Even amongst the most casual movie fans, it would probably be easy enough to have a conversation about infamous box office bombs. People would likely cite stuff like the box office flop “Tron: Ares” or DC’s “The Flash” as relatively recent, high-profile examples. However, there remains debate over what the biggest flop in box office history actually is. In my estimation, the biggest flop ever happened very recently, in 2026. It’s just that almost nobody noticed.
The movie in question is “Desert Warrior,” which you’d be forgiven for not being familiar with. It’s a movie with a $150 million production budget, which is a problem in and of itself. Movies this expensive require mass awareness. This one has almost none. “Desert Warrior” asserted itself as one of the biggest box office flops ever when it debuted in North American theaters in April. Now that we have a larger sense of the overall picture, things have gotten much worse.
As of this writing, director Rupert Wyatt’s historical action epic has made a grand total of $742,066 worldwide. That’s it. That includes a release in the United Arab Emirates, the region this movie was originally largely intended to serve, as it was a product of the Saudi film industry. Instead, it failed to drum up interest worldwide and earned less than $1 million in total. No other big-budget movie in history that got a robust theatrical release comes close to that level of abject failure.
“Desert Warrior” had one of the worst box office openings of all time, but there was a chance it would find its audience overseas. That didn’t happen, and it has now etched its place into the cinema history books, albeit for all the wrong reasons.
Read more: 12 Plot Holes That Completely Ruined Movies
Desert Warrior is a disaster of epic proportions
I should mention that I am not just some random entertainment journalist looking at these numbers and making a declarative statement. I am a box office analyst who has spent an enormous amount of time digging around in this specific area. I had a column here at /Film for a long time, titled “Tales from the Box Office,” that examined many, many high-profile flops throughout history. I say all of this to set up that when I say “Desert Warrior” is a disaster of all-time epic proportions, I am qualified to do so.
Directed by Rupert Wyatt (“Rise of the Planet of the Apes”), the movie centers on a princess (Aiysha Hart) who flees into the Arabian desert in defiance of a ruthless emperor. Hunted by mercenaries, she is forged into a warrior and aided by a legendary bandit, ultimately uniting warring tribes for a last stand that will change history. Anthony Mackie (“Captain America: Brave New World”), Ben Kingsley (“Wonder Man”), and Sharlto Copley (“District 9”) star.
There are numerous ways to look at a bomb/flop. Some argue it should be about what lost the most money on paper so far as we can tell. “John Carter” is a huge box office bomb we can learn a lot from, but it made over $280 million worldwide with at least some post-theatrical upside. Yes, its budget was north of $260 million, but it at least matched that in ticket sales.
“Desert Warrior,” on the other hand, barring a windfall from elsewhere in the world (highly unlikely), recouped roughly 0.5% of its total budget in ticket sales, with very little theatrical upside. Finding something that garnered a worse return on investment is difficult if not impossible.
Can any movie challenge Desert Warrior for the box office flop crown?
Anthony Mackie as the bandit standing in front of a grass hut in Desert Warrior – Vertical Entertainment
What the hell went wrong here? As Deadline pointed out, there was an enormous creative clash behind the scenes, and the movie was delayed several times throughout post-production. Beyond that, the report also notes that a sizable portion of that $150 million budget (which doesn’t account for marketing costs) created “a filmmaking infrastructure for Saudi Arabia” that can “support filmmaking endeavors in the future.”
That’s all good and well, but on paper, “Desert Warrior” has to eat that cost, and it must go down as an all-timer colossal flop as a result. Vertical Entertainment distributed the movie in the U.S. and paid a much smaller fee for those rights. Ultimately though, the Saudi-backed JB Pictures, AGC Studios, Studio Mechanical, and MBC Studios are left holding the bag. And it’s a big f*****g bag.
The question is, can any other movie truly challenge “Desert Warrior” for the crown at this point? I had previously argued that “The Adventures of Pluto Nash” was the biggest box office bomb of all time, taking in just $7.1 million on a $100 million budget. That can no longer be the case. “The 13th Warrior” was another historical epic and a bomb for the ages, pulling in less than $62 million on a budget as high as $160 million. Still not in the same ballpark.
Most of the biggest box office bombs of all time were made after 2010, and it’s a long, long list. “Mortal Engines, “The Lone Ranger,” the list goes on, and it’s all bad. But for my money, and looking purely at the numbers, there is now a definitive answer to the question: what’s the biggest box office flop in history?
“Desert Warrior” is available now on VOD.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.
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