Action movies tend to be some of the biggest performers at the box office, which is why Hollywood makes so many of them. Barbie and Oppenheimer were outliers last summer, but all of the other top summer hits of 2023 were action-oriented. Yet, to get the biggest bang, studios have given action films huge budgets, which only creates bigger box office bombs when they can’t come close to earning that money back.
When assembling this list of the 10 biggest action movie bombs of all time, we left out the sci-fi films because we’ve already covered those flops, as well as superhero movies like The Flash, which may have lost as much money as the top two films on this list combined. The 2016 remake of Ben-Hur was also left out since it was more of a historical epic than a traditional action film. Thankfully, there’s more than enough failure to go around just by focusing on the action flicks.
10. Hudson Hawk (1991)
Budget: $65 million
Worldwide gross: $17.2 million
Estimated loss: $47.8 million
Three years after Die Hard made him into an action star, Bruce Willis co-wrote the story for Hudson Hawk with Robert Kraft, which was rewritten by Die Hard scribe Steven E. de Souza and Daniel Waters. The results were less than enticing, and this is the biggest bomb in Willis’ long career. Willis portrays Eddie “Hudson Hawk” Hawkins, an art thief who is newly released from prison and eager to enjoy life’s simple pleasures. Unfortunately, multiple parties soon blackmail Eddie and his partner, Tommy “Five-Tone” Messina (Danny Aiello), into pulling off a heist on behalf of Darwin (Richard E. Grant) and Minerva Mayflower (Sandra Bernhard).
The object of the heist turns out to be the components of a machine designed by Leonardo da Vinci to turn lead into gold. The good news is that Eddie and Tommy find an ally in Vatican secret agent Sister Anna Baragli (Andie MacDowell). Unfortunately, this movie was far too silly to work as an action film, and audiences stayed away in droves. This was a fiasco from the word go.
9. Hard Rain (1998)
Budget: $70 million
Worldwide gross: $19.9 million
Estimated loss: $60 million
It’s easy to assume that Christian Slater and Morgan Freeman would be a pretty solid pairing for an action movie. Such was not the case with Hard Rain, a film that cast Slater as an armored car driver named Tom, who goes on the run from a group of thieves led by Jim (Freeman) during a massive rainstorm. Tom briefly offends and then befriends a local woman, Karen (Minnie Driver). But just when Jim is about to get his money, it turns out that the local sheriff, Mike Collig (Randy Quaid), will happily kill all of them and keep the money for himself.
As with a lot of movies on this list, Hard Rain had an impressive supporting cas,t including Ed Asner as Tom’s uncle, Charlie. But moviegoers just weren’t interested in this film, and it quickly sank at the box office.
8. Chill Factor (1999)
Budget: $34 million to $70 million
Worldwide gross: $11.8 million
Estimated loss: $64 million
Time has not been kind to the legacy of Chill Factor, a buddy action comedy starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Skeet Ulrich. The premise was kind of like Speed on an ice cream truck. When Dr. Richard Long (David Paymer) is murdered by a disgraced Colonel, Andrew Brynner (Peter Firth), it falls to Richard’s friend, Tim Mason (Ulrich), to safeguard the unstable weapon that Long created. The catch is that the weapon has to be kept below 50 degrees, so Tim hijacks an ice cream truck that belongs to Arlo (Gooding).
Naturally, this initially leads to some hard feelings between Tim and Arlo as they evade the men that Brynner has sent to kill them and go on a bizarre journey to protect the weapon. It’s pretty much every action movie you’ve ever seen. Except audiences didn’t come out to see it. They didn’t even care about this movie enough to hate it.
7. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002)
Budget: $70 million
Worldwide gross: $19.9 million
Estimated loss: $70.1 million
Warner Bros., you’re doing it all wrong! You need to have an Ecks movie, and then a Sever movie if you expect people to care about an Ecks vs. Sever movie. The studio sort of learned from that mistake by at least having one Superman movie before Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever casts Antonio Banderas as FBI Agent Jeremiah Ecks, a man who is tasked with finding renegade DIA Agent Sever (Lucy Liu) after she kidnaps Michael Gant (Aidan Drummond), the son of DIA Director Robert Gant (Gregg Henry).
Considering that the film’s title promises a battle royal between Ecks and Sever, you may be disappointed to learn that this was misleading. But you probably won’t be surprised to hear that Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever may be the worst-reviewed movie in the history of Rotten Tomatoes with a 0% score. Now that’s an accomplishment! Warner Bros. has buried this film so deeply that you may have to buy a DVD to find it.
6. Around the World in 80 Days (2004)
Budget: $110 million
Worldwide gross: $72.2 million
Estimated loss: $74 million
Jackie Chan reportedly got paid $18 million to star in Around the World in 80 Days, but the results of this turkey can’t all be laid at his feet, even though he does get top billing as Passepartout. Director Frank Coraci and screenwriters David Titcher, David Benullo, and David Goldstein made significant changes to the original novel by Jules Verne — changes that turned out to be very expensive.
In this revised version of the story, Passepartout’s real name is Lau Xing, and he has a secret history and his own agenda beyond helping Phileas Fogg (Steve Coogan) win the bet of a lifetime by circling the globe in 80 days. Along the way, they add Monique Laroche (Cécile de France) to their team, and they even encounter Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Prince Hapi, who briefly detains them. This film is nearly all spectacle, which would have been forgiven if it had also been a hit. Without a sizable audience, the movie had no hope of recouping its costs.
