- 6 hours ago
Hollywood can be brutal when stars strike out twice in a row! Join us as we count down the most devastating back-to-back box office failures that derailed acting careers. Our countdown includes Bruce Willis's vanity project fiasco, Taylor Kitsch's half-billion-dollar disaster season, and Eddie Murphy's comedy drought that nearly ended his reign as a leading man.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Mr. I've been in a real bad mood for a couple of years, so why don't you leave me alone?
00:04Welcome to WatchMojo, and today, we're counting down our picks for the worst examples of back-to-back bombs in
00:11movie history.
00:12Oh, and in case you're interested, my life sucks.
00:16You alright? Stick a fork in me, I'm done.
00:21Number 10. Bruce Willis, Hudson Hawk, and Billy Bathgate.
00:24If the Mario Brothers weren't New Jersey's third largest crime family, I'd say kiss my ass.
00:28But considering your status, I will say slurp my butt.
00:32Fresh off the massive success of Die Hard 2, Bruce Willis seemed untouchable, until his ego got the best of
00:38him.
00:38First came his passion project, Hudson Hawk, a bizarre action musical about a cat burglar stealing Da Vinci inventions.
00:45Audiences were baffled by the slapstick, causing the film to lose to studio roughly $50 million.
00:50Meanwhile, critics mercilessly labeled it one of the worst vanity projects ever made.
00:55Hey, something tastes like cappuccino?
00:58Huh, I guess I put too much of a chloride in it.
01:00Just six months later, Willis tried to pivot to serious prestige drama in the gangster flick Billy Bathgate.
01:07Despite appearing alongside Dustin Hoffman, Willis was miscast in the film Tanked, earning back only a fraction of its budget.
01:13While Willis obviously bounced back, 1991 served as a harsh reality check that one hit does not guarantee another.
01:21This schmuck, I should expect something else.
01:22He pulled me off the street right in front of my girl like he don't know no better.
01:26Schmuck.
01:27Don't talk to Irving.
01:31Talk to me.
01:32Number 9, Kevin Costner, Wyatt Earp, and the War.
01:36What do you want to do?
01:40Kill them all.
01:42In the early 90s, Kevin Costner was Hollywood royalty, hot off the Oscar-winning Dances with Wolves.
01:47But 1994 completely stripped his crown.
01:50It started with Wyatt Earp, a bloated three-hour biopic released just months after the far superior tombstone.
01:56Audiences were already exhausted by the genre, and the film barely scraped together $25 million against a colossal budget.
02:03If you don't want to cooperate, I'm going to open you up right now with this shotgun so wide your
02:08whole crew is going to see what you had for breakfast.
02:10And before the dust could settle, Costner released The War, a manipulative tearjerker where he played a supporting role but
02:16was marketed as the star.
02:18Critics hated it, and audiences stayed home.
02:21In less than six months, Costner went from the industry's golden boy to box office poison.
02:26This one-two punch halted his momentum cold, serving as a grim foreshadowing of the Waterworld fiasco that would follow
02:32the very next year.
02:33Well, looks good.
02:34I like it better than you realize.
02:38Much better.
02:38What do you say, Toby?
02:40You're true.
02:41Number eight, Ryan Reynolds, Green Lantern, and the change-up.
02:44To infinity and beyond.
02:47By the power of Grayskull.
02:50What the hell?
02:52Before he was the merc with the mouth, Ryan Reynolds was just a guy desperate to be a movie star.
02:572011 was supposed to be his coronation, but it nearly ended his run permanently.
03:01First, he suited up for Green Lantern, a film plagued by a terrible script in a wildly mock CGI super
03:07suit.
03:07It flopped so hard, it scrapped DC's cinematic plans for years.
03:11There is no way you can succeed.
03:14You will die, Hal Jordan.
03:18I'll die trying.
03:19Just two months later, Reynolds tried to change it up with the R-rated body switch comedy, The Change-Up.
03:24It failed to stop the bleeding, scoring dismal reviews and losing the studio money.
03:29These back-to-back failures created a narrative that Reynolds couldn't open a blockbuster, leaving him struggling to find his
03:34footing for nearly five years, until he finally broke into the A-list with Deadpool.
03:39Anyway, I got places to be, a face to fix, and oh, bad guys to kill.
03:45Number 7.
03:46Sylvester Stallone, Get Carter and Driven
03:48Hello, Mr. Davis.
03:50My name is Jack Carter, and you don't want to know me.
