This Is the Biggest Disney Flop of All Time

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Walt Disney Motion Pictures has been the dominant American studio for several years. It and its several brands have pumped out some of the most popular movies of all time over that period. It has helped make Disney one of the most financially successful U.S. companies. It also has helped build the Disney brand, which includes its string of theme parks in the United States, Europe and China.

Among the largest studio brands Disney controls are Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, 20th Century Animation, Searchlight Pictures and Pixar. It acquired several of these, including Pixar and Lucasfilm, spending billions of dollars.

Not everything Disney touches turns to gold. The company has had its share of flops, too. 24/7 Tempo has picked the biggest Disney flop of all time by looking at 632 feature-length Disney films and subtracting the worldwide domestic box office from the production budget.

On the list of finalists for the biggest flop are several movies many people have never heard of. The biggest flop was “Mars Needs Moms,” a 2011 film that had a production budget of almost $132 million and made less than $48 million. Behind that is “The Alamo,” a 2004 film about a pivotal event in Texas history. Disney probably doesn’t want to remember that film because it lost almost $100 million.
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The worldwide domestic box office and the production budget financial figures were adjusted for inflation using historic ticket prices and the Consumer Price Index, and they come from movie industry data site The Numbers, an online movie database owned by Nash Information Services. Casting information came from the Internet Movie Database.

As mentioned, the biggest Disney flop of all time is “Mars Needs Moms.” Here are some details:

  • Loss (world ticket sales minus production budget): $131.9 million
  • Production budget: $177.5 million (69th highest out of all Disney movies)
  • Worldwide ticket sales: $45.7 million (404th highest out of all Disney movies)
  • Starring: Seth Green, Joan Cusack, Dan Fogler, Elisabeth Harnois

Click here to see all 50 of the biggest Disney flops of all time.
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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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.

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