There may be a few more before Labor Day arrives, but none worse than these. Here’s a breakdown of the five biggest Summer 2015 Box Office bombs:
1.) “Ted 2” – If you had told me that this sequel to the 2012 comedy giant would make less than 40% of the original’s domestic gross, I would’ve thought you were nuts. But released on the heels of “Jurassic World” and “Inside Out”, “Ted 2” simply didn’t attract nearly the same audience as the original, making only $80 million domestically. How come? Well, the reviews were generally mixed (though I think it’s much funnier than the first film), and MacFarlane’s reputation has been on the decline since his Oscars hosting gig and last year’s complete bust, “A Million Ways to Die in the West”.
2.) “Aloha” – This is why movie reviews still matter. A romantic dramedy with a cast of Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, Bill Murray, John Krasinski, Danny McBride and Alec Baldwin would’ve opened to at least $20 million if it weren’t for the absolutely awful early reviews. “Aloha” has a lot of problems, but it’s not a terrible film. The fact that it only made $21 million is incredible to say the least.
3.) “Fantastic Four” – 140 characters can drastically change the destiny of a film. Director Josh Trank’s Tweet blaming 20th Century Fox for re-cutting “Fant4stic” (and making a mess of his “fantastic story”) ignited a firestorm of negative buzz, resulting in one of the worst opening weekends for a Marvel product ever. I guess we all finally learned how to defeat superheroes.
4.) “Tomorrowland” – Disney. George Clooney. “The Incredibles” director Brad Bird. Intriguing story based on the Mouse House’s own theme park attraction. So what went wrong? Well, it’s just not a great film, and even with the PG rating, the target audience wasn’t kids or families. In fact, I’m still not sure who Bird intended this movie for. And by the time he and Disney realized their marketing plan was all wrong it was too late.
5.) “Pixels” – Even though Adam Sandler wasn’t the (main) marketing tool (the classic video game characters dominated the TV ads), Sandler has to get much of the blame for this action comedy not being a summer winner. Having “Sandman” attached to any project these days pretty much means certain death. The PG-13 rating also didn’t help.
Honorable Mentions: No 4th of July fireworks for “Magic Mike XXL” or “Terminator Genisys”, as their respective studios learned that these sequels were completely unnecessary. And even though “Ant-Man” and “Spy” did OK, compared to previous Marvel movies and Melissa McCarthy/Paul Feig collaborations, the results for both were underwhelming.