King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
Budget:Â $175 million
Domestic gross:Â $39.2 million
Worldwide gross:Â $146.2 million
Most of these movies have simply not made as much money as expected, but King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is a bonafide catastrophe of the highest order. On top of an already hefty production budget, it’s estimated that a further $100 million was blown on promotional costs. All the film managed to claw back, then, was just over half of its total budget.
Despite the heft of having Guy Ritchie’s name attached, as well as being based on an established “brand” (if you can call an ancient mythology that), audiences just simply weren’t in the mood for this laddish, medieval fantasy. As the subtitle suggests, this was meant to be the first in a whopping six movie series that will clearly now never be drawn from the stone.
If Warner Bros. hadn’t have hit it big with the likes of Wonder Woman and Dunkirk, you can bet they would be fuming at this travesty of, heh, legendary proportions. It’s probably for the best that Ritchie is moving over to Disney to make their live-action Aladdin movie.
Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets
Budget: $177–180 million
Domestic gross:Â $40.2 million
Worldwide gross:Â $211.3 million
You have to feel for Luc Besson. Bringing classic French graphic novel Valerian and Laureline to the screen had been his career goal for years (ever since he made the similarly bonkers sci-fi caper The Fifth Element back in 1997). After much planning, though, the resulting movie turned out to be a great, steaming failure.
With its galaxy-sized budget pushing $200 million, it was estimated that Valerian would have to earn upwards of $400 million in order to merely break even. Largely thanks to a disappointing domestic gross, however, it fell a long way short of that total in the end.
Though Besson was hoping to achieve Avatar levels of success thanks to its dazzling visuals, the lack of star power in the cast and the overwhelmingly negative reviews ensured that people decided to stay at home instead of visiting the city of a thousand planets. Don’t expect the planned sequels to materialize any time soon.
