flops

Bob Iger, Disney, at Apple programSource: AppleIt's rare for Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger to acknowledge his company has had creative missteps. So when he does, it's probably wise to pay attention."As I've looked at our overall output, meaning the studio, it's clear that the pandemic created a lot of challenges creatively for everybody, including for us," Iger said last week during Disney's earnings conference call. "I've always felt that quantity can be actually a negative when it comes to quality, and I think that's…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeThe Marvels is on track to claim the unfortunate title for worst opening weekend in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) 32-film history after a woeful first day of takings in the US.Written and directed by Nia DaCosta, The Marvels is the follow-up to 2019’s Captain Marvel, which saw Brie Larson star as the titular superhero. She’s joined by Ms Marvel star Iman Vallani, and…

It’s beating a dead horse at this point to call The Flash a bomb; everybody knows the movie hyped by James Gunn as one of the greatest superhero blockbusters of all-time is an unmitigated financial catastrophe that stands to lose Warner Bros. hundreds of millions of dollars. However, what continues to make it such a fascinating tale is the way in which it’s been bombing, with the Scarlet Speedster’s long-gestating solo debut continuing to check off unwanted records and unfortunate milestones with each passing week, and…

A rated-R biographical drama may sound like a hard sell in terms of generating box office dollars but Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer may just have the cure to something that has been plaguing this year’s biggest flops: absolutely “zero” use of computer-generated imagery. That’s right, Nolan has confirmed that he not only recreated the nuclear explosion seen in the movie with practical visual effects but he is now claiming there isn’t a single CGI shot in the entire movie, according to Collider. It’s a statistic that is…

Image via Disney While the company tends to have a reputation for making money hand-over-fist, Disney‘s wretched run at the box office doesn’t quite come out of the blue. Sure, the company has the likes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, Pixar, and other subsidiaries to keep the cash rolling in, an abominable 2023 has seen the Mouse House rack up box office disasters like they’re going out of fashion. In fact, if Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny continues its current trajectory and does end up in…

Somewhere The Rock is laughing and laughing. The Flash made less in its opening weekend ($55.1M) than Black Adam did ($67.8M), and we all know Black Adam was a colossal flop. The Flash is expected to make $350M worldwide (less than Black Widow, a movie that opened in the middle of the pandemic) and that is nowhere near recouping the costs of the film, somewhere in the $300 million range. (A movie has to make about twice what it cost to go into the black.) It’s the penultimate chapter in the strange saga of the DCEU, not…

via Warner Bros. Things have been going from bad to worse for the The Flash over the last week, with critical reactions and box office expectations steadily dropping downwards after everyone discovered for themselves that it didn’t live up to the hype. Even as recently as Friday, the long-delayed DCU blockbuster was pegged to score a three-day domestic opening weekend of around $70 million, but to say it’s fallen short on that front would be an understatement. In fact, even when you factor in two whole decades…

The poor performance of Disney’s The Little Mermaid at the Chinese box office has reopened questions on Hollywood’s increasing difficulties in the world’s second-largest economy and the role racism has played in the film’s reception.The live action remake has grossed just $3.6m (£2.9m) since its release in Chinese cinemas on 26 May, according to Box Office Mojo.The film, starring Halle Bailey as the mermaid Ariel, arrives as Hollywood tries to edge back into a market increasingly dominated by domestic productions, and as…

At a glanceExpert's Rating ProsCompact designSupports Matter and SidewalkOn-board AlexaActs as an Eero extenderConsOnly slightly smaller than the Echo DotNo motion or temperature sensorsIffy sound qualityFeels cheapOur VerdictThe Amazon Echo Pop isn’t much smaller or more budget-friendly than the Echo Dot, yet it sounds worse, does less, and feels cheap. Our advice: get a Dot instead. Let’s just cut to the chase: With its new Echo Pop, Amazon has delivered an Echo speaker that looks worse, sounds worse, and does…

Nvidia Nvidia has just announced a new supercomputer that may change the future of AI. The DGX GH200, equipped with nearly 500 times more memory than the systems we’re familiar with now, will soon fall into the hands of Google, Meta, and Microsoft. The goal? Revolutionizing generative AI, recommender systems, and data processing on a scale we’ve never seen before. Are language models like GPT going to benefit, and what will that mean for regular users? Describing Nvidia’s DGX GH200 requires the use of terms most…