The biggest box office flops of the 21st century

photo of a dvd of The Adventures of Pluto Nash — ‘Anyone involved with ‘Pluto Nash’ has tried to absolve themself of any responsibility’

(Image credit: South China Morning Post / Getty Images)

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‘Mortal Engines’ (2018, $219M loss)
‘Pan’ (2015, $199M loss)
‘The Adventures of Pluto Nash’ (2002, $168M loss)
‘X Men: Dark Phoenix’ (2019, $167M loss)
‘Jupiter Ascending’ (2015, $159M loss)
‘Ben-Hur’ (2016, $157M loss)
‘The Alamo’ (2004, $156M loss)
‘Stealth’ (2005, $155M loss)

Amazon’s fawning documentary “Melania” opened in January to withering reviews and receipts unlikely to offset its $75 million budget. But losing tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars on a movie isn’t easy or particularly common.

For our list, we took a list of the movies that lost the most money since 2000, adjusted for inflation, and highlighted the top eight with Rotten Tomatoes critical scores of less than 30%. This avoids ensnaring perfectly serviceable movies that never found an audience, like 2012’s “John Carter,” or ones caught up in culture-war drama, like Disney’s 2022 “Strange World.”

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In one settlement set to be devoured by London, Hester (Hera Hilmar) is waiting to exact revenge against Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving) for killing her mother, and young historian Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan) joins her incipient rebellion. After a promising first act, director Christian Rivers’ film “devolves rapidly into a generic YA story with bland characters, poorly set up motivations and plans, and a general lack of personality,” said Tom Bedford at Film Inquiry. (Prime Video)

There, Peter is forced to mine fairy dust and meets a young James Hook (Garrett Hedlund), and together they fight their evil overlord Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman). Featuring bizarre anachronisms (at one point the Neverland child laborers sing Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”), it is an “embarrassing pastiche” whose plot mechanics and mind-numbing CGI effects “leech the wonder out of the material and leave it bone dry,” said Andy Crump at Paste Magazine. (HBO Max)

Under the tutelage of Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), her telekinetic powers become difficult to control after she is struck by solar flares while rescuing the space shuttle Endeavor. She flees as factions vie to use her powers for their own ends. The “worst movie ever in the X-Men series,” director Simon Kinberg’s film is so wretched that it “suggests the X-Men series is played out and beyond saving,” said Peter Travers at Rolling Stone. (Disney+)

Channing Tatum is Caine Wise, a half-wolf, half-human being who joins forces with Jupiter to save the human race from its destiny of getting harvested for a liquid that makes the galaxy’s rulers immortal. An unwatchable movie that is “inane from first frame to last,” it is festooned with “squiggly CG aliens and actors in costumes that would be laughed out of a Greenwich Village Halloween parade,” said David Edelstein at Vulture. (Prime Video)

This somehow involves competing against Messala in an elaborate and brutal chariot race, with Morgan Freeman serving as Ben-Hur’s trainer Ilderim. This “Ben-Hur” is an “epic fail,” and a film ”that should be seen on a plane, on the 6-by-8 screen on the back of an airline seat, probably at 2 a.m. on a transatlantic flight, accompanied by a complimentary sachet of salty cashews, a vodka and tonic and then a meal of mechanically reconstituted chicken in a fillet-style serving,” said Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian. (Prime Video)

Dennis Quaid and Billy Bob Thornton play, respectively, Sam Houston and Davy Crockett in a film that bombed spectacularly at the box office despite competent execution of the titular battle. For better or worse, “every generation gets the movie it deserves,” said Keith Uhlich at Slant Magazine, including this “candidate for worst movie of the year.” Its depiction of Mexicans proves that “racism can be as much an unintentionally passive act as an intentionally active one.” (Prime Video)

Lt. Ben Gannon (Josh Lucas), Lt. Kara Wade (Jessica Biel) and Lt. Henry Purcell (Jamie Foxx) are fighter pilots assigned in the near future to fly a new stealth strike fighter for the U.S. Air Force, which they inexplicably use to bomb a terrorist meeting in Myanmar and then to avert a vague nuclear catastrophe in Tajikistan before a showdown with some kind of nefarious AI embedded in an unmanned version of the craft.

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David Faris is a professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of "It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics." He's a frequent contributor to Newsweek and Slate, and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New Republic and The Nation, among others.

‘Mortal Engines’ (2018, $219M loss)

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‘Pan’ (2015, $199M loss)

‘The Adventures of Pluto Nash’ (2002, $168M loss)

‘X Men: Dark Phoenix’ (2019, $167M loss)

‘Jupiter Ascending’ (2015, $159M loss)

‘Ben-Hur’ (2016, $157M loss)

‘The Alamo’ (2004, $156M loss)

‘Stealth’ (2005, $155M loss)