The Biggest Box Office Bomb Every Year Since 1990

The best part? It happens every single year. Without fail. Like a tax season for hubris.

Roll the tape

The video below goes year by year, 1990 to now: every winner of the award nobody campaigns for. Some entries you'll guess instantly. A few will genuinely surprise you — including at least one movie you probably assumed made money.

Grab a snack. Preferably one that cost less than $200 million to produce.

Nobody knows anything, and they keep proving it

Screenwriter William Goldman gave Hollywood its most honest four words — "Nobody knows anything" — and every year since 1990 the industry has treated that line less like a warning and more like a dare.

Because bombs aren't random. They rhyme. There's the sure thing that wasn't (a beloved star, a hot property, a budget with a comma too many). The franchise starter that started nothing except meetings about who to blame. The passion project someone greenlit at the exact moment audiences collectively decided to stay home. One of these flops was so radioactive it took an entire studio down with it, which is the movie business equivalent of losing your house at a garage sale.

The bombs we can't quit

And here's the twisted romance of it: some of these disasters aged into treasures. Movies that lost nine figures now have shrines on Letterboxd. Actors who ate the blame walked away unrepentant — Taylor Kitsch, whose Mars epic became shorthand for "expensive mistake," still says "I'm very proud of John Carter," and honestly? Respect.

A hit tells you what people wanted. A bomb tells you what Hollywood thought people wanted — and that story is always funnier.

Others, of course, aged like milk in a hot car, and deserve every second of the roasting they're about to get.