Box office flops 2023: biggest film bombs of the year from The Marvels and The Flash to Renfield and 65

2023 has been a big year for the global box office, we’ve had two more billion-dollar movies - Barbie, and Super Mario Bros. Oppenheimer came in a close third, and the top 20 grossing films brought in $11.4 billion worldwide.

However, other films didn’t do so well and 2023 has also seen its fair share of flops, some from franchises that were previously the biggest box office draws. 

Some movies that performed poorly at the box office such as Guy Ritchie films The Covenant, and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, which both returned less than $30 million each, were released almost immediately on Amazon Prime, so it’s hard to judge their true value as they will have boosted the value of the streamer, and they don’t feature on this list.

The biggest film flops of 2023 have cost studios hundreds of millions of dollars and could see future sequels canned to avoid further losses.

The Marvels (Marvel Studios) - $200 million

There are a few excuses we can give The Marvels for becoming the worst performing MCU film of all time - for one SAG-AFTRA strikes prohibited promotion of the film right up to its release, and with all Marvel films coming to Disney+ within weeks of the cinematic run ending, there’s less reason for fans to flock to the cinema.

However, The Marvels has well and truly cemented the franchise’s reputation as an ailing studio, as the first film to make less than the films budget (by around $70 million). 2024 doesn’t look bright for Marvel, with Madame Web, Kraven the Hunter, Venom 3 all possible flops.

Shazam: Fury of the Gods (Warner Bros.) - $133.8 million

Marvel may have had a bad year at the box office, but for DC it’s been catastrophic, and recent release Aquaman 2 doesn’t look like it will turn the tide. Shazam 2! Made $133.8 against a $125 million budget, ultimately losing the studio money after marketing costs are factored in.

The diminishing returns, and increasing losses, incurred by superhero films are a testament to ‘superhero fatigue’ as audiences grow tired of the cookie cutter, origin stories, super villains, and victory against almost insurmountable odds, that the movies serve up at the cinema.

The Flash (Warner Bros.) - $270.6 million

Possibly the biggest bomb of the year, in part due to continuing controversy over the film’s star Ezra Miller, who has faced plenty of legal trouble over the last few years, Warner Bros. bet the farm on The Flash, giving it a $300 million budget. The movie made just $270 million at the box office and could result in a $200 million loss for the studio.

Nothing was able to save this movie, whether it was bringing back Michael Keaton’s Batman, copying Marvel’s multiverse theme, or resurrecting Christopher Reeve as Superman, audiences just weren’t interested.

Renfield (Universal) - $26.9 million million

Who remembers this Dracula comedy with Nic Cage and Nicholas Holt? Not many of you most likely given its dire box office performance. It made back less than half its budget, and will be remembered as one of the worst vampire flicks of the century, and that's with stiff competition in the form of the Twilight saga, Dracula Untold, and Vampires Suck.

It was reportedly a lifelong dream of Cage's to play Dracula, and he studied up on the performances of former counts, Bela Lugosi, Frank Langella, and Gary Oldman, so it's a shame that the end result of all that hard work turned out to be a critical and commercial bomb.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Disney) - $384 million

A real box office sob story, Dial of Destiny was Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones swansong, and a shot at redemption following the horrorshow that was Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But in the end the hype for Jones just wasn’t there by the time this movie finally hit cinemas after being first announced in 2016.

The reviews were poor, there was too much time travel insanity, and - the fatal flaw for Indy - it was released during the Barbenheimer craze, and blown out of the water by these big hitters when they hit cinemas weeks later. Despite making more than any other film on this list, Dial of Destiny is still expected to mark a $100 million loss for Disney.

65 (Sony) - $60.7 million

This is another film you may not even have been aware of, but it was supposed to be one of the year’s big sci-fi hits and a star vehicle with Adam Driver in the lead role. Ultimately, it made back less than its title, just $60 million against a $45 million budget. 

The film, about Driver’s astronaut who crash lands on a mysterious planet with a young girl on board his ship, features a Planet of the Apes style twist that is immediately revealed, and we are treated to a face off with dinosaurs - Jurassic Park it is not.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance (Warner Bros.) - $57.1 million

This definitely will be Magic Mike’s Last Dance, following a massive drop in returns from the first two films which made $167 million and $117 million respectively. Threequels have a tendency to flop and Magic Mike was unable to buck this trend.

The reviews were bad but ultimately it suffered because it was due for release on HBO Max in the US before Warner Bros. changed their minds and sent it into the cinemas for Valentine's weekend instead, despite the movie being budgeted for streaming.

The Exorcist: Believer (Universal) - $136.8 million.

Planned as the start of the rebooted trilogy which may or may not still go ahead, the sequel to The Exorcist takes place 50 years after the original and disregards the earlier sequels. But the horror flick, which Universal paid a whopping $400 million for the rights to, has been panned by fans as the worst instalment of the franchise so far.

Universal doubled the number of possessed girls, and halved the amount of terror, and brought back Ellen Burstyn as Chris MacNeil. The actress said she was convinced to return by 'a whole bunch of money' which was probably the first clue that the script wasn't all that.