03:53Sly has had more comebacks than Rocky Balboa, but the turn of the millennium was his absolute nadir.
03:58He kicked off the losing streak with a gritty remake of the British classic, Get Carter.
04:02It was a catastrophe, stripping away the charm of the original and earning a humiliating Rotten Tomatoes score before vanishing
04:09from theaters.
04:10You are so freaky.
04:12Well, we're all a little freaky, Doreen.
04:18It's those straight ones we gotta worry about.
04:20Hoping for a rebound, Stallone wrote and starred in Driven, a racing film intended to be Top Gun on Wheels.
04:26Instead, it was a laughing stock featuring some of the worst CGI car crashes in movie history.
04:31With a budget near $100 million, it recouped barely half its cost.
04:36These consecutive failures prove audiences had moved on from the 80s action icon,
04:40leaving him in a career slump that lasted until his nostalgic revival in 2006.
04:45Please, uh, picture, please.
04:47Picture, no problem.
04:52You gotta be kidding, right?
04:54Number 6.
04:55Johnny Depp, The Lone Ranger in Transcendence.
04:57Wait a minute.
04:59You're saying you're Tonto?
05:01The Tonto?
05:03There is another.
05:04For a decade, Johnny Depp was the erratic genius who printed money for Disney.
05:09That luck ran out spectacularly starting in 2013.
05:12The Lone Ranger was a production nightmare.
05:15Audiences rejected Depp's casting and performance as Tonto,
05:18resulting in a nearly $200 million write-down for the studio.
05:33Desperately needing a massive win, Depp pivoted to serious sci-fi with Transcendence the following year.
05:38The result?
05:39A convoluted critical dud that failed to even match its production budget.
05:43These two high-profile bombs marked a significant turning point in public perception.
05:47Suddenly, Depp wasn't the quirky character actor everyone loved.
05:51He was an expensive liability, signaling the start of a long and painful box office decline that he arguably never
05:57recovered from.
05:58I need you to wait here.
05:59Where are you going?
06:01Everywhere.
06:02Number 5.
06:03John Travolta, Battlefield Earth and Lucky Numbers
06:05While you were still learning how to spell your name, I was being trained to conquer galaxies.
06:13John Travolta spent the late 90s enjoying a massive career resurgence thanks to Pulp Fiction.
06:19And then the new millennium came along.
06:21Battlefield Earth isn't just a bomb.
06:23It's widely considered one of the most incompetent films ever made.
06:26A Scientology passion project featuring Travolta and dreadlocks and noseplugs, it swept the Razzies and became a legendary financial disaster.
06:34You will soon be relocated to a new mining site.
06:36And if any of you get any bright ideas about escaping, just keep in mind that although you know nothing
06:42about firearms, I certainly do.
06:44I graduated top marksman in my class, and I can kill any one of you at over a thousand paces.
06:49You think it couldn't get worse.
06:51But just five months later, Travolta starred in Lucky Numbers.
06:54Despite being directed by hitmaker Nora Ephron, the dark comedy was dead on arrival, grossing a pitiful $10 million against
07:02a $63 million budget.
07:04In a single calendar year, Travolta managed to incinerate almost all the cool factor he had built up over the
07:09previous decade, turning him once again into a punchline.
07:13Mainly the concept of gravity.
07:15No, no.
07:17The concept of gravity is when you fall down and you break your head open.
07:21Well, your glasses are obviously half empties now.
07:23You know, my glasses are totally empty.
07:25Number four, Ben Affleck, Geely, and Surviving Christmas.
07:29Don't pay no attention.
07:30She thinks I'm beautiful.
07:32Yeah, she's blind to one eye.
07:34If you were around in the early 2000s, you couldn't escape Bennifer, and neither could Ben Affleck's career.
07:39The media circus peaked with Geely, a romantic comedy so reviled for its terrible dialogue that it became a shorthand
07:46for bad cinema.
07:46You got a good sense of humor.
07:48You know that?
07:49God bless you.
07:55No, no, you stupid.
07:56When my peace needs, I say God bless you.
07:58God bless you, peace.
07:59It made just $7 million against a massive budget of $75 million.
08:03Now that's a disaster.
08:05While Affleck tried to lay low, he had the misfortune of starring in Surviving Christmas the following year.
08:10The movie was so bad, the studio panicked and dumped it into theaters in October, a decision which was widely
08:16mocked by critics and audiences alike.
08:18This double dose of failure was so toxic that Affleck essentially had to quit acting for a while and completely
08:23reinvent himself as a serious director just to earn back the goodwill.
