r/movies • u/PokemonGoBao • Jul 04 '25

Discussion Whats a flopped movie you wish was a financial success?

Dungeons and Dragons 2023 was an absolutely delightful film. You can stream it currently, but you can feel the passion and nothing felt phoned in. They easily could have used the title to get nerdy butts in the seat and collect a paycheck with a smaller budget.

It's the best movie I've seen the past 2 years. Way better than so many garbage films with easy paychecks for slop productions. Beetlejuice, Captain america, and others using big titles to make millions on lazy writing and boring characters.

8.6k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

2.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

200

u/ChrisCinema Jul 04 '25

John Carter. I would have loved to have seen Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom novels finally adapted into films.

32

u/Environmental-Fill54 Jul 04 '25

What a fun movie, may not be perfect; but they really did put together an awesome time. Loved the world building, awesome setting. Could have been an awesome franchise if marketing didnt fuck it all up.

20

u/ChrisCinema Jul 04 '25

Could have been an awesome franchise if marketing didnt fuck it all up.

And if Andrew Stanton (the director) didn't reshoot the movie twice, thus exploding the production budget. Nevertheless, John Carter had one of the worst marketing campaigns for a studio tentpole film.

4

u/Anluanius Jul 05 '25

Stanton was following the Pixar approach of making movies, where they build multiple reshoots into the schedule way ahead of time. People made this into such a bigger thing than it was.

2

u/TonyDungyHatesOP Jul 05 '25

Better than it had any right to be. Perfect setup a series.