Great things that FLOPPED when they first came out?

[Kirby101]

I did not know the Wizard of Oz was a box office bomb. NO WAY! Huh. That is some good trivia to have in my back pocket, thank-you.

Read my post, it was far from a bomb. Just cost too much to make.

[Kieran_Frost]

Read my post, it was far from a bomb. Just cost too much to make.

Oh. Awwwww... I was excited about that trivia too. This is why I can't have nice things But yes, glad I've been corrected on that. Thank-you thank-you.

[Gaastra]

Wizard of oz did not make the money it needed on first release but did great in it's rerelease.

Other films--

It's wonderful life--bombed so bad it killed the studio!
Willy Wonka
Blade runner
Disneys alice in wonderland
Disneys Pinocchio
Disney's sleeping beauty
Fight club
Iron giant
Scott pilgrim
Secret of niym
Office space
Heathers
This is spinal tap
Brazil
Hugo
Dazed and confused
Return to oz

[Zauriel]

Wizard of oz did not make the money it needed on first release but did great in it's rerelease.

Disneys Pinocchio
z

Pinocchio flopped because it was released at a bad time. It was released in 1940, when the WWII broke out in Europe. It was a time of despair and hopelessness. The European and Asian markets were cut by the war so the movie never went to the European and Asian theaters.

It took a few re-releases for Wizard of Oz to recover from the profit losses

[DrNewGod]

Firefly. Studio just couldn't figure it out.

[Iron Maiden]

Charles Laughton, known for playing Captain Bligh in the Clark Gable Mutiny on the Bounty and playing Quasimodo in the best version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, only directed one film. Because it didn't do well at the box office and was panned by the critics at the time, he never did another.

That film was The Night of the Hunter, with a bravura performance by Robert Mitchum as fake preacher/serial killer Harry Powell.





Here's a memorable review by the late and greatly missed Roger Ebert. He would sometimes write columns in the Chicago Sun-Times or later his website that were reviews of films of the past.

Some trivia: According to Laughton's wife Elsa Lanchester, Laughton didn't like working with the child actors in the film so many times it is probably Robert Mitchum directing them in scenes.



This movie plays fairly often on TCM. If you a film aficionado, watch it.

[Zauriel]

The General (1926 film) bombed/flopped when it came out. But many people including me have enjoyed watching the film. I get laughter from seeing Buster Keaton's comedic performance. It is one of the best funniest comedies I have seen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_(1926_film)

The General is a 1926 American silent comedy film released by United Artists. It was inspired by the Great Locomotive Chase, a true story of an event that occurred during the American Civil War. The story was adapted from the memoir The Great Locomotive Chase by William Pittenger. The film stars Buster Keaton who co-directed it with Clyde Bruckman.

At the time of its initial release, The General, an action-adventure-comedy made toward the end of the silent era, was not well received by critics and audiences, resulting in mediocre box office returns (about half a million dollars domestically, and approximately one million worldwide). Because of its then-huge budget ($750,000 supplied by Metro chief Joseph Schenck) and failure to turn a significant profit, Keaton lost his independence as a filmmaker and was forced into a restrictive deal with MGM.
The General has since been reevaluated, and is now often ranked among the greatest American films ever made, and was included in the first class of the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1989.

[Jim Kelly]

It's sad what happened to Buster Keaton's career once the talkies became the norm. I read a book about Buster's life many years ago when I had become fascinated with his silent films after seeing all of them at a local arthouse theatre. He had to suffer through several decades of ignomy before his comeback in the 1960s. People should check out the NFB's THE RAILRODDER--we Canadian kids got to see that in school, when the teacher had no lesson plan for the day. There's a making-of documentary that goes with it called BUSTER KEATON RIDES AGAIN.

However, box office in the old days wasn't like it is now where you have to make half your money when the movie opens. Movies had staggered releases and would come out at different times across the country, so they couldn't know if the movie was a success or failure until they got all the accumulated totals in.

GONE WITH THE WIND, which is reputed to have the highest box office of all time when adjusted for inflation, had a staggered release where it played to a limited number of theatres, at a whole dollar for a ticket, and MGM pocketed 70% of the receipts (rather than the normal 35%). After this road show run in 1940, it had a general release in 1941, MGM lowered its percentage, and you could see it for the regular ticket price (25 cents on average). MGM, which now owned the movie outright, had many re-releases for the film--and since you couldn't see it on VHS or DVD or TV, the only way you could see it was in a theatre, unless you had a private copy of the print. It didn't actually come to television until it was shown on HBO on June 11, 1976--and then in November of the same year it was shown on NBC over two nights, which is when I first saw it.

