Vote for List of Crap #101

[Johnny Unusual]

We made it to 100 and we are still going strong.  Here are our choices for this month:

Top 50 Box Office Flops - As in movies that were financially unsuccessful but that you like.  They don't have to be critical flops.
Top 50 MST3k Costumes - As in costumes characters wore on the show.  Includes alternate looks for Tom and Crow.
Top 50 Superheroes - We did this one before almost 10 years ago.  So, it's been a while.
Top 50 Suspense/Thriller Movies - For movies designed to give you a thrill and a chill.
Top 50 TV Series - This was the first list of crap.  It's exactly what is sounds like.

[stethacantus]

The most interesting one is the box office flops, considering they have to be films you liked. But one question. By flop, did the film need to loose money on it's initial release? For example, Batman & Robin did so poorly at the box office that Warner Bros. cancelled the franchise for years. But it actually made $100 million more at the box office than it's $125 million budget. It was just that Warner Bros. was expecting to gross over $200 million. There are a lot of other examples of films that underperformed and were considered flops, even though they actually earned money on their initial release.  Not that I would have Batman & Robin on my list. But quite a few films I like were considered flops because they only made a minor profit.

[Russoguru]

I'd like to see the top 50 film flops.

[Johnny Unusual]

Well you get your wish!  Looking forward to this one, there are a lot of great movies that didn't do well that were fantastic.

[Pak-Man]

Cool! I won! I'll be posting up the thread later on, but first I'd like some input.

What makes a flop?

My first instinct was to go with "Didn't make its budget back." But, as mentioned earlier in this thread, that invalidates famous flops like Waterworld and Batman and Robin. So then I decided to go with "Either never made its budget back or never cracked the top 5 at the box office." Neither of those movies are flops by those standards. Maybe it's their reputation as flops that's wrong?

So does the Budget/Top 5 qualification satisfy most of you, or is there another measure I should consider? I want this list to be fairly easy to research...

[Darth Geek]

I think that sounds good. There is the case where it's more the studio was disappointed in the box office and the movie ended a series (or prevented it from becoming a series). But I think that is too vague and difficult to research.

[stethacantus]

Basically the studios each expect a film to make X amount of dollars at the box office, and when it makes far less then it is a flop. It is very rare when you get a studio destroying disaster like Heaven's Gate ( 1980 ) because most movies will eventually make what they lost on the initial release back on television and home video. 

One interesting anomaly is Young Einstein ( 1988 ) which lost Warner Bros. a lot of money because they spent millions in promotion and made only $11 million at the box office. However, in Australia, it's country of origin, the movie broke box office records. So Young Einstein is only a flop in the United States, and a blockbuster elsewhere.

Something else needs to be taken into consideration. The box office of each film is from the date it was released until today. So basically, a film like Rocky Horror Picture Show which bombed on it's initial release, continued to make money as a midnight movie, and is still making money in theaters to this day.  But that means when you look for the box office of a movie on Wikipedia or IMDb, that you will get the combined total from the initial domestic release, all the foreign releases, and all the reissue releases. For example, the listed box office on Star Wars ( 1977 ) is not just the money it made in the 70s, but all the re releases including the Special Edition release. Also, it is not just the budget you need to take into account but how much was spent on distribution and promotion. So trying to find out if a movie made or lost money on it's initial release will involve a little more research. Usually Wikipedia also has a paragraph on how much the film made or lost on it's initial release, but not always.

Otherwise, this would be a very easy list to complete. Just start with a list of your 200 favorite films, then look to see what they made at the box office and cut all the ones that were hits. I know for a fact that my all time favorite movie bombed at the box office, so I already know what my #1 is.

[George-2.0]

Finally, "the Postman" will have his day!


If anything this list should spark some spirited conversation.

[Russoguru]

Are there any other special rules for what movie is a flop? I think this has been asked already but I'm not sure if I got the answer I was looking for. Suppose a movie is a financial flop but a huge hit with the critics and vice versa?

[Johnny Unusual]

You could go here where the rules are explained in detail and find out.

[Russoguru]

I'm not sure I've got the energy for the research so I might just submit a partial list again... on second thought, I managed to put together a full list this time.