Box office bombs

In the motion picture industry, a "box office bomb" or "box office flop" is a film that is considered highly unsuccessful or unprofitable during its theatrical run, often following significant hype regarding its cost, production, or marketing efforts. Generally, any film for which the production and marketing costs exceed the combined revenue recovered after release is considered to have "bombed".

Box-office bomb is a subjective term, as gauging the financial success of a film is difficult. There is also no reliable definition of the term. Not all films that fail to earn back their estimated costs during their theatrical runs are considered "bombs". The label is generally applied to films that miss earnings projections by a wide margin, particularly when they are very expensive to produce. Although this often occurs in conjunction with middling or poor reviews, critical reception has an imperfect connection to box office performance.

Beginning in the 1980s, cinemas started to release films that suffered a poor opening weekend. This made the performance of a film on its opening weekend much more crucial to its perception. With the growth of the Internet during the 1990s, chat rooms and websites enabled negative opinions for films to spread rapidly.

Another cause for failure is a troubled production history. This was the case for the film Heaven's Gate, which famously went three months over schedule and saw its budget mushroom from $7.5 million to $36 million. These facts caught the ears of journalists and critics who were refused access to the film's set by director Michael Cimino, and upon its release, the film was abhorred by the American press.

Films may have low ticket sales if they are released at the same time as other films that attract more viewers. A notable example of this was the 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life. The film was a financial loss for RKO because it was pitted against the highly successful films Miracle on 34th Street and The Best Years of Our Lives. However, it became highly popular during the television era and is now considered a Christmas classic.

Occasionally, films may underperform because of issues unrelated to the film itself. These issues commonly relate to the timing of the film's release. This was one of the reasons for the commercial failure of one of Hollywood's first "flops", Intolerance. Owing to production delays, the film was not released until late 1916, which was a time when the widespread anti-war sentiment it reflected had started to shift in favor of U.S. entry into World War I. While the film would later be considered groundbreaking, its failure drove D. W. Griffith's production company, Triangle Studio, out of business. Other examples include MGM's The Wizard of Oz and Walt Disney's Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi, all of which under-performed merely because they were released during World War II. This was a time period that cut off 60% of Hollywood's international release market. However, these films became popular and critically acclaimed in later years.

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