box office bomb
Financial film failure
A box office bomb is a film that fails commercially, earning far less than its production and marketing costs.
The term combines the theatrical box office—where tickets are sold—with the metaphor of spectacular failure.
Studios rarely acknowledge bombs directly, but industry watchers track them closely: The movie cost $200 million but earned back only $30 million—a complete box office bomb.
- flopComplete commercial failure
- disasterSudden ruinous event
- turkeyWattled North American fowl
- dudFailed device or effort
- failureLack of success
critical flop · megaflop · tanked · hemorrhage · budget · production budget · studio · losses · tax write-off · theatrical · receipts · opening · opening weekend · weekend · critics · panned · notorious · vanity project
- Entertainment Flops
- box officegross, worldwide gross, opening weekend, ticket sales, earnings
- failuresfailure, failures, flop, flops, bust
- Famous Failuresflop, dud, turkey, lemon, fiasco
- Flopsflop, dud, critical flop, Ishtar, John Carter
- creative failuresflop, dud, failed experiment, unfinished work
box office bombblockbuster
Enormously successful entertainment property
box office hit · megahit · runaway hit · money-maker · summer blockbuster
boxes, boxed, boxing, office, offices, officer, officers, official, officials