While the film will almost certainly be reevaluated in a more positive light as time passes (especially if Chazelle continues to establish himself as a filmmaker with a legacy worth studying), it faced a perfect storm of external factors that led to a dismal box office performance. The film quickly became synonymous with its sex-and-drug-fueled bacchanals, and fans and critics alike seemed to ignore the narrative heft in favor of discussing the pros and cons of Chazelle’s maximalism. Yet initial discourse around the film seemed to reduce the meticulously-researched project to one word: excess. Equal parts tragic and hilarious, the film finds Chazelle applying his distinct visual style to the largest canvas of his career, and the end result is a rich tapestry of stories about the finite nature of Hollywood success despite the industry’s remarkable staying power. Image Credit: ©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collectionĭamien Chazelle’s misunderstood Hollywood epic is a sprawling story of an industry in transition, documenting the rise and fall of an ensemble of artists at a moment when nobody knew what the future would hold. Zack Sharf and Ryan Lattanzio contributed to this story. Keep reading to see our 45 favorite movies that bombed at the box office. Plenty of great movies have been the victims of bad timing, ineffective marketing campaigns, or simply being too “out there” for the general public. Fortunately, a disappointing box office performance doesn’t have to be a death sentence, and many flops go on to be reevaluated as classic films in their own right. While many flops are just flat-out bad, there’s a multitude of other reasons why a film can lose money at the box office. Filmmaking is a fickle industry - if you make enough movies, one of them is bound to go wrong. Everyone from Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino to Martin Scorsese and Denis Villeneuve has released a film that, for whatever reason, didn’t resonate with audiences during its initial release. No filmmaker has ascended to the apex of Hollywood - and stayed there - without surviving the occasional flop.

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