The Biggest Flops of 2006
Filed under: Action, Animation, Drama, Thrillers, MGM, Warner Brothers, Box Office, 20th Century Fox, Family Films, Dreamworks, Tom Cruise, Remakes and Sequels, Lists
It was a good year for much of Hollywood, but a bad year for A Good Year. The Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe team-up only grossed $7 million domestically, and has been labeled a flop. Variety has listed the major box office disappointments for 2006, and interestingly enough, a few of them have to do with water. The appropriately bad way to describe their fate, then, is to say that they drowned. Flushed Away, The Lady in the Water, Poseidon and The Fountain (okay, I didn't see it, but I don't think there's an actual water-type fountain), just couldn't swim. Here's some more bad puns: Sharon Stone didn't have the Basic Instict 2 stay away from a dumb sequel; Producer Dean Devin said, "Flyboys," to his new movie but it crashed and burned; All the King's Men stayed away from this remake, and so did everyone else; Audiences let their Freedomland in other activities besides seeing a movie starring Julianne Moore and Samuel L. Jackson. There's no pun needed for The Wicker Man; it just sucked.Unlike the biggest flops of all time, none of these movies from 2006 broke a studio or likely ended a career. Ridley Scott and Wolfgang Petersen (director of Poseidon) have had flops before, but they can be forgiven for "flukes" every once in awhile since they usually turn out successful work. Plus, their films did okay business overseas. International box office saves more flops these days than back in the times of the really big bombs. Most of the other filmmakers represented are also probable to bounce back, or at least fall back on their other talents. Joe Roth (Freedomland) has already returned to producing. Steve Zaillian (All the King's Men) is back to writing. Tony Bill (Flyboys) may continue acting. Michael Caton-Jones (Basic Instinct 2) will eventually make another crappy film. M. Night Shyamalan (Lady in the Water) might need to be forced to work on somebody else's script for once, but he isn't going to disappear anytime soon, unfortunately.
There are two movies that could have more averse affect on their creators. Darren Aronofsky may not get to make another ambitious film with the sort of freedom he had on The Fountain, at least not for awhile. But his supposedly underrated, misunderstood picture may be considered a classic one day, just as happened to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, to which The Fountain has been compared. The other movie, Flushed Away, has already caused a punishing reaction. Last month, Dreamworks announced they'll be taking a write-down on the film, and the studio is thinking about severing its deal with Aardman Animation.
Other sites are giving their own opinions of what the biggest disasters of 2006 are. ING claims Zoom and My Super Ex-Girlfriend are the biggest flops. According to Wikipedia's list of biggest bombs, this year's worst sufferers were Basic Instinct 2, Bloodrayne, and Slither. Other analyses may point to Superman Returns, Snakes on a Plane, Akeelah and the Bee, Apocalypto, or Mission: Impossible III.
What do you think the biggest disappointment of 2006 was?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-26-2006 @ 3:05PM
Sam said...
Bloodrayne should just be classified as "Uwe Boll" for these purposes.
Also, any mention of Snakes On A Plane as a flop should be put on hold until after the DVD comes out. I think it may be a hot seller, especially if the commentary track features Samuel L. Jackson cursing about snakes for an hour and a half.
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12-26-2006 @ 2:11PM
Anibal Fernan said...
Well, what is a flop? A succesful bad movie? A masterpiece that is also a money loser?
For me the worst movie of 2006, hands down, was A Prairie Home Companion. Pointless, out of focus, critically acclaimed and a completely shallow exercise in snobbish filmmaking. Robert Altman used to stink.
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12-26-2006 @ 8:37PM
The Jeremy said...
I'm adding *BloodRayne* to my Netflix queue. I'm sure it will be just as bad as I imagine it will be, but I want visual confirmation.
Maybe when the SciFi Channel ultimately makes *BloodRayne 2* with a different director and cast, it will be a competent cheap B film versus the Boll directed original. That certainly was the case with *House of the Dead 2*.
In other ponderings, I seem to have collided with the glass ceiling of stars here at Cinematical.
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12-26-2006 @ 7:01PM
Rob Gonsalves said...
Aside from "The Fountain," none of these flops were really art movies. They were mainly calculated commercial endeavors: kiddie flicks or action or sequels or remakes. And aside from "Superman Returns," none of them were known for being budget-busters. They got sent out into the marketplace and the market didn't respond. Even "The Fountain" was relatively modestly budgeted. Whoever greenlit it must've known it wasn't going to make a lot of bank, but did it anyway, and whoever approved the budget on "Superman Returns" must've known it would be a gamble — and you can't say they didn't promote it enough.
People only really get sent to Movie Jail for arrogantly bad movies that lose a shitload of money. "Superman Returns" struggled to make $200 million domestically, and its crime I guess was that it didn't make $400 million. But it also depends on what else the studio that backed a flop had coming out in a given year; a "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" buys Disney breathing space for a few mid-level movies that tank.
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12-27-2006 @ 5:41PM
MosquitoControl said...
Is anyone truly surprised by A Good Year?
I was unaware it had even opened. But the previews made me cringe. It reminded me a bit like a masculine Under a Tuscan Sun. Worse, it was a story of a man having to choose between two lives most of its intended audience would kill for.
Just a tad off from the overused successful-businessman-gives-it-all-up-for-happiness-because-he's-too-dumb-to-find-balance theme that crops up a few times a year, always to panning.
And does anyone really want to see Russell Crowe do anything other than kill these days? He's managed to wear out his welcome some.
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12-28-2006 @ 9:50AM
lastworthy said...
I'm not sure how familliar you are with the production history on "the fountain", but Aronofsky had his actors leave, his buget slashed and had to essentially start from scratch after a couple years of planning. Kent Williams illustrated the version of his script he wanted to make as a graphic novel for Vertigo last year. Considering how the studio bailed on him, I can't imagine he'd personally be judged too harshly.
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1-05-2007 @ 6:31PM
Dragonfly said...
I saw my Super-Ex Girlfriend - which I chose to wait for on DVD, and MI:III which I saw in the theatre and that was FAR FROM being a flop. Everyone I talked to who saw it, loved it. Those who didn't go see it were liberal, pro-psych, "pill-for-all-your-problems" drug pushers or religious bigots who scream "cult" at the first sign of anyone's beliefs they don't agree with.
Everything else on this list, I thought wasn't worth seeing, and so I guess they did flop.
But other movies that definitely did not flop: XMen 3 and Pirates of the Carribean.
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