11 Films Considered Cult But Failed at the Box Office

Released in 2019, the last film in the series Avengers it became the biggest box office hit of all time, having grossed nearly $2.8 billion. However, not every film is that lucky: sometimes showings and takings at the box office are so low that it barely pays the production costs. And this is not exclusive to bad productions; some feature films, no matter how good they are, do not reach box office success, but, over time, end up becoming a symbol of a generation or even considered cult by moviegoers.

We, from awesome.club, we love good movies. Therefore, we decided to research which cinematographic productions only reached due recognition and success belatedly. Check out!

A dream of freedom faced difficulties right from the start: it was released almost immediately after Forrest Gump: The Storyteller (By the way, Tom Hanks was offered the role of Andy Dufresne, but he turned it down) and Pulp Fiction: Time of Violence, by renowned director Quentin Tarantino, which ended up attracting all the attention of viewers. Other than that, some blame the very title of the film for the failure at the box office: actor Tim Robbins said in an interview that, even years after the premiere, people would come to congratulate him for participating in the film, but could not even remember the correct name of the long.

However, critics and cinema specialists, unlike the public, have taken a liking to the work since its release, so much so that the feature received seven Oscar nominations. And even though it didn’t win an award in any category, it drew public attention to the film, which ended up earning enough at the box office to cover production costs.

Nowadays, A dream of freedom it is often among the top ten positions in many of the best film rankings. In addition, Stephen King himself considers this feature one of the best film adaptations of his works.

Despite Blade Runner 2049 having received excellent reviews from experts, the film failed to attract viewers to theaters. Perhaps the fault lies in the length of 3 hours of the feature itself, as defended by director Denis Villeneuve, or in the fact that the film was publicized as a very dynamic and action-packed production, but which ended up presenting a little hectic plot and maybe even dull.

By the way, the first film adaptation of Philip Dick’s work, Blade Runner: The Android Hunter (1982), in which Harrison Ford played the lead, was also not a box office success at the time. Despite this, the film is currently considered a film. cult and recommended by film buffs.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a great example that not even the participation of Hollywood’s biggest stars can guarantee box office success. In the production of the feature, which is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Ron Hansen, 30 million dollars were spent, while the box office only managed to raise half of that amount. However, unlike viewers, critics and experts loved the production, and Brad Pitt ended up winning the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, an award at the Venice International Film Festival.

Furthermore, the critics themselves revealed the secret of the film’s box office failure: many highlighted that the plot ended up being too long and not very dynamic, sometimes even being boring to watch.

Inherent Vice, which is a film adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s book of the same name, had everything to be a box office success — it had Paul Thomas Anderson as director, Joaquin Phoenix as protagonist and Josh Brolin, who demonstrated an excellent performance as detective Christian ” Bigfoot”. However, the plot turned out to be too complex and viewers easily got lost in the middle of the story. In the end, of the $20 million spent on producing the feature, only $14 million was recovered at the box office.

In 2016, however, critics recognized Inherent Vice as one of the best films of the 21st century, placing it at number 75 on the list of the 100 best film productions.

Despite having had a good collection at the world box office, responsible for a profit of 14 million dollars, in the United States Mother! it had little success, grossing just over half of its production costs.

In one of the criticisms of this production by Darren Aronofsky, the following is highlighted: “The end of the film reminds one of Bosch’s paintings: a lot of action and little sense”. In general, there was no consensus among critics – while some praised the narrative and the brilliant performance of the actors, others were not so optimistic, as this review highlights: “I hesitate to call the feature Mother! of the worst film of the year. I think ‘worst movie of the century’ is more appropriate”. In addition, virtually all film experts highlighted Jennifer Lawrence’s work as, at the very least, very good.

One of the most renowned films of director David Lynch, and perhaps even of all cinematography, City of Dreams it was not a box office success when it was released. Its collection in the United States was less than half of the production costs. However, the reasons for this are even understandable — productions whose script is very complex and difficult to understand, even after being watched a second time, are unlikely to be well suited to being shown in cinemas.

But in fairness, it is necessary to note that thanks to the world box office, the collection of the film exceeded the costs by 5 million dollars, which is already a success for a production of this type.

sports-themed drama Warrior, starring Tom Hardy, debuted on the big screen in 2011 and failed to raise the $25 million spent on the production at both the US and international box office. This is probably due to the fact that films of this genre are more likely to succeed in terms of revenue only when they have big stars in their cast of actors, and Tom Hardy had not yet achieved such fame at the time of his debut.

Regardless, viewers liked the feature: its IMDb rating is 8.2 out of 10, even higher than the classic’s rating. Rocky: A Fighter (1976).

One of the main representatives of American independent cinema, director Jim Jarmusch manages to shoot really unusual and very attractive films. AND Eternal Loverswhich features the performance of Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston, is certainly no exception – the director himself described the work as “a crypto-vampire love story”.

But despite the good evaluation of professional critics and viewers, and the participation of stars in the cast, the collection of the world box office generated a profit of only 600 thousand dollars. However, looking at it from the other side, box office success was never one of Jarmusch’s main goals for this production.

Winner of two Oscars, director Alfonso Cuarón, who also produced the successful feature Gravity (2013), is able to create strong and captivating productions. And this is also the case for Children of Hope🇧🇷 By telling about a future in which humanity was affected by mass infertility, the film became a favorite of critics around the world. But it still didn’t succeed at the box office, having raised only 70 million of the 76 million dollars spent on the production.

But time ended up doing justice to the feature — despite not having won any of the three Oscar nominations, Children of Hope was included in the list of the best film productions of the 21st century.

Donnie Darko, produced by director Richard Kelly, who was only 25 at the time, turned out to be a real failure at the American box office, having raised only 517 thousand of the 4.5 million dollars spent on the production. Perhaps this is due to the fact that only 58 cinemas showed the production, which in itself would hardly guarantee a good collection. Another reason could have been its premiere date — October 1, 2001, because considering that there is a scene in which an airplane crashes over a house, the moment may not have been one of the most opportune, do you agree?

However, after the film was released on DVD, success was not long in coming: sales were so successful that they generated a profit of 3 million dollars on top of production costs.

the box office of The trip it cannot be considered weak, after all, thanks to viewers the film managed to collect around 130 million dollars, while its own budget was estimated between 100 and 147 million dollars. However, if we only consider the American box office, this production by the Wachowski sisters managed to raise just over 27 million dollars. As with other productions, the main cause of this is attributed to the duration of almost 3 hours of the film, which, with the high complexity of the script, can leave the viewer confused.

By the way, despite being applauded for about 10 minutes by the audience at the official premiere, reviews from film experts and viewers were quite diverse — there were both very positive and very negative evaluations.

Do you think that for a film to be classified as good it needs to achieve a certain success at the box office? Or do you think this is relative and could end up being unfair to some productions? Tell us in the comments section.