If The Losers was made a decade later – or even a few years for that matter – then there’s surely no chance it would have fared as dismally at the box office as it did.
After all, we’re talking about a comic book adaptation tangentially connected to the sprawling world of DC that boasted an ensemble that could generously be described as ridiculously stacked, with the cast roping in the likes of Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba, Zoe Saldana, Chris Evans, Holt McCallany and many more besides, although all of those aforementioned names would eventually go on to enjoy superhero careers of their own in various guises.
Unfortunately, a mediocre reception proved to be the film’s undoing, and it scored one of DC’s worst-ever domestic opening weekends on its way to a cumulative box office haul of less than $30 million, but you don’t have to travel too far to find somebody who believes it to be a criminally underrated and unfairly overlooked cult gem.
In fact, there’s a lot of them currently manning the forums of Reddit, and they’ve even pitched it as a retconned addition to James Gunn’s DCU canon. Per the suggestions, it would only take a swift stroke of a pen to dig into comic book history, have the titular team’s “New Frontier” storyline connect to Rick Flag Sr. (already cast in the form of Frank Grillo), and have their mysterious benefactor revealed as Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller. Sure, it’s wishful thinking, but that doesn’t make it any less fascinating to think about.