Biggest movie flops of 2011
Starred: Seth Green, Joan Cusack Cost: $150m (£96m) Lost: $110m (£70m)
Mars needs money. This animated adventure-comedy, produced by Hollywood ledge Robert Zemeckis, earned itself the dubious honour of having the 12th worst opening weekend of any film, ever. Considering its biggest actor by some margin was Seth Green, how it cost $150m (£96m) to make is a genuine mystery. One factor could be its descent into the creepy 'uncanny valley', whereby the motion-capture and rendering of characters falls into that hinterland of animation that's a bit too close to looking human. But not quite. Zemeckis' films 'The Polar Express' and 'Beowulf' also suffered from this. Whatever, this was a Herculean failure.
Starred: Jason Momoa, Rose McGowan, Ron Perlman Cost: $90m (£57.6m) Lost: $41.2m (£26.3m)
The 'swords and sandals' genre has it tough. Either it really works, or it really doesn't. And if it doesn't, what you're left with is a bunch of people wearing the most ridiculous clothing imaginable talking about ludicrous made up nonsense in a most earnest way. With a loss like this at the box office, which camp do you reckon the remake of the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger film fell into?
Starred: Steve Martin, Jack Black, Owen Wilson Cost: $41m (£26m) Lost: £33.9m (£21.7m)
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. What a duffer. Mediocrity is almost worse than being flat-out rubbish. For 'The Big Year', about a group of competitive bird-watchers, did have some marks in the plus column – though admittedly not many. It certainly wasn't despised, that's for sure. Remember when Steve Martin did truly great work? When he was one of the finest comics actors in the world? 'The Jerk' seems so dim and distant now...
Starred: Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman Cost: $35m (£22.4m) Lost: $31.5m (£20.1m)
Us neither. This one slipped right under the radar, notable perhaps only for its remarkable tanking at the box office. Nicolas Cage, on his day, is mesmerising. It's just that he's only on his day in about a tenth of his films, the rest being utter, utter garbage. This Joel Schumacher thriller falls into the latter. It was pulled from theatres in the US after just 10 days, during which it made a pitiful $25,000 (£16,000).
Starred: Gerard Butler, Michael Shannon Cost: $30m (£19.2m) Lost: $29.7m (£19m)
Gerard Butler played played reformed drug-using, alcoholic biker Sam Childers who went to the Sudan to rescue children from the Lord's Resistance Army in this biopic. It got some dreadful reviews, but also a fair amount of middling ones, but perhaps it was the sledgehammer of a title which put people off. It's up there with 'Hobo With A Shotgun', which also lost a few million quid. But not quite the thumpingly large sum 'Machine Gun Preacher' lost. Ouch.
Starred: Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman Cost: $50m (£32m) Lost: $23.9m (£15.3m)
Patently enamoured by the classic 'The Princess Bride', 'Pineapple Express' director David Gordon Green's 'Your Highness' attempted to translate its cult success for the 'frat pack' stoner crowd. But it was colossally unfunny, rarely a positive attribute in comedy. Even its impressive cast (featuring Danny McBride, James Franco and Natalie Portman) could do nothing of merit with the materials at hand.
Starred: Paul Giamatti, Dustin Hoffman Cost: $30m (£19.2m) Lost: $21.5m (£13.7m)
This was a case of when bad things happen to good movies. Giamatti won a Golden Globe for his role of filthy-mouthed TV producer Barney Panofsky in a film that was in development for 12 years. But the public failed to care about it, and it barely made $500,000 in its first few weeks on release. It did, however, do very well in Italy.
Starred: Nicolas Cage, Amber Heard Cost: $45m (£28.8m) Lost: £16m (£10.2m)
It's another entry for Nicolas Cage. He must be so proud. 'Loud, vicious, tasteless and inane', crowed one critic - probably not meaning it in a good way - of his nonsensical modern grind-houser. It was, perhaps, another example of Cage's inability to choose good roles. We know he's capable of them. So why are there always so many 'Drive Angrys', and so few 'Bad Lieutenants' and 'Adaptations'?
Starred: Mel Gibson Cost: $21m (£13.4m) Lost: $14.7m (£9.4m)
This was supposed to be Mel Gibson's big screen comeback (directed by Jodie Foster) after the forensic coverage of his rather public meltdown, resulting in anti-semitic roadside rants and threatening phone calls to his ex-wife. But the bitter-sweet tale of a businessman facing a massive breakdown (sound familiar?) who then develops an alternate personality represented by a beaver hand puppet he found in a bin failed to capture the public's imagination. Why ever not, eh? It sounded like such a sure thing...
Starred: Brandon Routh, Peter Stormare Cost: $20m (£12.8m) Lost: $15m (£9.6m)
Italian comic Dylan Dog was the inspiration for this paranormal detective thriller. It proved the only inspiration in the vicinity, as the resulting film, starring box office poison Brandon Routh, was unmercifully pummelled, currently the proud owner of a 6% 'rotten rating' on review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes. Dog is right.
The cinematic flops of 2011 have, in some cases, been truly extraordinary. It’s not just for their lack of quality (some were actually not so bad) or the staggering amounts of money they lost, but for the fact that quite a few slipped under the radar entirely. But then, that's probably why they flopped in the first place. Anyway, without further ado, here are the poorest performing films of 2011...