When Hollywood bets big and loses - the most expensive flops of 2024
Last updated: February 12, 2026
There's something genuinely hard to watch about a studio betting the farm on a sequel, then watching it go down in flames. The recent years have been like a highlight reel of exactly that – these massive, expensive productions that were supposed to be sure things turning into perfect examples of what happens when budgets spiral out of control and everyone's too confident for their own good.
The biggest disappointment
If we talk about box office disasters in 2024. Joker: Folie à Deux is our poster child. The numbers are pretty damning. The first Joker was a phenomenon back in 2019, raking in over a billion dollars worldwide on what was basically pocket change by Hollywood standards – around 60 million. It worked because it wasn't trying to be some massive blockbuster. It was raw, stripped down, a character study that hit people right where they lived.
The sequel? They went the complete opposite direction. They spent between 190 and 200 million making it, then another 100 million trying to convince people to see it. Do the math – the movie had to bring in something like 450 million just to avoid being a total loss.
The auteur's gamble
Then there's Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola's passion project that he'd been developing since the late 1970s. The legendary director put his own money on the line – all 120 million of it – even selling off chunks of his wine business to get the thing made. Box office haul? A pathetic 13 million. The movie looked incredible. Every frame could've been hung in a gallery. But as a story? It was all over the place. This sprawling, confusing thing that never quite clicked into something that made sense.
The pattern of emerged
What ties these disasters together isn't just their financial losses – it's the pattern of misplaced confidence. Studios saw success with the first Joker. They forgot the most basic thing – people care about a good story, not how much you spent making it. The first Joker landed because it felt different. Smaller. A little dangerous, even. So what did they do for the sequel? Threw three times the money at it, added musical numbers and bigger stars, and somehow thought that would do the trick.
Did Hollywood learn anything?
The question is whether Hollywood has learned anything from these disasters. The early signs aren't promising - studios are still greenlighting massive-budget sequels and franchise expansions. But maybe, just maybe, some executive somewhere is looking at Joker: Folie à Deux's 144 million dollar loss and thinking twice about whether that musical superhero courtroom drama really needs a 200 million dollar budget.
