Deadline and the Five Biggest Box Office Failures of 2022: Some Thoughts

When it comes to talk of "hits" and "flops," of "blockbusters" and "bombs," even those of us who bother to consult the data regarding the financial performance of particular films usually have to make do with just a few of the relevant numbers--namely reported production budgets, and box office grosses. Just how much money a studio actually shelled out to get a movie made (as against how much was carried by government subsidy and product placement), just how much it cost to distribute and promote the movie, how much of the gross the studio got after divvying it up with distributors, what it made from other revenue streams (like video, or merchandising), are not consistently available to us.

For that reason when considering the issue I go by the (admittedly very conservative) rule of thumb that a movie which did not make at least 4-5 times its production budget is at least susceptible to the charge that it did not break even on the theatrical run, which is likely to imply that, even with all the rest counted in it just did not do terribly well (because home video is no substitute for ticket sales, because people do not buy much merchandise for flops, etc.). This is not always the case, of course--studios sometimes having a movie's cost covered before it even starts shooting through early sales of key rights, or subsidies and product placement pick up a big part of the tab, or they get a bigger than usual share of the theatrical revenue, or other revenue streams prove unusually strong. Sometimes the mechanics of all this actually prove very different from the conventional operation of the movies. (Pixar's Cars movies are not its biggest successes--but given the colossal merchandise sales even if they were just expensive ads for the $10 billion in product they moved by 2011 alone they would have been well worthwhile.) Still, most of the time it seems to me to give a fairly good idea of a "worst-case" scenario, which is my concern here.

Deadline, however, publishes its own estimates for some of the more conspicuous hits and misses each year--apparently culled from various sources and perhaps incomplete but at least something more comprehensive with an eye to giving us the five most and five least profitable films of the annum. The news site skipped out on doing so in 2020 and 2021 when movie earnings were so battered that the exercise seemed pointless, but it has returned to its practice, doing so again for 2022.

According to its listing the five biggest "box office bombs" of 2022 were (I should think, to no one's surprise) Strange World, Amsterdam, Lightyear, Devotion and Babylon.

It seems notable that all five of the films fit into two distinct patterns.

Two of those films (Strange World and Lightyear) are big-budget Disney animated productions that can seem conventional enough in offering science-fiction adventure to a family audience, but going about it in a less-than-expected way more likely to please a hardcore audience than the general audience. (They made Buzz Lightyear an action hero in a straight adventure film rather than a comedic figure--voiced by Captain America instead of Tim the Toolman Taylor, no less! Meanwhile Strange World offered the kind of involved premise and retro aesthetic that makes for a cult following rather than a general audience hit.) They also stirred a lot of controversy--of the kind that does more harm than good--through their prominent LGBTQ+ "representation."

The other three films (Amsterdam, Devotion, Babylon), pointedly aimed at adults rather than families, are all lavish period pieces set between the 1920s and 1950s and generally dealing with themes that have historically not been successful with American audiences, while unlikely to do better overseas (Silent Era Hollywood, the Korean War--while David O. Russell's trying to make another American Hustle out of the events surrounding the Business Plot seem a long shot).

Within this set of three films two conformed to another, more specific pattern --specifically Russell's Amsterdam and David Chazelle's Babylon. Charges of competence or incompetence aside the essential handling of the material was unlikely to appeal to a big audience (Amsterdam studiedly "offbeat," Babylon frequently deliberately repellent), while at least two of the films would seem to have cost much more than they ought to have done (Amsterdam's budget certainly ballooning, the production of Babylon perhaps having seen something similar). It all suggests the combination of a lot of money with the independent movie sensibility that their writer-directors of independent film roots have displayed in the past--indeed, suggests big money combined with much of the worst of the indie sensibility. (Certainly David Walsh's review of Amsterdam characterizes it as full of "oddball characters . . . lack[ing] any special purpose or sharpness," with the star's performance "a series of irritating quirks"; the film more broadly as having a feel of "[a]morphousness, muddiness," comprised as it is of scenes that go nowhere between individuals whose motives are unclear and for the most part uninteresting," even with weighty, timely material at the center of things. Walsh's colleague Joannie Laurier wrote of Babylon as murky" and" "lack[ing] . . . substance and cohesiveness," even while being "crude, vulgar . . . cartoonish" as it characterizes "everything and everyone in the worst possible light." This looks edgy, but in actuality presents only the most conventional, even reactionary, critique, bespeaking a "demoralized . . . disoriented" perspective given over to "postmodern subjectivism" that prefers the simplicities of myth to the complexity of a reality that is a "closed book" to such filmmakers. Yup, pure independent all the way.)

As they let these indie film-makers run wild with big budgets in this way the producers would seem to have bet heavily on star power and critical acclaim to turn a profit, or at least not lose very much. Alas, as anyone who has been paying attention knows, star power does not deliver the way it used to (with Margot Robbie, who is about as close as any performer who made her name in recent years gets to being a star, getting black marks on her record from both films), while certainly the critical acclaim never came for either Amsterdam or Babylon.

I suspect that in that there is an irony--that when a formula-addicted Hollywood fails miserably it does even that in the most wearisomely formulaic way.