08:27Hunting.
08:28Tom, please, please let me stay here.
08:31No.
08:32I'll pay you.
08:33My family's not for sale, pal.
08:35Tom, I'll pay you $250,000.
08:39Welcome home, son.
08:40Number three, Eddie Murphy, The Adventures of Pluto Nash in I Spy.
08:44You're trying to shake me down and you blow up my cup?
08:46You blow up my wood barstools.
08:48You know how hard it is to get wood on the moon?
08:502002 was the year The Laughter Died for Eddie Murphy.
08:53It began with The Adventures of Pluto Nash, a sci-fi comedy so troubled it sat on the show for
08:59two years before release.
09:00It cost $100 million and made back only $7 million, resulting in a staggering 93% loss.
09:07It remains one of the worst returns on investment in movie history.
09:10So how did they find us?
09:12Obviously, you did something stupid.
09:14Trying to recover, Murphy teamed up with Owen Wilson for I Spy just three months later.
09:19It didn't help.
09:20The film was another critical dud that failed to cover its budget, lacking the edge of his earlier work.
09:25Murphy was once the biggest star in the world, but this one-two punch proved that his name alone could
09:30no longer sell tickets, pushing him toward safer, family-friendly fare.
09:34Put that on.
09:35What is this?
09:36It's a mask.
09:37Put it on.
09:38This looks like a sock.
09:39It's a spy mask.
09:40It's a special spy mask.
09:41Put it on.
09:42It looks like a sock.
09:44Hey, man, this is a sock.
09:45Number two.
09:46Gina Davis, Cutthroat Island in The Long Kiss Goodnight.
09:49You planning to fight me with that little stick?
09:53No, Uncle.
09:55What would you do?
09:55This double bomb didn't just hurt her career.
09:58It killed an entire movie studio.
10:01Gina Davis teamed up with her then-husband director, Rennie Harlan, for the pirate epic, Cutthroat Island.
10:06Plagued by script and casting issues, it lost so much money, it bankrupt Caracol Pictures and made the Guinness World
10:13Record for the biggest box office loss ever.
10:15Very pretty, Mr. Shaw.
10:16Thank you, ma'am.
10:17I had the good fortune to study with the Grand Master in Vienna.
10:20That glass pool.
10:22Oh, my God!
10:24Now, stop diddling your children, man.
10:26Killed him?
10:27Bless me.
10:27We never got to that.
10:28Desperate to pivot, The Duel returned the next year with the action thriller The Long Kiss Goodnight.
10:33While the film was actually well-written and has since become a cult classic, audiences at the time completely ignored
10:38it.
10:39Despite being a talented Oscar winner, the massive financial stigma attached to these two films effectively ended Davis' run as
10:45a Hollywood lead, pushing her out of Tinseltown and into TV.
10:49Easy sport.
10:50Got myself out of Beirut once.
10:52I think I can get out of New Jersey.
10:53Yeah?
10:54Well, don't be so sure.
10:55Others have tried and failed.
10:57The entire population, in fact.
10:59Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about our latest
11:04videos.
11:05You have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them.
11:09If you're on your phone, make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications.
11:15Number 1.
11:16Taylor Kish, John Carter and Battleship.
11:24No actor has ever had a worse spring break than Taylor Kish.
11:28Hollywood tried desperately to make the actor work by casting him in two massive blockbusters just two months apart.
11:34First, Disney's John Carter crashed and burned, resulting in a $200 million loss.
11:39That alone would usually be enough to end a career.
11:42Captain John Carter.
11:44Virginia.
11:49Virginia.
11:53Virginia.
11:55No.
11:57My name is John Carter.
12:02I'm from Virginia.
12:04But then came Universal's Battleship, which was criticized as a loud Transformers ripoff.
12:09It, too, sank at the box office, losing Universal about $150 million.
12:13In just 60 days, Kish was the face of nearly half a billion dollars in failed investments.
12:19It's a record of futility that may never be broken, effectively ending Kish's shot at A-list stardom and relegating
12:25him to TV and supporting roles ever since.
12:27I can't believe that war.
12:29Yeah, art of war.
12:30Fight the enemy where they aren't.
12:32After all these years, it finally just clicked.
12:34But that's not what it means.
12:36Really?
12:37Not even close.
12:38Did you catch any of these movies?
12:40Let us know in the comments down below.
12:41And don't forget to like and subscribe for more WatchMojo videos.
Comments