Of the three central Harry Potter kids, Emma Watson has had the best career so far. Even discounting all the good she’s done in the world, she’s starred in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, This Is the End, The Bling Ring, and Noah, all of which made back their budgets. Some were even critically admired! The same can’t be said for Daniel Radcliffe. Yes, he had a scene-stealing role in Trainwreck‘s movie-within-a-movie, The Dog Walker, but Horns and The F Word didn’t connect with audiences too strongly and Victor Frankenstein, where he plays Igor, set the record for “the worst opening ever for a film opening in more than 2,500 locations.”
That’s the wrong kind of record to break. (2012’s Won’t Back Down was the previous title-holder). Here are six other films in its unfortunate company.
Worst Opening, 2,000 Theaters: The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure
The Oogieloves In the Big Balloon Adventure isn’t as much of a kids film-disaster as Foodfight, but it’s certainly the most successful movie inspired by people yelling at Tyler Perry’s oeuvre. Cloris Leachman, Christopher Lloyd, and Chazz Palminteri were somehow tricked into starring in this trippy radioactive-fruit nightmare, which made all of $443,901 during its opening weekend in 2012. That’s the worst three-day debut for a movie that debuted in 2,000 theaters ever. The equally terrible Delgo is forever grateful.
Worst Opening, 3,000 Theaters: Hoot
Brie Larson is the frontrunner for the 2015 Academy Award for Best Actress for her marvelously un-showy performance in Room. But her career wasn’t always so promising. Larson was a mall-pop star in the mid-2000s (her first and only album: Finally Out of P.E.), right around the same time she starred in Hoot, the environmental-themed owl movie. It’s mostly inoffensive fluff, which also describes Jimmy Buffett, who produced the film and provides the music. Hoot opened in 3,018 theaters and made $3,368,197 at the box office, good for a putrid average of $1,116/theater. Chances are Larson won’t mention the movie during her acceptance speech. Sorry, Hoot-heads.
Biggest Second Weekend Drop: Undiscovered
When a film’s box office total only drops 30 percent in its second weekend, that’s considered a huge success. It means word of mouth is generally positive and viewers are seeing it multiple times. The opposite is true when your post-first weekend total plummets by 86.4 percent, like Undiscovered did in 2005. What is Undiscovered? Exactly. Meiert Avis’ would-be inspiring movie about actors and actresses trying to make it in this crazy world of ours stars Ashlee Simpson and is named after an Ashlee Simpson song, which is pretty much all you need to know. It’s never good when your film did something “better” than Gigli, which only dropped 81.9 percent in its second weekend.
Lowest Modern Weekend, Aggregated Top 12 Weekend Totals, Oct. 15–17, 1982
There’s a big asterisk next to this since our source, Box Office Mojo, has archives that only go back to 1982. It’s also important to consider inflation. More expensive tickets mean more money. That said, the same year E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial became the highest-grossing film of all time, it also helped set an ignominious record. The weekend of Oct. 15-17, 1982, is the lowest grossing Friday-Saturday-Sunday in recent history, with a stunningly low take of $13,856,557. E.T. led the way with $3,315,692, followed by An Officer and a Gentleman‘s $3,260,328, My Favorite Year‘s $2,205,749, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High‘s $1,162,149. No other movie made over a million bucks, with the John Cassavetes-starring Tempest rounding out the top 12 with $277,030. The highest-grossing weekend? That was June 12-14, 2015 ($266,035,144), thanks to Jurassic World‘s $208,806,270.
Domestic Gross, All-Time: Zyzzyx Road
Zyzzyx Road never stood a chance. The title alone doomed it to the wrong kind of pop-culture infamy, but the bomb was also never meant to be seen. Director John Penney and star Leo Grillo wanted to make horror movies with animals — “an animal Hannibal,” as Grillo told EW — and they figured they could “sell [Zyzzyx Road] foreign and get our money back. Then we’ll have a track record.” It sort of worked, in that no one saw Zyzzyx Road. It ran for a week at a single theater in Dallas, in order to fulfill a SAG agreement, and only sold six tickets for a total of $30. You can’t blame this bomb on star Katherine Heigl. As for Penney and Grillo’s plan: In 2010, they wrote and starred in Magic, about a dog-angel that heals a feuding family. So, it worked?
