Johnny Depp in Transcendence

After seeing Michael Bay bomb at #CES2014, I’ve compiled my predictions for what will be some of the biggest movie busts in 2014.

As we look back on 2013, some of the biggest, costliest misfires in cinema history were released, leading to over half a billion dollars in write-offs for major studios. Led by such massive flops as “The Lone Ranger” ($190M write off), sci-fi disasters “R.I.P.D.,”and  “After Earth,” the poorly received “White House Down,” and most recently the samurai CGI schlockfest “47 Ronin,” which had a negative cost of at least $175M before marketing is factored in and only opened at $20M, it was a year that prompted industry legends such as Steven Spielberg to say:

“There’s eventually going to be a big meltdown. There’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen of these mega-budgeted movies go crashing into the ground and that’s going to change the paradigm…”

Which brings us to 2014, and our examination of which movies are positioned to be the biggest bombs. Which movies will “go crashing into the ground,” leading to the inevitable industry-wide paradigm change of VOD available day and night with wide theatrical releases as Spielberg and George Lucas prognosticate?

Before we begin, it’s important to keep in mind that studios only recoup approximately 50 percent of theatrical grosses, the rest being split with theater owners. This means that for a film that has a negative cost of $200M (the cost of the actual film production) and $100M in associated marketing costs (premieres, ads, events, airfare, etc.), grossing $300M at the global box office means the movie earned half of its total negative costs back, or $150M. Such a movie would need to make $600M theatrically to break even.

Of course the strength of digital downloads, video streaming, up front cable and TV network sales and physical format distribution (a dying revenue stream) can most definitely help make up for a theatrical shortfall, but no studio greenlights a $200M summer movie with plans to generate half that amount at the global box office. Which is why the industry change of making movies available on VOD concurrently with theatrical releases is inevitable as it would allow studios to recoup investments more quickly, particularly for a movie with horrendous word of mouth reviews, as many of these recent mega flops generated.

Biggest box office bombs of 2014

So for 2014, what are the sure-fire bets? What are the riskiest movie ventures out there? And what genres are still marketable? The following are SiliconANGLE’s predictions and analysis for the Top Three biggest flops of 2014, in order of magnitude (net loss):

• Godzilla

Hands down, Godzilla will be the biggest box office bomb of 2014. Godzilla as a character is box office poison. In fact, the last three Godzilla movies released domestically have flopped: “Godzilla 1985” made $4M; “Godzilla 2000” made a whopping $10M and the last attempt at a Hollywood-style big budget remake, also called “Godzilla” bombed so badly that its lead toy licensee went bankrupt.

Moreover, the last Godzilla movie,“Godzilla: Final Wars,” was produced a decade ago, and it bombed so hard that the studio, Toho, Co. Ltd., put the entire franchise on ice. That installment cost $20M and made $12M in Japan, and had the lowest admission numbers for a Godzilla movie in nearly 30 years. Following that bomb, the film’s director, Ryuhei Kitamura, has been cranking out budget rate horror slasher flicks ever since—choice fare like “Midnight Meat Train” and “No One Lives.”

Aside from Godzilla, the giant monster genre as a whole is anemic. “King Kong” flopped, despite having Peter Jackson at the helm; “Pacific Rim” bombed, despite having umpteen giant monsters battling on screen; Gamera the Brave, about a lumbering giant turtle monster, delivered weak numbers at the box office; and even among the outer edges of the giant monster genre, recent films “Jack the Giant Slayer” and “Walking with Dinosaurs” flopped as well.

Ultimately, if Peter Jackson couldn’t turn “King Kong” into a mega-size box office hit, the likelihood of an indie film director—Gareth Edwards—making a big budget giant monster action film like “Godzilla” a global, profitable hit are essentially non-existent.

