14. Proud Mary
Domestic Box Office: $20.87 million
Foreign Box Office: $0.876 million
Budget: $14 million
Quietly released in early January, Sony’s Proud Mary was sold as an action flick starring Taraji P. Henson, the breakout star of the TV series Empire. What viewers got instead was less John Wick re-imagined with a black female lead but rather a messy, mediocre crime drama with very few big action moments.
As such, negative review scores and word of mouth convinced audiences to stay away from Proud Mary and the film, which seemed to have “surprise early year hit” written all over it, sputtered out at the box office, failing to break even by close to $8 million.
Screen Gems
13. Death Wish
Domestic Box Office: $34.017 million
Foreign Box Office: $14.6 million
Budget: $30 million
Despite getting off to a decent start with a domestic opening weekend haul of $13 million, Eli Roth’s remake of the 1974 vigilante action movie Death Wish failed to have the legs required to recoup its production and marketing costs. Written by Joe Carnahan (The Grey) and starring Bruce Willis, Death Wish was aimed squarely at the same audience that helped a number of action movies released in the first quarter find success in recent years (many of which starred Liam Neeson).
However, whether due to the presence of Willis – who has not been much of a box office draw for a long time – or being quite run-of-the-mill, Death Proof fell about $12 million short of the $60 million it needed to break even.
MGM
12. Superfly
Domestic Box Office: $20.53 million
Foreign Box Office: N/A
Budget: $16 million
A remake of the 1972 blaxploitation film Super Fly, 2018’s Superfly is notable for its frankly incredible turnaround time, as the film only went into production this past January and somehow made it to theaters by June 13. Unfortunately, this impressive feat failed to translate to much success, as Julien Christian Lutz, a.k.a. Director X’s remake received mixed reviews from critics and an even more muted box office reception.
To put Superfly’s commercial failure into context, the Columbia Pictures-produced film was projected to earn between $7-12 million over its first five days. Though it managed to earn around $9 million over that period, Superfly had a considerable drop off after its first week, and has earned around $20.5 million to date. On the bright side, Superfly was made on a relatively modest $16 million, but Sony will likely still suffer a loss on the flick.
Columbia Pictures