[Iron Maiden]

It's sad what happened to Buster Keaton's career once the talkies became the norm. I read a book about Buster's life many years ago when I had become fascinated with his silent films after seeing all of them at a local arthouse theatre. He had to suffer through several decades of ignomy before his comeback in the 1960s. People should check out the NFB's THE RAILRODDER--we Canadian kids got to see that in school, when the teacher had no lesson plan for the day. There's a making-of documentary that goes with it called BUSTER KEATON RIDES AGAIN.

However, box office in the old days wasn't like it is now where you have to make half your money when the movie opens. Movies had staggered releases and would come out at different times across the country, so they couldn't know if the movie was a success or failure until they got all the accumulated totals in.

GONE WITH THE WIND, which is reputed to have the highest box office of all time when adjusted for inflation, had a staggered release where it played to a limited number of theatres, at a whole dollar for a ticket, and MGM pocketed 70% of the receipts (rather than the normal 35%). After this road show run in 1940, it had a general release in 1941, MGM lowered its percentage, and you could see it for the regular ticket price (25 cents on average). MGM, which now owned the movie outright, had many re-releases for the film--and since you couldn't see it on VHS or DVD or TV, the only way you could see it was in a theatre, unless you had a private copy of the print. It didn't actually come to television until it was shown on HBO on June 11, 1976--and then in November of the same year it was shown on NBC over two nights, which is when I first saw it.

When I was very young the only way we would see those prestige films shot in 70 mm were in a larger city. We would catch the South Shore train and get off at the last stop in Chicago, which put us right in the heart of the movie theater district. I remember having to go to Chicago to see Jaws that summer with a friend because that was the closest place to us in NW Indiana that we could see it. I don't think it hit the drive ins until the following summer. The small local theater chains got it in the fall IIRC. BTW, we still have an operating drive in over in Valparaiso, Indiana called the 49er They were named one of the top ten in the country. I sometimes wonder though if there are only 10 or 20 left. Joking....they do maintain it pretty well.

[Scott Taylor]

Van Gogh was not the failure people think. He was getting recognition at the time of his untimely death at 37. His first show was 6 years later and he had a museum retrospective in 1904. So by the time he would have been in his 40s, he would have found success. This would have been similar to other great artist of the time like Monet and Cezanne.

I love the Dr. Who episode where he gets to see an exhibition of his work.

[Kirby101]

I love the Dr. Who episode where he gets to see an exhibition of his work.

Yes, tear jerking.

[PaulBullion]

Believe it or not, Aretha Franklin. Columbia Records tried to market her as a Jazz singer, and people were barely buying it.

The moment she switched to Atlantic Records, she started having hits and Top 10 albums.

[The Darknight Detective]

It's sad what happened to Buster Keaton's career once the talkies became the norm. I read a book about Buster's life many years ago when I had become fascinated with his silent films after seeing all of them at a local arthouse theatre. He had to suffer through several decades of ignomy before his comeback in the 1960s. People should check out the NFB's THE RAILRODDER--we Canadian kids got to see that in school, when the teacher had no lesson plan for the day. There's a making-of documentary that goes with it called BUSTER KEATON RIDES AGAIN.

I also saw The Railroader at school back in the mid-'70s, so we Long Island kids weren't left out. It wasn't the first Keaton film I had seen (that was Seven Chances), but it was the first one I had seen in its entirety. Since then, he has been my favorite Silent Screen clown of them all.

GONE WITH THE WIND, which is reputed to have the highest box office of all time when adjusted for inflation, had a staggered release where it played to a limited number of theatres, at a whole dollar for a ticket, and MGM pocketed 70% of the receipts (rather than the normal 35%). After this road show run in 1940, it had a general release in 1941, MGM lowered its percentage, and you could see it for the regular ticket price (25 cents on average). MGM, which now owned the movie outright, had many re-releases for the film--and since you couldn't see it on VHS or DVD or TV, the only way you could see it was in a theatre, unless you had a private copy of the print. It didn't actually come to television until it was shown on HBO on June 11, 1976--and then in November of the same year it was shown on NBC over two nights, which is when I first saw it.

The first time I ever heard of the film was from a newspaper ad during its 1972 re-release. I never heard of Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh at the time, so I assumed they were young, contemporary actors.

[The Darknight Detective]

Yes, tear jerking.

Yes, it was. Too bad the Brits don't know how to pronounce his surname (okay, we Yankees don't either, but that's besides the point ).

[Iron Maiden]

Believe it or not, Aretha Franklin. Columbia Records tried to market her as a Jazz singer, and people were barely buying it.

The moment she switched to Atlantic Records, she started having hits and Top 10 albums.

And the sad thing is Atlantic dropped her in the disco era. It's often said that her casting in The Blues Brothers put her career back on track, esp with her track of "Think" on the soundtrack album which sold very well. Even weirder was that director John Landis and Dan Ayckroyd had to talk the studio into casting her.