Disney’s theatrical movies grossed some $4.9 billion in 2022 alone. That sounds like a lot of money, but it’s actually down from the company’s pre-pandemic heights; thanks to hits like Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the company’s films grossed over $11 billion in theaters worldwide in 2019.
But nobody’s perfect; not even the company that gave us The Little Mermaid, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, The Lion King, and many more. Through the years, Disney has had their fair share of bombs; in fact, despite their sterling reputation as hitmakers today, Disney suffered through long periods after Walt Disney’s death in 1966 when the company’s output was uneven at best. Even as the studio grew into a Hollywood powerhouse, it continued releasing flops — and a few out-and-out disasters.
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The list that follows contains 20 such examples. Keep in mind that the details of Hollywood accounting are about as clear as a trip through Space Mountain. Even when data is available about budgets and profits, it’s rarely complete. The budgetary info online rarely includes what Disney (and other studios) spend on marketing, and the price of promoting a movie can often equal or exceed the millions spent on the actual production. As a result, a film might seem to break even in theaters, when it fact it actually cost the studio tens or hundreds of millions of dollars — like, for example, many of the titles below…
The Biggest Disney Bombs at the Box Office
Disney is one of the biggest studios in Hollywood history. But even they release a flop every now and then. Here are some of their most notorious bombs — along with a few titles whose failure at the box office might surprise you.
The Biggest Superhero Movie Bombs at the Box Office
These superhero movies had none-too-heroic runs in theaters.