Movies bomb all the time, so much so that even many of them end up being forgotten about in an instant. On the other side of that unwanted coin, there are blockbusters that crater so catastrophically they’re guaranteed to live on forever in infamy. As the single biggest flop in the history of cinema, Mortal Engines at least has a place in the history books.
Arriving far too late to try and capitalize on the craze for YA literary adaptations that had already fizzled out long ago, Christian Rivers’ feature-length directorial debut instead marketed itself largely around the involvement of producers and co-writers Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Phillipa Boyens, which is fair enough when they were responsible for The Lord of the Rings.
The post-apocalyptic fantasy did boast some stellar visuals – which was to be expected given Rivers’ background in effects – but nobody showed any interest in paying to see it on the big screen. At a cost of $150 million, Mortal Engines earned just under $84 million from theaters, and when the dust had settled it was in the red to the tune of an eye-watering $174.8 million.
That makes it the single heftiest commercial disaster in the industry has ever seen, and that remains true even if you adjust the losses of its contemporaries for inflation, which is even more damning when you think about. And yet, it’s managed to convince at-home audiences that it’s worth a shot.
Per FlixPatrol, Mortal Engines has attempted to rebuild the ruins of civilization on the iTunes global charts, but we should at least commend it for appealing to on-demand crowds given its reputation as a financial calamity for the ages.