This can be due to Hollywood accounting practices that manipulate profits or keep costs secret to circumvent profit-sharing agreements,[1] but it is also possible for films to lose money legitimately even when the theatrical gross exceeds the budget.
For example, tax filings in 2010 for Cinemark Theatres show that only 54.5 percent of ticket revenues went to the distributor, with the exhibitor retaining the rest.
[2] In some cases, a company can make profits from a box-office bomb when ancillary revenues are taken into account, such as streaming, home media sales and rentals, television broadcast rights, and licensing fees, so a film that loses money at the box office can still eventually break even.
[10] The COVID-19 pandemic, starting around March 2020, caused temporary closure of movie theatres, and distributors moved several films to premier to streaming services such as HBO Max, Disney+, and Peacock with little to no box-office takes.
[11] The following is a partial list of films that lost the most money, based on documented losses or estimated by expert analysis of various financial factors such as the production budget, marketing and distribution costs, gross box-office receipts and other ancillary revenues.