JCC Flopfest 2023 Year In Review - rank the flops!

This was such a good year for cinematastrophies of all shapes and sizes. From the megabombs Flash, The Marvels and Dale of Density and Wish, through the big budget flops like Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves and Shazam Fury of the Gods, Blue Beetle and Haunted Mansion, to the more modestly budgeted disasters like The Creator and Renfield, to the odd hybrid incredibly overpriced streaming vanity projects with theatrical runs like Napoleon and Killers of the Flower Moon, so many movies disappointed in spectacular fashion, making this one of the best ex pandemic years ever, along with the strikes, for big body blows to Hollywood.

And of course we still have Aquaman 2, coming to and then rapidly exiting from, a theater near you.

What are your top 5 candidates for biggest flops of 2023? Use any metric you like, e.g. biggest overall monetary loss, worst return on budget, biggest franchise death rattle.

Disney should be a shoe in for floppiest studio of the year.

 

My favorite film flop is whatever caused the most pain for executives and shareholders.

 

And they say nobody cares about the shareholders anymore.

 

Disney share prices are technically up nearly 3% for the year, but compared to Nasdaq ytd, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, that is not great.

 

1. The Little Mermaid - sank like a stone
2. Fast X - ran out of gas
3. Dial of Destiny - retired early
4. Haunted Mansion - got spooked
5. Elemental - temperamental

 

You know I saw Shazam 2 and I can't remember a single thing about it.

 

I did end up watching Flash on streaming. You can almost see the money burning. Dial of Destiny is unwatchable. I liked D&D Hat. I loved Killers of the Flower Moon but it could so easily have been made for less than $50 million. Most of that $200 million budget went to pay way too much money to DiCaprio and DiNiro and DiScorcese. It was in many respects an extension of the exploitive money grab described in the movie's plot.

Renfield is a much overlooked flop. It made only 40% of its budget at theaters.
Wish is just over 50% of its budget. Maybe it makes it to 60%. It is arguably the biggest flop of the year.

 

Too bad it was successful because "Floppenheimer" is perfect.

 

The little girl said "Taste the ****ing rainbow." That's the single thing I remember.

 

Haunted Mansion is in a funny spot where it just feels like it was deliberately set up to fail, the marketing, the release timing, all of it. Disney just burning money for the sheer joy of it.

The ad blitz they put out desperately telling us to get a Disney plus subscription so we could understand The Marvels was pretty great too.

 

Sound of Freedom deserves an honorable mention for haranguing the audience to buy tickets for strangers via giant QR codes on the screen before the credits roll

 

Sound of Freedom's phantom box office is a genuine phenomenon. There's not much evidence that anyone ever saw it, so it's like a Star Wars show on Disney+ in that respect.

 

wtf is sound of freedom

 

exactly!

 

You guys missed out. JFK Jr. came to my screening and spoke to the audience before the movie started. It was a nice surprise.

 

Sound of Freedom is real. I know several people who saw it went it was out in theaters. The content matter and the news that the disney executives who had it tried to bury the film when they acquired fox and the makers had to fight to get it made it an interesting story media wise. Plus all the media against it calling it "right wing", when it wasn't political at all to people who saw it, even theaters themselves seemingly trying to shun people from watching it, just made people want to. So a big hit it became.

Far as the DND film, it was actually really good and hopefully a sequel will be made. They'd like to, but smaller budget considering

 

Ah, so it's right wing.

 

My Top 5 candidates (in order of theatrical release)
Shazam! Fury of the Gods
Fast X
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
DC's The Flash
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny


Edit: Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves is actually good and worth a watch.

 

Dial of Destiny was the best actual movie to flop imho

 

I'd say Killers of the Flower Moon although its hybrid theatrical/original streaming status apparently exempts it from having to make money for Apple. Apple stock is up 55.68% ytd to date so Killers is also exempted by the @Darth Guy test.

 

Thanks for clarifying, the people here had me convinced it wasn’t real.

 

It's as real as its main character's sexual misconduct allegations.

 

Forspoken - Looked like it could be a new IP that had legs. Graphically solid and barring a couple of required tweaks the trailers and general gist indicated this could be a game worth following, that coupled with a solid developer suggested January had a PS5 game worthy of the legs the PS5 has.

Queue the demo and then launch day and (insert sad trombone)

Yes recent patches have improved things dramatically but it really is a missed opportunity