This year has been a strange one for box office fortunes, primarily as movies that have done well have done extremely well, while those that failed did so in huge numbers.
There really was no middle ground this year at the box office, with some huge losses being attributed to movies that seemed like all-but-certain hits. Movies like 'The Goldfinch' flatlined with audiences and critics, yet strongly-reviewed offerings like 'Missing Link' and 'The Kid Who Would Be King' failed to make a dent either.
Obviously, there's still a few days left to go in 2019, but we feel confident these are the worst / biggest box office bombs of 2019. The thing that makes this slightly difficult is that studios rarely give accurate data on production budgets and almost never publish their marketing budgets.
This also means that we're not able to accurately define just how much money a certain movie lost, as the marketing budgets would be estimated. So, to that end, we're taking the reported production budget and balancing it against the worldwide gross taken from BoxOfficeMojo.com to calculate how much money each movie lost.
Take a look.
10. 'Hellboy'
Production budget - $50 million
Worldwide gross - $44.6 million
Given how much love there was for the original 'Hellboy', directed by Guillermo del Toro and starring Ron Perlman, it's not surprising that this panned and lost just under $6 million in the process - and that's not including marketing budget, either.
9. 'The Kid'
Production budget - $7 million
Worldwide gross - $1.5 million
'The Kid' was an independent Western, directed by Vincent D'Onofrio, but it had a budget of over $7 million - which is big money in the indie circuit - most likely on the fact that it had Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke attached to it. Sadly, this didn't see a huge amount of business during its run in cinemas.
8. 'Serenity'
Production budget - $25 million
Worldwide gross - $14.3 million
A movie so bad that it had its marketing budget slashed to ribbons before it even saw the light, which conversely saw the stars - Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway - get into a public spat with the distributors, Aviron, over that fact. The movie itself? Absolute dogsh*t.
7. 'UglyDolls'
Production budget - $45 million
Worldwide gross - $32 million
There's a good chance you might have heard of this if you have smaller children, but for everyone else, this came and went like a fart in the wind and with as much fanfare to boot.
6. 'Captive State'
Production budget - $25 million
Worldwide gross - $8.8 million
There was a certain amount of expectation on this, and dense sci-fi parables can normally do quite well for themselves. Sadly, it wasn't to be and 'Captive State' had a dismal $17 million loss around its neck by the end, not counting the marketing budget for it either.
5. 'Replicas'
Production budget - $30 million
Worldwide gross - $9.206 million
For whatever reason, 'Replicas' didn't make any kind of an impact at the box office and even with internet boyfriend Keanu Reeves front and centre, this went nowhere and left a $20 million loss in its wake.
4. 'The Kitchen'
Production budget - $38 million
Worldwide gross - $15.8 million
Despite attaching buzzy names like Tiffany Haddish and Elisabeth Moss, it wasn't enough to save this by-the-numbers crime thriller from the scrapheap and crashed out of cinemas, $22.2 million worse off.
3. 'The Kid Who Would Be King'
Production budget - $59 million
Worldwide gross - $32 million
If you check out the Rotten Tomatoes score or our reviews from almost all of the movies so far, you'll recognise a common theme - they either weren't screened in Ireland, or they were absolutely pants. 'The Kid Who Would Be King', however, was well-received by critics but simply didn't translate into any kind of box-office magic. All told, 'The King Who Would Be King' ended up losing Fox a total of $27 million by the time it left cinemas, and again, that's not even including the unknown marketing budget.
2. 'The Goldfinch'
Production budget - $45-49 million
Worldwide gross - $9.923 million
Far and away, 'The Goldfinch' is one of the most disappointing movies of the year for a number of reasons. There was a huge amount of promise behind it, as the book had proven so popular with people. Not only that, you had a heavy-hitter cast lined up to go along with, you had a script from Peter Straughan and 'Brooklyn' director John Crowley behind the camera. It had everything going for it, but couldn't live up to what was expected and ended up tanking with audiences and producing all but a $40 million loss.
1. 'Missing Link'
Production budget - $100 million
Worldwide gross - $26.2 million
Despite all the noise around the failure of 'The Goldfinch', the biggest bomb of the year fell to 'Missing Link', a heart-warming stop-animation comedy with Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana and Zach Galifinakis as a well-meaning, mild-mannered bigfoot creature. With a production budget of $100 million, 'Missing Link' only managed a global gross of $26.2 for whopping $73.8 million loss to the fledgling animation studio. What's more, 'Missing Link' was a huge hit with critics, garnering strong reviews and decent word-of-mouth in the process.
