Box Office Poison: A Hilarious and Revealing Journey Through Hollywood’s Biggest Blunders with a Surprising Lesson, Perfect for Fall 2024, Discover … the Film Industry’s Most Memorable Failures

The memory of show business can be fickle, long-time success forgotten upon one epic failure. Blockbusters that generate multi-billion dollar revenues may garner headlines, but box office failures often replace them in the pop culture consciousness. There can be many reasons for a feature film to fail: release date, competition, lack of cohesive story, lack of chemistry among co-stars.

In the case of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, his previous success (Birth of a Nation) fueled a grandiose ego and an inflated budget. A disastrous test screening and Orson Welles’ loss of final cut shredded The Magnificent Ambersons. The hubris of the film studios and their desire for more profits led to ill-fated and plotted sequels such as Speed 2: Cruise Control and Babe: Pig in the City. Every year brings anticipation for box office gold and the worry of Hollywood infamy. <br.
Tim Robey has carefully singled out twenty-six movies for an intuitive perspective of what went wrong in Box Office Poison. Robey’s choices run the gamut from misunderstood horror (Freaks) to the horribly made (Cats). Robey’s appreciation for the cinema is clear in each well-written breakdown of Hollywood’s orphans.