1) John Carter
Production Budget: $250 million
Worldwide Box Office Total: $282,778,100
By now, everyone knows the saga of Disney’s John Carter. Regarded as one of the biggest box office failures ever, the film itself wasn’t necessarily terrible, but it was marketed poorly and had a rather excessive budget. It was a gamble to begin with too, bringing a character who debuted in 1912 to the big screen almost a century later.
Analysts have pointed out that once you add in the marketing budget and everything else associated with releasing the film, for John Carter to have broken even, it would have needed to hit $600 million at the worldwide box office. To make profit, it would have needed to pull in a number even higher than that. Obviously, the odds were not in its favor.
As I said above, I don’t think that John Carter was really that terrible. It wasn’t a good film but it wasn’t as bad as many made it out to be. It hads its moments and I still wouldn’t be totally opposed to seeing a sequel. Not that we’ll ever get one, but I wouldn’t be against it if it ever did happen.
Unfortunately, this is one franchise that I think is dead, for now at least. Disney lost way too much money on it and I can’t see them going back to the character anytime soon.