Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops

***A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB MUST-READ BOOK OF NOVEMBER 2024***

＂A wild success.＂ -- Publishers Weekly

＂A surefire hit.＂ --Library Journal STARRED review

＂A brilliant star turn.＂ --Andrew O’Hagan

A riotous and revealing story of Hollywood’s most spectacular flops and how they ended careers, bankrupted studios and changed film history.

＂Failure fascinates, for all the reasons that success is a drag...＂

From grand follies to misunderstood masterpieces, disastrous sequels to catastrophic literary adaptations, Box Office Poison tells a hugely entertaining alternative history of Hollywood, through a century of its most notable flops. What can these films tell us about the Hollywood system, the public’s appetite-or lack of it-and the circumstances that saw such flops actually made? Away from the canon, this is the definitive take on these ill-fated, but essential celluloid failures.

Robey covers a vast century of flops, including: Intolerance; Queen Kelly; Freaks; Sylvia Scarlett; The Magnificent Ambersons; Land of the Pharoahs; Doctor Dolittle; Sorcerer; Dune; The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; Nothing But Trouble; The Hudsucker Proxy; Cutthroat Island; Speed 2: Cruise Control; Babe: Pig in the City; Supernova; Rollerball; The Adventures of Pluto Nash; Gigli; Alexander; Catwoman; A Sound of Thunder; Speed Racer; Synecdoche, New York; Pan; and Cats.

From Daily Telegraph film critic Tim Robey, this is a brilliantly fun exploration of human nature and stupidity in some of the greatest film flops throughout history.