This Is the Biggest Movie Flop in Hollywood History

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 1, 7:50AM EDT

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A movie’s performance at the box office gets plenty of attention. Some people were very impressed when “Avatar” became the most profitable movie in Hollywood history (and it still is). Others gasped when the big-screen adaptation of “Cats” bombed in domestic theaters despite a star-studded cast featuring Taylor Swift and Jennifer Hudson.

What’s the biggest box-office bomb of all time? Here we have tried to answer this question. Using data on worldwide box office and production costs from film industry data site The Numbers, 24/7 Tempo compiled a list of 40 movies that lost the most money when comparing their box office gross to their production budgets. From this, we took the film with the worst numbers.

It seems there is never a guarantee a movie will do great at the box office. Some directors count on recognizable names in Hollywood to attract moviegoers. Yet, the list of the biggest film flops includes A-listers such as Christian Bale, Angelina Jolie, Chris Rock and Reese Witherspoon.

Similarly, no genre appears to be a safer bet for turning a profit. The list of the movies that lost the most money is very diverse. It includes everything from time travel thrillers to romantic comedies and historical dramas based on true events.
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“Mars Needs Moms,” released in 2011, is the biggest flop in Hollywood history. Some details:

Loss: $110,450,242
Production budget: $150,000,000
Worldwide box office: $39,549,758
Starring: Seth Green, Joan Cusack, Dan Fogler
Directed by: Simon Wells

In the film, a nine-year-old boy is trying to save his mother from Martians who kidnap her, and he gains a new appreciation for her during his rescue journey. Some critics have described the movie as a mess and an interplanetary clunker.

Our methodology: As mentioned, 24/7 Tempo reviewed data on worldwide box office and production costs from film industry data site The Numbers to determine the biggest movie flop ever. Films were ranked on the difference between total worldwide box office gross and production budget, with the films with the largest losses ranking at the top of the list. Data on the domestic box office also came from The Numbers. Supplemental data included the number of reviews and overall rating of each film on the Internet Movie Database, as well as audience score and Tomatometer ranking from Rotten Tomatoes. Data was collected in April 2021.

Click here to see all the biggest movie flops in Hollywood history.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.