16. Jupiter Ascending
Estimated Loss: $87,056,139
Many had hopes that the Wachowskis’ sci-fi adventure would finally be the proper successor to The Matrix, a fantastic adventure with a great female lead that would be a true blast. Warner Bros was pushing it hard in promotion for a planned July 2014 release and the film boasting a budget reported at $180 million thanks to original spaceship and alien designs. But when the film was suddenly pushed from its release date to February 2015, many believed that test screenings were frightening the studio and moving it to a “dead zone’ was a way to avoid a bad loss. It didn’t work as the film was trashed by critics and audiences alike for its incoherent plot, the lack of chemistry between Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum and Eddie Redmayne’s ludicrous performance. The movie bombed, barely making back its budget in the worldwide box office and its loses counting at $88 million. While its camp aspects may win it a future cult following, for the present time, it ranks as proof that The Matrix may have been a fluke rather than a true act of genius by its creators.
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15. The Alamo
Estimated Loss: $94,090,020
One of the last movies to be released under the Touchstone label, Disney’s big-budget telling of the iconic battle between Texas and Mexico was intended to be a major awards-bait movie. Ron Howard was to direct but Disney balked at his budget, shooting on location with a full-scale replica of the Alamo and would have pushed the movie to $200 million. They instead went with John Lee Hancock whose insistence on accuracy meant making sure every detail from clothes to the Alamo itself was perfect and that, combined with bad weather on location, shoved the budget even higher. The film was put off several times as the marketing did their best to promote it, ending with a final budget of roughly $107 million but the movie was crushed in its opening in April of 2004 with poor reviews and lack of interest, leaving Disney with a loss of $94 million. Just like the historical event it covered, the producers of The Alamo went down pretty badly.
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