A history of Hollywood's greatest failures

When a novel misses the mark, an opera sinks like a stone, or a Broadway show closes up shop, few care beyond the niche contingent conversant in the inside baseball of the respective art form. By contrast, when large-scale, grandly budgeted movies prove ruinously unprofitable at the box office, even amateur cinephiles find themselves doubled over with glee. Why do we derive such pleasure from the fiascos that emanate from Hollywood? The last year in flops was particularly fertile: Francis Ford Coppola self-financed the disastrous Megalopolis, the Joker sequel came a cropper, and even the Mad Max spinoff spun to nowhere worth going.