The biggest movie flops of 2024, from Joker: Folie à Deux to Megalopolis

The biggest flops of 2024 are unlikely to be remembered in cinema's hall of fame. Big budgets don't always equate to box office success, as some of these much-hyped titles learned the hard way this year.

A well known franchise, a starry cast or a talented director (or in some cases, all three) can't guarantee a film will do well. Audiences failed to connect with some of 2024's most anticipated releases, leaving filmmakers wondering where it all went wrong.

Let's take a look back at the biggest movie flops of 2024.

Joker: Folie à Deux

The Joker sequel was undoubtedly one of the most highly-anticipated releases of the year: Joker had been nominated for the best picture Oscar in 2020, with Joaquin Phoenix winning best actor. What could possibly go wrong for a sequel?

Well... making it a musical. Although Joker: Folie à Deux was promoted as just happening to include rather a lot of music, not being an actual musical, it amounted to the same thing. Even the inclusion of Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn couldn't rescue the film for baffled audiences.

Read more: Has 2024 been the ultimate year for bad movies?

Other complaints included the storyline being dull and a twist at the end bringing frustration rather than admiration. The film was the first big-screen comic book adaptation to get a D CinemaScore from opening day audiences, only achieved a 32% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and was a box office disappointment compared to its 2019 predecessor.

While Joker made £12.6m on its opening weekend alone, Joker: Folie à Deux opened on a more muted £5.7m and continued to underperform during its time in cinemas.

The film took $206m at the global box office, but cost Warner Bros. somewhere in the region of $190-$200m to make, plus the same again to market it.

Borderlands

Gone are the days when video game adaptations meant substandard films — or at least, they were until the disastrous release of Borderlands.

The Eli Roth film might have attracted a cast including the likes of Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart and Jamie Lee Curtis, but critics felt it didn't cater for either fans of the game, who would find the detail lacking, or those new to Borderlands as it was too difficult to understand.

Others thought the error lay in going for a PG-13 rating, offering the worst of both worlds.

Borderlands got just a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was not a hit at the box office, either — it grossed just $33m worldwide, against production costs of $155m plus $30m on marketing and distribution, making it a definite flop.

Megalopolis

Francis Ford Coppola's dystopian future epic was 40 years in the making, but is unfortunately unlikely to be remembered as the high point of his career. It follows architect Caesar Catalina (Adam Driver), intent on building a new utopia in New York City called New Rome, whose dream is challenged by Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), a man committed to the status quo that puts greed above all else, and they are put on a collision course when Caesar meets the mayor's daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel).

Things got off to a bad start when it debuted at Cannes to boos from some critics, but Megalopolis spiralled further thanks to a series of controversies that dogged its release. There was confusion over a promotional trailer that was alleged to have used fake review quotes, while not everyone was a fan of the cast including "cancelled" actors Shia LaBoeuf, Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman.

Megalopolis got a lacklustre 45% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and bombed at the box office — despite $120m plus being spent on making it, the film grossed just $13.7m.

The Fall Guy

Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt action rom-com The Fall Guy is an unexpected entrant in the biggest flops of 2024 as all the signs had pointed towards it being a huge hit.

Starring two of the biggest names from the previous awards season in a fun romance about a stunt man and a film director reconnecting after a previous fling, it was loved by critics and boasts an 81% Rotten Tomatoes rating.

However, for reasons that were lost on fans of the film, hardly anyone went to see it. The Fall Guy cost $140m to make and only took $181m at the box office, being made available digitally just 17 days after its release.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

Guy Ritchie's World War II action film starring Henry Cavill in the special forces story of a sabotage mission was criticised for being light on plot and heavy on killing scenes.

Not everyone agreed that they disliked The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, as some critics thought it was a fun romp loosely based on historical events.

Read more: The true story behind The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

But of course, cinemagoers' opinion was what really mattered, and despite $60m having been spent on making the film it managed to gross just $29.7m at the box office. The film was never even released in UK cinemas, with the distributors opting to put it straight onto streaming here.

Madame Web

Superhero films are usually a sure-fire box office smash, but not so for Madame Web which earned itself the unenviable distinction of having one of the lowest opening weeks of all time for a Marvel character film.

Dakota Johnson starred as Cassandra Webb, a minor character from the Spider-Man comics who works as a paramedic and might have clairvoyant abilities.

Madame Web was criticised for its thin plot, poor acting and shallow depths in the Marvel universe, earning just 11% on Rotten Tomatoes.

It seems even the Marvel faithful couldn't get on board with this previously unexplored avenue of Spider-Man — after spending $100m in production, the film grossed just $100.5m from its release.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Blockbuster season got off to a terrible start in May 2024 when Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga failed to rev up the box office. Coming nine years after the award-winning Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller's prequel was much hyped and arrived with a buzzworthy cast including Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth, but was met with a resounding shrug from audiences.

It went on to take $173m, making it the highest-grossing Mad Max film to date. But... it was also the most expensive Mad Max film to make too, coming in with a budget of roughly $168m. Reasons for the flop ranged from mediocre marketing to the long wait for the movie after Fury Road. But if the film had a budget more in line with the franchise's indie movie origins, it could have turned a tidy profit.

Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

Kevin Costner quit his hit TV show Yellowstone in order to follow his dreams and make his long-gestating four-part Western epic Horizon, but it has quickly turned into a nightmare for the Oscar-winning filmmaker. The first two films were shot back-to-back with a combined budget of $100m, of which Costner personally injected $38m from his own finances.

Read more: What's happening with the Horizon sequels?

The three-hour-long Chapter 1 premiered at Cannes Film Festival to a mix of cheers and jeers, before hitting cinemas in June, where it went on to gross $38m globally, and was quickly put onto streaming. Chapter 2 premiered at Venice Film Festival, but plans for a theatrical release were quietly shelved leaving the whole project in limbo.

Argylle

Kingsman director Matthew Vaughn assembled an all-star cast for Argylle his latest venture into the world of fantasy espionage. James Bond hopeful Henry Cavill starred alongside Bryce Dallas Howard, Samuel L Jackson, Sam Rockwell, and Bryan Cranston among many others, but the film arrived to a chorus of middling reviews, and fell flat on its face at the box office taking $96m against a reported budget of $200m.

It found a second life on streaming when it hit Apple TV+, but hopes of a sequel and a crossover with the Kingsman series seems very unlikely at this stage, mainly due to the financial performance of the first instalment.