General Discussion

So I made an original post about this on my website, and it kind of has audio recordings and goes into detail about why I believe the way I do. But the written version is better because even though the original post is like 10 minutes and the later recording is like 49 seconds, the original post gets to the point much quicker. This is just my opinion and things I was taught and things that I've observed when looking up stuff about movies and such.

When they say box office flop, it means that even if the movie was really really good and made millions, like over 30 million dollars, because the original film took 50 million to make, the movie was still considered a box office flop.

The box office flop isn't necessarily about how good a movie is The Iron Giant was considered a box office flop initially by some despite people loving the film because it made 31 million instead of surpassing the 50 million it took to make it.

A lot of people who review movies on YouTube say a movie “bombed at the box office,” and then some viewers assume that means the movie was bad. That’s not actually true. A box office failure could have nothing to do with the quality of a film—it only describes the financial performance during its theatrical release.

A “box office bomb” simply means a movie did not earn back enough money in theaters to cover its production and marketing costs. That’s it. It is a financial label, not a quality rating. A movie can be amazing, well-written, and widely loved, and still lose money in theaters if it doesn’t earn enough ticket sales quickly enough.

This happens because movies are extremely expensive to make and release. Big studio films can cost tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars when you combine production and marketing. On top of that, theaters don’t give all the ticket money back to the studio—studios typically only get a portion of each ticket sold. So even a film that sells millions of tickets might still fall short financially.

That’s why box office “success” is not really about whether people liked the movie. It’s about whether enough people paid to see it in theaters within a limited time window, under very high financial expectations. Studios usually need a movie to earn roughly 2–3 times its production budget just to break even.

This is also why marketing matters so much. A movie can be great, but if not enough people hear about it or decide to see it in theaters, it can still underperform. On the other hand, a heavily marketed film can make huge money even if audiences think it’s just average.

Meanwhile, many films that were originally considered “bombs” later become very popular and widely respected. The Iron Giant is a perfect example—it underperformed in theaters, but later became a beloved classic through DVD sales, TV airings, and word of mouth.

So when people say “this movie bombed,” they’re only talking about money—not quality, cultural impact, or how many people actually enjoyed it over time.

Basically the box office terminology is misleading in the way that it is used and doesn't actually ALWAYS mean a film is bad or good. It just means the film didn't make enough money in an extremely high maintenance field with extremely high expectations that are very extremely hard and costly to meet.

Also, Sometimes, a film is screwed in the box office due to poor marketing.

Also, due to the fact that tickets are very expensive, of which this very situation with films and the box office might actually be the reason for, it has gotten to a point where fewer people are going to theaters. Tickets are expensive, and due to people losing jobs and the economic collapse that happened after 2020 due to a variety of factors I will not go into here or the post will be much longer, people simply do not have as much disposable income.

Because of that, things like box office “flops” are happening more often. I have also noticed that initial reactions to movies can sometimes be negative or full of complaints, and then over time those same films gain more appreciation and people begin speaking about them more fondly as more people actually play the game or watch the film and love it.

Essentially, it is not always that people are going off the initial trailer or that the movie is necessarily bad. Today, especially, many people do not have the money to go to the theater and have fun like they used to, because everything is more expensive and most of their money goes toward bills and necessities.

Due to people saying they do not have enough money to buy tickets or go to the movie theater, you are actually more likely to see DVDs, digital sales, and online streaming perform better. In many cases, films make more of their long-term revenue after the theatrical release, during the home media phase, because theaters are expensive and many people do not have as much disposable income.

Once a movie is released on DVD, it may initially be expensive, but some people are more willing to buy it for home viewing. After that, it becomes available digitally, and not everyone wants to go to the theater anyway. This was also influenced by the fact that many people became used to staying home during 2020, and some still prefer not to go out as much even today.

So people may be more willing to spend money on a film in today’s market through home viewing rather than theaters. At the same time, there is also less disposable income overall, so people tend to be more careful with spending.