taking just 165 million globally on a $140 million budget, with a total write-off of nearly $100 million, while “Alice Through The Looking Glass” took just south of $300 million on a $170 million budget, losing at least $65 million.
It’s interesting which movies here aren’t mentioned, as “Star Trek Beyond” ($300 million worldwide on a $185 million budget) and “Ghostbusters” ($224 million on a $144 million budget) would seem to be fairly hefty money losers to us as well, but maybe THR knows something we don’t… Anyway, let’s hope that the studios have better luck next summer, and remember, kids: don’t spend nine-figure sums on movies that nobody wants to see.