The $160M Godzilla is also sandwiched between some of the summer’s sure-fire mega hits, with Sony’s “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” coming at it with strong tailwinds just two weeks before, and the double team of Adam Sandler’s latest summer comedy “Blended” and Fox’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past” opening just one week later with strong headwinds pointing right at Godzilla. Godzilla will be hit from all sides, and theater owners will be allocating more screens for “X-Men” and “Spider-Man” rather than taking a chance on empty theaters screening “Godzilla.”

It’s also worth noting that the marketing to date for “Godzilla” has been rather weak (and nearly invisible). Considering that “Godzilla” is the last film that Warner Bros. is co-financing with former producing partner, Legendary Pictures, we believe that Godzilla’s box office results aren’t exactly WB’s top priority at this time. Especially considering that the studio is opening up an Adam Sandler summer comedy only one week after Godzilla’s release. It should also be noted that WB is only financing 25% of “Godzilla,” so its exposure is minimal. And since the two companies have effectively divorced, we don’t expect a “full court press” on the marketing front from WB, who is distributing worldwide except for Japan.

• Robocop

Sony has already tried to take a classic R-rated sci-fi gem from the early ’90s and turn it

Image via MGM/IFC Films

into a $125M watered down PG-13 CGI headache. It was called Total Recall and it bombed, making only $58M domestically. Ironically the director tried to blame Arnold Schwarzenegger for the film’s failure. Now Sony is using the same formula with one of the greatest R-rated sci-fi films ever, Robocop.

Water it down, eliminate the grittiness, delete the intense storytelling and high octane action that Paul Verhoeven so masterfully put on screen back in 1987, and attempt to sell it to the masses as an Iron Man/Transformers clone.  This movie’s trailers are so bad they make Ishtar look like Oscar material. Plagued with bad publicity from the onset, and various reports about the director being unhappy — referring to making Robocop as “hell”— and you have a recipe for a very high priced box office failure.

Set to be released in February (after being delayed at least once), the $120M Robocop production will be met with seats as empty as the movie itself. The marketing is right on one aspect—audiences will remain “robophobic” and stay away from this stinker. Roboflop – er, Robocop –  opens on Feb. 14, making it the least desirable Valentine’s Day movie we can think of.

• Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy

We know what you’re thinking. Anything Marvel touches is gold. Except when Marvel pulls a Green Lantern. That is, to make a movie so abstract, so extreme in the dimension of sci-fi bizarreness, so alien-centric, with so many plots and sub-plots that the general public simply can’t connect with the characters or understand the story. The general public definitely couldn’t connect with Green Lantern, which had a total negative cost of $300M, including advertising, yet grossed only $219M worldwide, netting the studio just north of $100M from theatrical receipts.

To date, Marvel has turned second tier superheroes such as Thor into worldwide box office hits. But a Viking warrior based on Norse mythology—with a leading man that women worldwide find extremely attractive—is a much easier story to convey than a talking raccoon, a tree man, and a green space aliens running around on other planets for 2 hours. In fact, the post credits scene for Thor 2 which focused on the “Guardians of the Galaxy” was met with laughter by many in the theater and the director of Thor 2 even attempted to distance himself from it.

All superhero movies require a suspension of disbelief in order to be successful, but Marvel is pushing the boundaries way too far into obscurity on this one. And don’t forget, prior to the Disney acquisition, Marvel delivered a bomb in the form of “The Incredible Hulk,” which had a negative cost of $150M, excluding marketing, and generated only $263M in global ticket sales. Marvel properties have bombed before, and this year “Guardians” will prove that Marvel can—and will—flop again.

The bottom line

Image via Flickr/Media Management

When it comes to box office success, trending on Twitter doesn’t translate to packing the seats. Scott Pilgrim was trending on Twitter and that bombed. Justin Beiber has 48 million followers on Twitter and yet seemingly none of them showed up for his latest theatrical masterpiece. The correlation of Twitter activity to theatrical receipts has yet to manifest itself in any tangible way.

There are only so many movies that people will pay to see on opening weekend. These three movies just don’t fall into that category.