The summer movie season can be like Hollywood's version of hitting the tables in Vegas. The studios put down big bets with the hopes of an even bigger payout. But everyone rolls snake eyes now and again.

Still, there's a difference between a movie that underperforms at the box office and one that downright collapses. Sometimes a film can be so disastrous that its very title becomes synonymous with the word "flop" ("Ishtar," for one). Here are 10 high-profile, big-budget summer movies that bombed and bombed hard.

Catwoman

Release date: July 23, 2004

Estimated budget: $100 million

U.S. gross: $40.2 million

It would've been swell if Tim Burton and Michelle Pfeiffer had made this movie, like they had talked about doing sometime shortly after the release of "Batman Returns" (1992). Instead, we got this monstrosity starring Halle Berry in laughable barely-there leather get-ups that proved Hollywood still didn't quite "get" comic books ... and that nobody can stumble quite as far and hard as a recent Oscar winner.

Battlefield Earth

Release date: May 12, 2000

Estimated budget: $44 million

U.S. gross: $21 million

John Travolta initially approached Quentin Tarantino to direct the big-screen adaptation of the notorious sci-fi novel by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. We're sure Tarantino turned down the offer from his "Pulp Fiction" star within about .032 seconds of receiving it. A big, bloated, embarrassing mess, "Battlefield Earth" is now one of the industry's go-to metaphors when you want to describe a project no one should touch with a ten-foot pole. It even looked like a bigger disaster at the time because the production company, Franchise Pictures, claimed it cost $75 million, but when they were sued for fraud it was revealed they had inflated the budget by over $30 million.

Hudson Hawk

Release date: May 24, 1991

Estimated budget: $65 million

U.S. gross: $17.2 million

A personal pet project of producer/star Bruce Willis was this awkward, painfully unfunny caper comedy about a professional thief who's forced to pull off a series of daring art heists by various shadowy entities, most notably the cuckoo-bird husband and wife team of Darwin and Minerva Mayflower (Richard E. Grant and Sandra Bernhard), heads of the "psychotic American corporation," Mayflower Industries. With a budget of $65 million in 1991 dollars (adjusted for inflation that's about $108 million today), "Hudson Hawk" failed to connect audiences with Willis' ego as it barely made $17 million at the box office.

Gigli

Release date: August 1, 2003

Estimated budget: $75 million

U.S. gross: $6 million

Back in 2003, almost everyone -- especially the media -- loved to hate Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, aka the celebrity super-couple collectively known as "Benifer." And their big-screen team-up, the crime "comedy" called "Gigli," made everyone love to hate them even more. A film that would've been a disaster no matter who starred in it, "Gigli" couldn't even be rescued by amusing supporting turns by Al Pacino and Christopher Walken, barely earning $7 million worldwide against its $75 million budget. It's kind of hard to believe that Ben Affleck is now an A-list, Oscar-winning director when you consider the bad spot he was in just ten years ago.

Speed Racer

Release date: May 9, 2008

Estimated budget: $120 million

U.S. gross: $44 million

The Wachowskis followed up their wildly successful and influential "The Matrix" trilogy with a live-action adaptation of Tatsuo Yoshida's fondly remembered animated series, which turned an amusing cartoon trifle into a wildly over-designed, headache-inducing, candy-colored train wreck that went on for an astonishing 135 minutes with nary one real thrill or relatable character. The clunky anti-big-corporation plot seems downright hypocritical when you consider the $120 million that Warner Bros. shelled out for this misguided monster.

Around the World in 80 Days

Release date: June 16, 2004

Estimated budget: $110 million

U.S. gross: $24 million

Maybe doing a new adaptation of Jules Verne's beloved fantasy novel with the brilliant but unfamiliar to American audiences Steve Coogan as Phileas Fogg (here re-imagined as an eccentric inventor) and Jackie Chan (?) as Passepartout wasn't such a good idea, eh? While the $110 million film eventually turned a profit on DVD, it only earned $30 million during its theatrical run ... not a very impressive turn-out for what made for Arnold Schwarzenegger's final movie gig before beginning his term as the Governor of California.