Movies

Top 10 movie flops of the decade

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-11-27 10:09

LOS ANGELE –Movie flops aren't just about losing money. Yes, big budgets that go bust are one consideration. But flops are also about lofty expectations dashed and high profiles brought low. They trigger embarrassing catcalls from the peanut gallery and a general whoever-thought-that-was-a-good-idea-in-the-first-place bewilderment.

Any judgments of flopitude are necessarily subjective, but here are 10 movies from the past decade that made those few moviegoers who saw them cringe. Disagree? Talk among yourselves.

10. THE SPIRIT

* Release date: December 25, 2008

* Estimated cost: $60 million

* Domestic gross: $19.8 million

Frank Miller, the man who created the comics "300" and "Sin City," and who redefined Batman and Daredevil for the modern age, directed this adaptation of Will Eisner's comic-strip hero. Starring Samuel L. Jackson and a bevy of beauties, it may have looked good on the page. But onscreen, the heavily stylized, nearly black-and-white results were disastrous. The expensive movie was killed by comic fans, who wanted Miller to go back to comics, and critics, who trashed the movie's over-the-top tones and aesthetics. Consequently, the partners at the company behind the production, Odd Lot Entertainment, parted ways after 23 years together. It even killed plans for a Miller-directed version of "Buck Rogers."

9. GRINDHOUSE

* Release date: April 6, 2007

* Estimated cost: $67 million

* Domestic gross: $25 million

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez managed to turn twice the filmmaking firepower into half the box office (and a third of the critical praise). With "Grindhouse," what began as an explicit exercise in joyous B-movie cinema homage -- a double bill of '70s-style schlock, one film from each director -- ended up aping its scuzzy genre ancestors a little too closely in the receipts department. After the three-hour-plus "Grindhouse" opened to a mere $11.6 million, Harvey Weinstein split the film's two parts -- "Death Proof" and "Planet Terror" -- and shuttled them to international markets individually. While that recouped a little of the Weinstein Co.'s money, it incurred the wrath of purists who were angry that the original film had been corrupted. Tarantino and Weinstein are famously loyal to each other, and while the writer-director eventually made good on the losses with the $120 million-grossing "Inglourious Basterds" this year, "Grindhouse" was one instance where loyalty nearly brought down the house.

8. ROLLERBALL

* Release date: February 8, 2002

* Estimated cost: $70 million

* Domestic gross: $19 million

Norman Jewison's 1975 comment on violence, corporatism and spectacle has its place in the paranoid '70s-era cult film pantheon. John McTiernan's remake, on the other hand, would be totally forgettable if it weren't so spectacularly misconceived in every way. The cast -- Jean Reno, Chris Klein, LL Cool J and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos -- was a C-list mishmash closer to reality TV than big-budget studio moviemaking. McTiernan had long since dented his box-office bona fides with "Last Action Hero" and "The 13th Warrior." And the studio releasing it -- MGM -- was so aware of its bomb-worthiness that it pushed the release back four times, out of the summer 2001 field and into the barren wasteland of February. In a last act of desperation, the movie was also re-edited from an R to a PG-13 rating, sabotaging any last chance it had at an audience. Ultimately, it pretty much wrecked McTiernan's career (he has directed only one film since).

7. THE INVASION

* Release date: August 17, 2007

* Estimated cost: $80 million

* Domestic gross: $15.1 million

Nicole Kidman couldn't have started the decade any hotter, scoring with "Moulin Rouge," "The Others" and "The Hours." But after 2002, her career went cold in the U.S. ("Stepford Wives," "Bewitched," "Australia" and "The Golden Compass"); it's as if the actress was abducted by some sort of soul-draining body snatcher. But wait, isn't that what she's fighting in "The Invasion," Hollywood's latest remake of the 1956 film "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"? This time around, the eerie premise, based on a novel by Jack Finney, failed to catch fire. The Wachowski brothers' second unit director, James McTeigue, was called in to shoot additional scenes written by the "Matrix" whiz kids after original director Oliver Hirschbiegel was sent packing, having filmed the bulk of the movie. In an omen of things to come, Kidman suffered an on-set fender-bender during the reshoots. When the film arrived in theaters more than a year late, Kidman's regal bearing took another dent.

6. CATWOMAN

* Release date: July 23, 2004

* Estimated cost: $100 million

* Domestic gross: $40 million

It was inevitable after Michelle Pfeiffer stole scenes as Catwoman in "Batman Returns" that her black-latexed anti-heroine would get a spinoff of her own. But when the inevitable occurred in 2004, this time with Halle Berry playing the character, audiences tried hard to cover up the kitty litter. No one involved with the movie came out unscathed. Not Berry, who just two years earlier had won an Oscar for "Monster's Ball"; not Sharon Stone, who chewed up the scenery as the movie's villainess; and not Pitof, the French filmmaker making his American directorial debut. He went back to his native land and hasn't directed a theatrical feature since. The movie is another example cited by studios in their long-held contention that female superhero movies just don't work.

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