#-B | C | D | E-F | G-H | I-J | K-M | N-R | S-T | U-Z | DC Comics Films | Marvel Comics Films
A number of films based off DC Comics characters have bombed since The '80s, often due to inflated budgets from troubled productions, themselves often due to a notorious history of Executive Meddling from Warner Bros. that made them struggle to find an audience.
- Supergirl (1984) — Budget, $35 millionnote . Box office, $14,296,438 (domestic). Not only did it end Alexander and Ilya Salkind's involvement with the original Superman film series (though they would later produce the TV series The Adventures of Superboy), but the film’s failure would be largely responsible for the character getting killed off in Crisis on Infinite Earths.
- Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) — Budget, $17 millionnote . Box office, $15,681,020 (domestic), $30,281,020 (worldwide). Along with Superman III (which barely broke even and was considered a huge disappointment), it was the death knell for Christopher Reeve's tenure in the role and kept the Man of Steel off the big screen for nearly two decades. It was also one of several big flops in the late '80s for The Cannon Group, who took over production from the Salkinds, which lead to their eventual bankruptcy.
- Batman & Robin (1997) — Budget, $160 million (plus $125 million marketing). Box office, $107,353,792 (domestic), $238,235,719 (worldwide). The other infamous fourth installment of a once-groundbreaking DC movie series, its critical thrashing and financial underperformance cast a permanent shadow over Joel Schumacher for the rest of his career, set back the careers of several of its lead actors (with Alicia Silverstone getting the worst of it), and ended the original Batman Film Series, keeping the Caped Crusader off the big screen for nearly a decade until Christopher Nolan brought him back with Batman Begins. Speaking of which, to this day The Dark Knight Trilogy is still the only DC Comics-based film series to have concluded without either a disappointment with critics or a box office bomb.
- Steel (1997) — Budget, $16 million. Box office, $1,710,972 (domestic). Was critically panned and dealt a fatal blow to Shaquille O'Neal's acting career. Removing the character's ties to the Superman mythos likely didn't help either. Combined with Batman & Robin, it ended up keeping DC as a whole off the big screen for seven years and nearly killed the superhero movie as a whole, which allowed DC’s rival Marvel to start gaining ground and become the new dominant force in superhero movies.
- Catwoman (2004) — Budget, $100 million. Box office, $40,202,379 (domestic), $82,102,379 (worldwide). This was DC's first film since the double bombs of 1997, and it was definitely not the comeback they were looking for. This film was meant to be a spinoff of Batman Returns, but it suffered through Development Hell that led to it not having anything to do with Batman. Halle Berry quit the X-Men franchise to take the role of the titular character and be in this film, only for Catwoman to become one of the biggest critical busts of 2004. Berry personally accepted her Razzie, stating "It was just what my career needed." Said career had to fight its way back. The movie was also a major blow to Big Bad actress Sharon Stone, who followed it up with Basic Instinct 2, setting it back even further. Along with Elektra, this helped keep the superheroine genre barren after films like Supergirl made it that way, and it also ensured director "Pitof" would not helm another major project. DC would have to wait another year for Batman Begins to regain ground in the film industry and thirteen years for Wonder Woman to take another crack at the superheroine genre and finally see major box office success.
- Superman Returns (2006) — Budget, $204 million. Box office, $200,081,192 (domestic), $391,081,192 (worldwide). An attempt to revive the original Superman movie series for contemporary audiences, it proved to be extremely divisive for being a Same Plot Sequel and failed to break even at the box office, causing plans for a sequel to be scrapped and Superman to get a full-blown film reboot seven years later. While its gross was respectable in absolute terms (comparable to near-contemporaries Batman Begins and X-Men 2, which were both successful enough to get multiple sequels), the sheer cost plus its relative underperformance from expectations of what a mega-high-budget Superman revival "should" have been doomed it.
- Watchmen (2009) — Budget, $130–150 million. Box office, $107,509,799 (domestic), $185,382,813 (worldwide). Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore’s iconic miniseries got a polarizing reception from critics and audiences alike at the time (though said reception would get better over the years), and failed to make a dent financially. The marketing trying to sell it as a traditional superhero romp instead of the Deconstruction it actually was didn't help matters.