5. Blackhat (2015)
Budget: $70 million
Worldwide gross: $19.7 million
Estimated loss: $68 million to $90 million
Sometimes it seems like audiences just don’t want to see Chris Hemsworth in anything that doesn’t involve him picking up a giant hammer and playing Thor. The failure of Furiosa this summer proves that depressing theory. Director Michael Mann put Hemsworth in the lead of Blackhat as an exceptional computer hacker, Nicholas Hathaway. After a series of brazen cyberattacks on both America and China, Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang) and his sister, Chen Lien (Tang Wei), convince FBI Special Agent Carol Barrett (Viola Davis) to release Hathaway from prison to aid their investigation.
As action films go, $70 million seems pretty modest compared to the budgets of the biggest Hollywood blockbusters. But when the worldwide take can’t even break $20 million, then it’s an absolute disaster. There are certainly worse movies than Blackhat, but only a few that managed to lose more money.
4. The 355 (2022)
Budget: $40 million to $75 million
Worldwide gross: $27.7 million
Estimated loss: $93 million
It was reportedly Jessica Chastain’s idea to team up with other famous actresses for a female-led spy franchise not unlike Mission: Impossible or the James Bond films. Naturally, Chastain got the leading role as CIA Agent Mason “Mace” Browne, with Penélope Cruz as DNI psychologist Graciela Rivera, Diane Kruger as BND agent Marie Schmidt, Lupita Nyong’o as ex-MI6 agent Khadijah Adiyeme, and Fan Bingbing as MSS agent Lin Mi Sheng.
In theory, audiences would cheer on these kickass ladies as they took on a crime lord, Elijah Clarke (Jason Flemyng). The MCU’s Sebastian Stan even had a key role as CIA Agent Nick Fowler. But audiences just didn’t come out to see it. This film was also hindered by the fact that Bingbing spent months under house arrest in China for tax evasion, and the producers were forced to film her role with a body double. Bingbing was eventually allowed to film her scenes separately, which allowed the special effects team to use CGI to put her back into the movie. That couldn’t have been good news for the film’s budget.
3. 47 Ronin (2013)
Budget: $175 millions to $225 million
Worldwide gross: $151.8 million
Estimated loss: $96 million
The real-life story of the 47 Ronin has been famous in Japan for centuries, but this 47 Ronin film is better known for being one of the biggest flops in the history of cinema. It’s not that people didn’t see 47 Ronin, it just couldn’t come close to recouping its bloated budget and it eventually lost $96 million. That’s a feat that very few films have managed to achieve.
This adaptation took a lot of liberties with the actual history, most notably by creating a half-English, half-Japanese character, Kai, just so Keanu Reeves could have the leading role. There are also splashes of fantasy, including giants and a witch named Mizuki (Tokyo Vice‘s Rinko Kikuchi), who helps trick Lord Naganori Asano (Min Tanaka) into dishonoring himself and committing suicide. This was done at the behest of Lord Yoshinaka Kira (Tadanobu Asano), and Lord Asano’s remaining men vow to avenge their fallen lord even though they have been branded as Ronin, or masterless samurai. 47 Ronin was recently popular on Netflix, but that’s the only resurgence that it has enjoyed.
2. Cutthroat Island (1995)
Budget: $98 million
Worldwide gross: $18.3 million
Estimated loss: $105 million
Cutthroat Island is the film that helped bring down a studio (Carolco Pictures), and successfully scared Hollywood away from making more big-budget pirate epics until Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl came along eight years later. It’s not like Genna Davis wasn’t a worthy star. Davis was at the height of her fame when she portrayed Morgan Adams, the daughter of a famed pirate, “Black” Harry Adams (Harris Yulin), and the new captain of the Morning Star.
In part because few of the established male action stars of that era wanted second billing to Davis, Matthew Modine was cast as William Shaw, Morgan’s foil and potentially her romantic partner. They go on a quest to find her father’s treasure and prevent her rival, Dawg Brown (Frank Langella), from getting it first. Expensive reshoots and lackluster box office results killed this one. Even Davis’ career was badly damaged from her role in this bomb, but she eventually weathered that storm.
1. The 13th Warrior (1999)
Budget: $100 million to $160 million
Worldwide gross: $61.7 million
Estimated loss: $69 million to $129 million
For a film that ranks as one of the all-time flops in any genre, The 13th Warrior hasn’t left much of an impact on pop culture. Few even remember that this movie was based on a novel by Michael Crichton, the author of Jurassic Park. Crichton himself played a role in The 13th Warrior‘s ill-fated release when he took over as director from John McTiernan (Die Hard) following disastrous test screenings. The reshoots helped drive up the budget, which in turn led to the movie losing even more money once it was finally released.
Antonio Banderas stars as Ahmad ibn Fadlan, the former royal poet of the court of Baghdad, who is sent into exile. Ahmad eventually meets a tribe of Norsemen, including their leader, Buliwyf (Vladimir Kulich), who forcibly recruit Ahmad to help them face an unimaginable enemy. The Norsemen were given a prophecy that their quest would only succeed if they took a 13th warrior with them who was not of their tribe. But even Ahmad’s presence may do little to help as their enemy cuts them down one by one.
