Box Office Poison

Hollywood's Story in a Century of Flops

De: Tim Robey

Narrado por: Tim Robey

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.

©2024 Tim Robey (P)2024 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited

Interesting coverage of the topic, but the author was the wrong choice to read it

Despite the potential of humorous delivery at points, the matter of fact reading of the work by the writer is the main concern I had with this otherwise good overview of movie production and marketing history.

So biting and snarky !

The author knows the history , industry and art of Hollywood. He is a hilarious critic

The ending

I was really hoping that it would come full circle, and it did. The author even used that exact phrase at the end. Wrapped up perfectly.

The most entertaining film book I’ve read in years

Absolutely loved it. Smart, funny and historically revealing. Excited to check out more by Tim Robey.

Enjoy it, but wanted more

I love the movie industry and have enjoyed learning the behind the scenes of making movies. I wish this book went a little deeper with more mainstream movies but it was def. Worth a listen.

The Best Book on the Worst Movies

Box Office Poison is a clever and insightful exploration of a subject movie buffs never knew they needed. I’ve never felt such morbid curiosity over a list of movie casualties.

This book dives deep into the biggest box office disasters in American cinema. It’s the film buff’s equivalent of watching one car crash after another—you can’t look away! You’ll be told who was behind the wheel, what caused the collision, who walked away unscathed, and who didn’t survive the wreck. The factors leading to each crash are as interesting as the crashes themselves.

Excellent BTS analysis of how Hollywood executives make decisions

Worried at first that this book would be a downer, given the dreadful movies it covers, But found it to be a treasure trove of cinema history, funny throughout, and highlighted by fascinating inside baseball stories I'd never heard (since Hollywood journalism is primarily about HITS). It benefits from the across-the-pond Britiish critic's witty analysis that Hollywood is too blind to see. I wrote THE BIG DEAL: HOLLYWOOD'S MILLION-DOLLAR SPEC SCRIPT MARKET (HarperCollins 1999) about 1990s cinema -- which includes backstories on "Last Action Hero," "Waterworld," (which was just a dud, not a flop- eventually making back its costs, as Tim Robey so keenly explains) "Cutthroat Island" and several other flicks that Robey skewers. I can't recall when I last enjoyed a book on Hollywood so much -- film enthusiasts of all stripes will learn plenty from BOX-OFFICE POISON, while laughing and cringing simultaneously

Boring and dull

I really wanted to enjoy this book, but it fell short. Perhaps it would be better reading it in a book, but the authors necessity of telling you the year each movie is made when he mentioned it gets very repetitive and very boring.