- The Losers (2010) — Budget, $25 million. Box office, $23,591,432 (domestic), $29,397,654 (worldwide). The 2010 film adaptation of The Losers from the DC imprint Vertigo Comics underperformed.
- Jonah Hex (2010) — Budget, $47 million. Box office, $10,547,117 (domestic), $10,903,312 (worldwide). Releasing against the heavily anticipated Toy Story 3 did not help - it had the lowest opening weekend of the entire company at the time, with just $5.6 million domestic. Its abysmal reception (currently 12% on Rotten Tomatoes and 32 on Metacritic) likely sealed its fate as it then plummeted to just $1.6 million the next week.
- Green Lantern (2011) — Budget, $$225 million (plus $100 million marketing). Box office, $116,601,172 (domestic), $219,851,172 (worldwide). Being critically panned didn't help. This movie was originally supposed to be the start of a DC shared universe, but as a result of this failure, Man of Steel would instead serve as the introduction to the DC Extended Universe.
- The DC Extended Universe got caught in quite a bad string of bombs it never managed to overcome starting with Birds of Prey in 2020. Of particular note, there's the Continuity Reboot by James Gunn that was announced in late 2022... while there were still four expensive movies to release in 2023, among other reasons that led to audience indifference.
- Justice League (2017) — Budget, $300 million ($500 million including marketing, interest expense, and residuals). Box office, $229,024,295 (domestic), $657,926,987 (worldwide). Following the critically polarizing but financially successful Man of Steel, the Critic-Proof duo of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad, and the runaway success of Wonder Woman, Justice League was expected to have a box office performance that could rival the MCU's Avengers movies. This was among the most expensive films ever made, caused in part by its Troubled Production that saw Zack Snyder replaced with Joss Whedon for studio-mandated reshoots, so it needed to gross a massive amount just to break even. Instead it earned the dubious title of "most successful box office bomb ever
" as industry analysts believe this film lost $50 to $100 million for WB. It opened in a surprisingly competitive season on the release calendar. Its opening domestic weekend of $93.8 million was only about half of BvS and the lowest of any DCEU film to that point, suffering from lackluster marketing and critical backlash after a long embargo. The film's failure prompted the studio to fire several members of DC Films including heads Geoff Johns and Jon Berg, while both Snyder and Whedon were removed from future DC films, the latter also being accused of abusive behavior during the reshoots. Walter Hamada became the new chairman in January 2018. Meanwhile, after a massive fan campaign, Snyder was eventually allowed to release his original vision of the film as Zack Snyder's Justice League in 2021 to noticeably better critical reception, leading to some thinking that releasing a shorter version of that movie in November 2017 would've yielded better results than what came out of Whedon's numerous, costly, and rushed reshoots. - Birds of Prey (2020) — Budget, $84-100 million. Box office, $84,172,791 (domestic), $205,372,791 (worldwide). Despite the missteps with Justice League, the next two movies, Aquaman and SHAZAM!, managed to generate profits, with Aquaman grossing over a billion dollars worldwide, while SHAZAM!’s worldwide gross of $365 million on a $100 million budget allowed the movie to make a modest profit. The future seemed promising after these, but this is actually where the DCEU's run of profitability ended (with the only films afterwards related to DC to be a success being the non-DCEU films Joker and The Batman and the animated film DC's League of Super Pets- and even so, the latter film still had to rely on a surprisingly strong-legged run in a rather dry 2022 end-of-summer box office to make back its budget). Birds of Prey fell short of its $250-300 million break-even point, costing the studio tens of millions of dollars. This was not helped by the movie’s audience-limiting R-rating, competition from the much more accessible Sonic the Hedgehog, confusion over its title (being more a Harley Quinn movie than a Birds of Prey movie, to the point that theater listings and even the film’s own commercials started referring to it as Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey), a massive underperformance in the opening weekend (it made $33m after expectations of $55m) followed by indifference among general audiences (a large second-week drop ensued), and the impending onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the subsequent closure of theatres, which cut off the film's legs.
- Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) — Budget, $200 million. Box office, $46,801,036 (domestic), $169,601,036 (worldwide). A massive drop compared to the first film's $412 million domestic/$822 million worldwide. The film was released amidst one of the worst timeframes of the COVID-19 pandemic in December 2020, with many theaters still being closed, and it was the first of the "Day-and-Date" releases on HBO Max (which caused much piracy), and that difficult release was combined with mixed-to-terrible reviews and word of mouth. Patty Jenkins, who still stands by her creative choices on the film, was eventually let go by DC Studios out of Creative Differences once James Gunn took over, and plans for a third film were quietly dropped, possibly also meaning the end of Gal Gadot's run in the role.
- The Suicide Squad (2021) — Budget, $185 million. Box office, $55,817,425 (domestic), $168,717,425 (worldwide). Most agreed it was a massive improvement over 2016's Suicide Squad, but while that made a lot of money in spite of terrible reviews, this one became the exact opposite. The divisive reception to the first film likely impacted the sequel's performance, as general audiences who didn't like it may not have been in a rush to revisit the Suicide Squad concept, while those that did likely wished for a direct sequel rather than a soft reboot. However, the box office gross was more severely impacted by the industry still being hindered by the pandemic and Warner Bros.' decision to gave it a simultaneous release on HBO Max to drive subscriptions to the fledgling platform. The film had a huge streaming premiere, but how many new subscribers that strategy generated against the money lost from not keeping the movie exclusive to theaters is unclear (accusations of cooking the HBO Max numbers have risen amidst the creation of the Warner Bros. Discovery conglomerate); Warner would abandon the simultaneous strategy by the end of the year. Other roadblocks included its R-rating, having significantly less star power than the 2016 film had (Will Smith, Jared Leto), and the Recycled Title from its recent predecessor confusing general audiences. At the end of the day, the very positive critical response to the film (and its companion series Peacemaker) was apparently enough for WBD to look past the box office underperformance and give the keys of their entire DC slate and its Continuity Reboot over to James Gunn, not what usually happens to directors of films that appear to have lost as much money as this one did.
- Black Adam (2022) — Budget, $260 million. Box office, $168,152,111 (domestic), $393,252,111 (worldwide). It was actually the highest grossing DCEU movie post-Aquaman and above-average in Dwayne Johnson's catalog in general, but its massive budget set a high break-even point that it failed to reach. The film is estimated to have lost WBD $50-100 million. Not helping is that the Rock's hyping of the movie prior to release caused Hype Aversion for a number of DC fans going in, particularly those who got sick of him insisting the film would completely "change the hierarchy of the DC Universe", much of which stems from ignoring Black Adam’s traditional nemesis, Shazam, to focus entirely on a proposed conflict between him and Superman that was teased in this film’s post-credits scene. Not long after this movie was released, Walter Hamada left the company and James Gunn took over, announcing a reboot for the franchise, resulting in Henry Cavill's much-ballyhooed return as Superman being nixed. The word about Johnson’s meddling with the movie also greatly damaged his career, with him returning to the Fast & Furious franchise despite having previously exited after a dispute with Vin Diesel.
- SHAZAM! Fury of the Gods (2023) — Budget, $110-125 million. Box office, $57,638,006 (domestic), $133,838,006 (worldwide). The aforementioned announcement that DC Comics adaptations on film would be completely rebooted under James Gunn signaled doom for this movie well in advance, as fans knew going in that any unresolved threads would be Left Hanging. The movie was pushed back almost a year from its original scheduled release date and ended up stranded in a very crowded Spring 2023 marketplace (opening against, amongst others, Creed III, Scream VI, John Wick: Chapter 4, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie) with little fanfare, and opened to an anemic $30.1 million domestic and $60 million worldwide, the lowest for any DCEU film not impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and simultaneous release on HBO Max. From there, it suffered huge weekend to weekend drops both domestically and internationally and was put on digital platforms within a month of release, finishing as the lowest grossing DCEU film ever at the time. As soon as it became evident the film would bomb, multiple members of the cast and crew openly criticized Warner and DC executives for kneecapping the project almost from the start, with star Zachary Levi leveling a lot of the blame on Dwayne Johnson for Executive Meddling and blocking any crossover with Black Adam (whose own potential financial shortcomings likely set the stage for Fury of the Gods being left to die on the vine at the box office).
