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EntertainmentIndustry.net
Unfortunately, the major box office bombs far outweigh the handful of record breakers.
Gigli (2003), flopped infamously in spite of the nauseating Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez “Bennifer” engagement media frenzy hype right before its release. With salaries of $12.5 and $12 million, respectively, the $54-million dollar film grossed less than $6 million domestically — and gasped to a quick but painful death after a paltry $4 million-dollar opening weekend. This turkey set the record for the biggest second-weekend drop in box office grosses (82%) of any film ever in wide release and having been withdrawn from US theatres after only 3 weeks, holds another record as one of the shortest circulation times for a big-budget movie.
And that was with arguably two of the “hottest” attachments conceivable in Hollywood at the time, at the peak, perhaps, of their respective careers. Not to mention a cast forgettably fleshed out with well-respected actors, Al Pacino and Christopher Walken. When you calculate the distribution and advertising costs equal to but not included in a movie's production costs, this bomb's failure was doubly crushing to the studio.
The biggest box office bomb ever in terms of budget percentage, Gigli is second only to Cutthroat Island (1995), which cost almost $100 million but earned only 10% of that back ($10 million).
Some of the biggest crapshoots are notoriously summer blockbusters with their often special-effects-bloated budgets trying to make a splash in one of the most competitive seasons. These high-risk gambles can pay off in wildly profitable success or disastrous failure. In the most dramatic cases, one film's dismal performance can be all it takes to push a production company or even a studio over the brink into bankruptcy (or equivalent financial ruin), as happened with Carolco Pictures because of Cutthroat Island and United Artists after Heaven's Gate.
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