Sean Penn delivered “one of his greatest screen performances” as Willie Stark in “All the King’s Men,” according to The Hollywood Reporter’s review of the filmin 2006.
Nevertheless, the Sony Pictures film earned just $9 million at the worldwide boxoffice. Factor in its $55 million production budget and it amounts to Hollywood’s biggest flop of the past five years, according to the prolific listmakers at Forbes magazine.
After eliminating movies without star power, Forbes divided each movie’s boxoffice take by its production budget to figure out the shortfall. “All the King’s Men” failed to earn back 84% of its production budget, bad enough to earn it first place among flops.
In second place is “The Express,” Universal’s movie starring Dennis Quaid about late college football star Ernie Davis. The 2008 movie failed to earn back 75% of its production budget.
Fox’s 2005 film “Stay” was third, a movie that failed to earn back 73% of its budget despite the efforts of Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts. The film’s pedigree included director Marc Foster (“Monster‘s Ball”) and writer David Benioff (“Troy”).
Even Quentin Tarantino shows up on the list, courtesy of his co-direction of “Grindhouse” for the Weinstein Co. The 2007 movie that featured Josh Brolin and Bruce Willis failed to earn back 65% of its budget.
Other movies on the list of the 15 biggest flops of the past five years include “The Fountain” withHugh Jackman, “The Invasion” starring NIcole Kidman and two movies with Eddie Murphy: “Imagine That” and “Meet Dave.”
The full list is at Forbes.com.
