Worst Grossing Comic Book Movies of All Time

In an era of dominance for comic book films — are they completely infallible?

In my first post, I evaluated the “Top 10 Grossing Comic Book Movies of All Time”. In this post we’re going to take a gander at the basement of my list — the “Bottom 10 Grossing Comic Book Movies of All Time”

Recapping the data sources

As mentioned in my prior post, I decided to analyze live-action movies from the two biggest comic book publishers: Marvel and DC. I used the following data sources to determine the movies that have been produced using their characters: All Marvel Movies and All DC Movies

To ensure all is copasetic, I’m adjusting for inflation when I report my rankings. To adjust for inflation, I’m sourcing the consumer price index (CPI) from the Bureau Labor of Statistics.

For the box office numbers, we use Box Office Mojo for the films total gross during their run in theaters.

That’s that. For more detail information on the calculation and data sources, check out my inaugural post.

Ranking the worst

Out of the 60 Marvel and DC live-action films, below are the bottom ten grossing comic book films when adjusting for inflation (unadjusted box office numbers in parenthesis):

51. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012) — Marvel — $137,323,885 ($132,563,930)

52. Catwoman (2004) — DC — $103,372,502 ($82,102,379)

53. Howard the Duck (1986) — Marvel — $82,381,298 (37,962,774)

54. Elektra (2005) — Marvel — $69,027,293 ($56,681,566)

55. The Punisher (2004) — Marvel — $68,871,168 ($54,700,105)

56. Supergirl (1984) — DC — $32,726,046 ($14,296,438)

57. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) — DC — $23,507,070 ($11,227,824)

58. Jonah Hex (2010) — DC — $11,892,458 ($10,903,312)

59. Punisher: War Zone (2008) — Marvel — $11,157,171 ($10,100,036)

60. Steel (1997) — DC — $2,535,415 ($1,710,972)

Starting at the bottom

Coming in at a lowly $2.5 million dollars at the the box office is Steel. Shaquille O’Neal plays the title character Steel based off the DC comic book. The film itself holds true to some of the elements of the comic book and follows John Henry Irons and his alter-ego, Steel. However, the film distances itself from the connection Superman and comic book storyline, “Reign of Superman”

How impressive is Shaq’s futile with Steel? Shaq’s other two starring features: Blue Chips and Kazaam fared MUCH better with $56 million and $30 million when adjusted for inflation.

In comparison, Shaq himself nearly outpaced the box office output of Steel in the first 45 minutes of his basketball career. It’s recently been publicized, the Shaq spent $1 million dollars 45 minutes after he was drafted by the Orlando Magic in 1992. Adjust that $1 million dollars for inflation and it’s $1.5 million dollars. At the same rate, if Shaq were to have gone on a 90 minute shopping spree he would have outspent what Steel made in it’s entirety with $3 million dollars.. and he would have done it in a shorter time than the 1 hour and 37 run-time of Steel.

While we’re potentially “joshing” Shaq a bit for Steel’s financial performance, let’s make one thing clear. Outside of Steel, Shaq was a financial juggernaut. How much so? In the 2006–2007 season, Shaq earned a staggering $20,789 per minute he was on the court ($17,621.15 before adjusting for inflation). If Shaq were to play the entire 97 minute run time of Steel, he would have made $2,016,492, just a sparse $518,923 off from the total gross of Steel.. or another 25 minutes on the court.

Not so “Super” after all?

Superman led/related movies Superman IV and Supergirl join Steel in the bottom ten with $23.5 million and $32.7 million, respectively. This leads me to wonder with one Superman in the top ten grossing movies and one in the bottom ten, how do the other movies net-out? How does the Superman franchise stack up against other character franchises such as Batman, Iron Man, etc. We’ll explore franchises and how they fare against each other in a future post.

Current status of female led movies?

On a scale from very, very bad to disaster.

In the day and age of Jennifer Lawrence’s Hunger Games franchises grossing nearly $1 billion dollars at the box office, it’s a bit hard to believe that all of female led comic book films appear in the bottom ten. The movies have performed so poorly that during the 2014 Sony hack it was revealed that Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter provided the following recaps of past female led comic book film performances:

1. Electra (Marvel) — Very bad idea and the end result was very, very bad. 2. Catwoman (WB/DC) — Catwoman was one of the most important female character within the Batmanfranchise. This film was a disaster. 3. Supergirl — (DC) Supergirl was one of the most important female super hero in Superman franchise. This Movie came out in 1984 and did $14 million total domestic with opening weekend of $5.5 million. Again, another disaster.

With that said, both Marvel and DC seem to be slowly introducing female comic book characters into their universes. Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow has appeared 4 Marvel Cinematic Universe films (with a 5th on the way with Captain America: Civil War), Jessica Jones is enjoying critical acclaim on Netflix, Wonder Woman will be introduced in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Captain Marvel will be hitting movie theaters in 2018.

I would not be surprised to see a female led movie not only break out of the bottom ten, but rank pretty high in overall gross.

But wait.. there’s more.. later.

These first two posts offered a fairly simplistic view box office gross. In the next post, we’ll explore the profitability side of comic book films including the top movies in terms of net profit and losses and best return on investment.