Movies that cost a lot, and made very little.

Sometimes, big budgets don't pay off when it comes to the box office. A film can look like a hit, and have studios spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a film's budget and marketing, only for critics and audiences to respond with a shrug, and the cinema earnings to end up a mere fraction of the movie's costs.

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The following 10 films are some of the most dramatic examples of this phenomenon. All cost a great deal to make and market, yet dramatically underperformed at the box office. They are ranked from least costly to most costly, and the loss is calculated by comparing what they earned to their approximate production and marketing costs (meaning some estimates are made when calculating these numbers, as sometimes, precise budgets and marketing costs are not disclosed).

Mulan was a box office failure, though not an overall flop, due to the circumstances of its release. The live-action retelling of the 1998 Disney classic about a young woman pretending to be a man and going to war in place of her father was an early victim of the COVID pandemic, only recovering about 30% of its budget from box office earnings.

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Still, the fact it wasn't as significant a failure as this would suggest is because of its somewhat controversial Disney+ release, where it was made available as a "premium rental" which cost money, before eventually being free to stream for the service's subscribers. It's not known exactly how much it made from this release, but there's a good chance it did solidly, considering the popularity of most live-action Disney remakes so far.

Mars Needs Moms is not the most expensive movie on this list, but it's the one with the smallest box office take. It's a mostly forgotten science-fiction family film that focuses on a nine-year-old boy and his mission to save his mother when she's captured by aliens.

With poor reviews, unsettling animation, and its odd premise, Mars Needs Moms made about $39 million on a $150 million budget, with the rest of its losses coming from the estimated money spent on other expenses, like marketing. It remains a mystery, over a decade later, why so much money was thrown at this movie in the first place.

There have been a surprisingly large number of movies related to Peter Pan, but 2015's Pan may have been one too many. It serves as a prequel of sorts to the Peter Pan story most are familiar with, and features several familiar characters plus... Blackbeard? Played by Hugh Jackman? Yeah...

When it came to critical reviews, Pan got panned. With production costs and marketing taken into account, it may have cost up to $275 million, and made less than half of that at the worldwide box office. Like many costly, unsuccessful films of the last decade or so, it's been quickly forgotten. At least it didn't seem to hurt its star's reputations too badly, nor director Joe Wright's, despite the film's failure making him consider an early retirement from filmmaking.

Tomorrowland looked good on paper. It had a reliable star in George Clooney, a great director in Brad Bird, and an interesting science-fiction premise involving adventures within an alternate dimension.

It ultimately didn't amount to much, though, as what sounds like a respectable $209 million cinema haul worldwide didn't help when the film and its promotion were so costly. Whether Bird returns to live-action filmmaking, or continues to make animated films like his most recent one, Incredibles 2, remains to be seen.

It was strange that producers had faith in Battleship from the get-go, as the idea of a film being based on the famous tabletop board game of the same name seemed ludicrous. Even if the Transformers movies had been reliable earners around the same time of Battleship's release, it did seem like far more of a stretch to base a movie on it.

It was an incredibly costly film that failed to earn back its money due to poor word of mouth and negative reviews. It's more than understandable why most people have forgotten its existence, some 10 years on now.

Jungle Cruise, like Mulan a year before, was another Disney movie impacted by what COVID did to movie theaters. It's an adventure film with a journey through a jungle setting that was probably betting on Dwayne Johnson's star power to achieve success.

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Still, like Mulan, it's not known how much revenue it ultimately earned from being available to rent from home, but it was enough for an apparent sequel to be considered. So ultimately, it's another case where a disappointing box office take didn't 100% reflect a movie's overall earnings.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was always a risky venture, even though the story told is a well-worn and classic one. Modern audiences just don't seem to be keen on historical epics lately, what with the disappointing earnings of The Last Duel in 2021 and The Northman in 2022.

It was an ambitious film, and was apparently supposed to be the first film in a six-film series, but underwhelming reviews and a poor box office performance cut those plans down quite abruptly. The making of Legend of the Sword ended up being a cautionary tale of not biting off more than you can chew when it comes to planning and financing movies in today's entertainment landscape.

Despite a relatively recent release, Mortal Engines is one of those movies that's seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. It's based on a book set in a dark future where cities are mobile and human life is cheap.

It may have been trying to chase the young adult fantasy novel adaptation trend that's been out of fashion for a little while now. If the trend wasn't entirely dead in 2018, Mortal Engines' dismal box office performance may have dealt the killing blow, and it's a film no one seems to remember; maybe because no one seemed to actually watch it.

Director Gore Verbinski found some success with animated Western Rango in 2011; maybe more when it came to reviews, but it still performed decently at the box office. The same couldn't be said for his follow-up, The Lone Ranger, which was something like a buddy comedy/action movie set in an over-the-top Wild West.

It seemed like a messy film from start to finish, with a troubled production followed by less than stellar reviews all leading to a huge loss for the movie's producers. The Western has been a risky genre to gamble with for decades now, and perhaps no film demonstrates that better than The Lone Ranger.

John Carter looked like it could have been a big success, being a science-fiction epic based on a classic novel, and having a strong cast and talented director, Andrew Stanton. But like many other box office failures, reviews and marketing let it down, which is odd, considering that its marketing budget (on top of its production budget) was huge.

Sequels were canceled due to the film's lack of success, and another potential franchise was halted due to its first installment not working or resonating with audiences. John Carter goes to show that there might not be such a thing as a guaranteed hit, and reinforces the need for care, planning, and thought to go into both a film's production and its marketing in equal measure.

NEXT: Box Office Flops That Are Actually Worth Watching

Jeremy is an omnivore when it comes to movies. He'll gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU. When he's not writing lists for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile and Instagram account.

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