- The Flash (2023) — Budget, $200-220 million note . Box office, $108,133,313 (domestic), $268,533,313 (worldwide). After spending roughly a decade in Development Hell as the DCEU took shape and COVID-19 shook up the film industry, this effort to finally bring the iconic DC Comics character to the big screen faced even greater challenges after filming wrapped. Ezra Miller became the center of numerous legal controversies that made it impossible for the film's lead and co-lead to do any promotion for the movie and cost WB many product endorsements that typically help offset costs. Ads were forced to focus on the film's multiverse concept (particularly the return of Michael Keaton to the role of Batman for the first time since Batman Returns three decades prior, reaching out for a significantly older viewerbase than what WB was targeting) and the film's intended role in rebooting the entire DC movie universe, which (as evident by the previous entries on this page) hadn't had any box office success since before the pandemic. This kneecapped the film in generating positive pre-release buzz, as audiences were already fatigued by superhero and multiverse-based films (and for those who weren't, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse provided stiff competition), the focus on subject matters other than its title character gave the impression that WB had no confidence in the project and was desperate to bank on nostalgic fans for success (even if the finished film is still Flash-centric), and the news of the upcoming reboot by James Gunn led audiences to think it was inconsequential and unnecessary. All this, combined with other issues — the WGA strike, chaos at WB after its merger with Discovery (including the scrapping of a nearly completed Batgirl movie that would have included Keaton, for a tax write-off), and lukewarm reviews for the movie – led to a disaster at the box office, with a poor opening and near-record week-to-week dropoffs. Several reports after its release have estimated that the film lost $200 million at the least, which would make it one of the biggest, if not the biggest, box office bomb of all time. Some have even speculated that WB would have lost less money had they decided to scrap The Flash entirely as they had with Batgirl or released it straight to streaming.
- Blue Beetle (2023) - Budget, $104-120 million. Box office, $72,397,133 (domestic), $129,197,133 (worldwide). While it got the best reviews for a DCEU movie since The Suicide Squad and featured an All-Star Cast of Latin-American talent, the circumstances around its release were dire; the advertising was limited to two trailers and a few TV spots, it was releasing towards the end of August, it was yet another leftover of the DCEU that audiences knew that the upcoming reboot would render pointless (though James Gunn said he intends to put the character in his new universe, and with the same actor too), the SAG-AFTRA strikes going on at the time prevented the cast from promoting the film themselves, and most general audiences had lost faith in the DC brand on film after the DCEU’s string of flops, especially after the monumental flop of The Flash barely two months prior. Couple that with many audiences experiencing genre fatigue (and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem appealing to others who weren't) and key markets the film was targeting being impacted by Tropical Storm Hilary, and Blue Beetle barely edged out SHAZAM! Fury of the Gods as the lowest grossing film in the franchise (though it actually made more money domestically).
- Justice League (2017) — Budget, $300 million ($500 million including marketing, interest expense, and residuals). Box office, $229,024,295 (domestic), $657,926,987 (worldwide). Following the critically polarizing but financially successful Man of Steel, the Critic-Proof duo of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad, and the runaway success of Wonder Woman, Justice League was expected to have a box office performance that could rival the MCU's Avengers movies. This was among the most expensive films ever made, caused in part by its Troubled Production that saw Zack Snyder replaced with Joss Whedon for studio-mandated reshoots, so it needed to gross a massive amount just to break even. Instead it earned the dubious title of "most successful box office bomb ever
- The Kitchen (2019) — Budget, $38 million. Box office, $12,180,032 (domestic), $15,980,032 (worldwide). Based off a DC Vertigo comic, its' $5.5 million opening weekend just barely outdid Jonah Hex (2010) for the worst opening weekend of a DC-related film and was the worst opening weekend for lead actress Melissa Mccarthy. It quickly petered out and was out of theaters before the month was over.
