I really liked this book. It offers some great information on films from the start of mainstream silent films to present day films with huge budgets that bombed. I really enjoyed this one. The short chapters cover a movie per chapter and give an overview of the film, why it flopped, and if it had any affect on the wider industry.

If you enjoy movies or have interest in the movies we don't enjoy, this is a good one. If you are a fan of the podcast How Did This Get Made, this book is definitely for you!

Even if you haven’t seen these films (and being that they were flops, most people haven’t), this is well worth reading as the stories behind the scenes are often more entertaining than the films themselves. Robey has a thorough knowledge of film history, but he also speaks like a fan, bluntly and humorously calling out boneheaded decisions. A must read for any cinephile.

Have you seen these movies? If you have, it's time to see them in a new light. If you haven't, you'll probably have plenty of reason to steer clear. I've only seen a handful of them, but I love reading the background and behind the scenes. It's always fascinating and this is no exception!

4 stars.

"Box Office Poison" by Tim Robey is a must-read for cinephiles like me. If you've ever wanted to know the history of box office bombs and Hollywood turkeys, this book is for you. Factual, immersive, and interesting, Robey's research spans from silent films in the 1910s to present-day big budget monstrosities, examining the likes of movies from "Freaks" and "Queen Kelly" to "Speed 2: Cruise Control" and "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," to "Catwoman" and "Cats." He also goes into how studios have changed throughout the years, as well as how streaming services and the C0VID-19 pandemic have forever altered the box office landscape. Robey uses his job as a film critic to formulate why each film flopped (overinflated budgets, lack of necessity, divergence from the source materials, poor filming locations, mismatched casting, the internet/memes, poor trailers, ego of stars and directors, etc), as well as what could have been done to save them. You can tell Robey likes and respects cinema, even outside of his job, which makes this book a breeze to read because he is not condemning with emotions, but presenting with facts. It was cool to read about films I have always enjoyed watching, as well as ones I totally forgot existed. I came away from this book with a ton of new, interesting facts, like how c0ndoms were used to make the sandworms look like they had shimmering tendons in David Lynch's "Dune," and how George Miller's savage and dark take on "Babe" did not yield returns at cinemas due to its depressing nature. A very fascinating book that I highly recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley, Tim Robey, Harlequin Trade Publishing, and Hanover Square Press for the complimentary ARC of this book. All opinions are my own. I was not compensated for this review.

An interesting concept, but as we’ve seen with other books that try to do something similar, it’s very hard to write a good book about stuff that’s bad.

I think of Rax King’s Tacky, a book about the love of things considered tasteless, and why that worked so well while this and most others like it don’t. I think it’s because King was celebrating the concept of “so bad it’s good,” and reveling in the idea that just because something is considered “bad” doesn’t mean you can’t like or enjoy it. It has humor and levity, and is worlds away from this book, which is essentially just a list of movies and a “this did poorly, here’s why it was bad” section about each.

There’s no fun to it at all, and while I think the research was good and the writing fine, there’s not much enjoyment to be taken in a list of failures and non-humorous analysis of why these things failed. Movies are entertainment, and I think that’s the lens you have to look through when you examine them critically, even the bad ones.

I think this book was a terrific read for anyone who loves movies and pop culture. It’s written in a fun, approachable way that is part research, observation and film critique. With a good mix of pop culture references too.

The book covers 100 years of flops, focusing on one per chapter but in a way that puts them in context of other failures and successes. I like how not just mega-blockbuster misfired are included but smaller, indecent bombs as well.

There’s astuteness and humor to clearly make the case for why a film was box office poison, without weighing things down with too much detail. The writing is sharp but not belabored.

A really enjoyable read.

Thank you Netgalley and Harlequin Publishing for this arc.

As part of the blurb says, we like to focus on what goes terribly wrong. Robey has a grab bag of films that for one reason or another, failed spectacularly. Hubris, bad timing, miscasting, misreading the room, money (too much and too little), making enemies in the business, or just bad luck – the reasons are many with some films snagging more than one. Among the choices he covers are some films that ought to have been masterpieces while others make one mutter about what the studio heads were thinking when they greenlit these projects.

Robey avoids doing little but taking the piss about these films. Instead he delves into why the film should have worked and what specifically happened to stop that. Robey also points out things that did work and mentions when some films have managed to rise from the dead through fandoms and becoming cult classics. “Cats” is the last film covered after which he muses a little on how Covid and streaming services might have forever changed film floppage. Some of these films I’ve seen, some I’ve heard of, and some were totally new to me.

The writing style is approachable, readable, and fun. It’s clear that Robey loves films and talking about them. One or two have piqued my interest and I might see if I can find a copy to watch. But “Cats,” no, I’ll skip that one along with “Nothing but Trouble.” B

An entertaining look at a century of cinematic failures. Some chapters were more engaging than others , but over it gave great context for flopping favorites.

BOX OFFICE POISON takes a closer look at the biggest film flops from the very beginning of Hollywood's silent era through the memes and hashtags that was Cats. What sets this book apart from others in the genre is that Robey doesn't (always) go for the cheap shots, the easy jokes. Instead, he digs deeper into the films that had every reason to succeed, but fell short for one reason for another: it had the misfortune to open alongside Star Wars, the planets aligned for the first movie but making lightning strike twice with a should-have-been-bankable sequel just didn't pan out, the Hays code came along.

Robey theorizes that the days of flops have come to an end with the emergence of streaming services, there's simply too much out where and too many viewers for one lone title to bomb as hard at the ones in this book -- and I thought that was fascinating.

My thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing, Hanover Square Press for an advance copy on this book dealing with movies that have gone down in history as failures, some deserved, some unfairly tarnished, but all are given one more chance in front of an audience, one reader at a time.

I have loved movies since I first saw Walt Disney's Robin Hood at the age of 3 in a small theater in the Bronx. The images on the screen were huge, bigger than our tv, the sound knocked me deep into my seats, the whole thing was magical. From there is was 4:00 o'clock movie monster shows, an illegal cable box, VCR and more. I loved movies. Good, bad or indifferent. I don't really have guilty pleasure movies, nor have an elitest cinema sense. Iranian art movies are as interesting to me as a Jim Wynorski or Fred Olen Ray B movie. Well maybe C movie. I have always loved to read about movies, the ideas, the making of behind the scene information. Here maybe my snobbish shows, as I love to read about the beautiful disasters. Where and when a movie goes from something that makes sense, to lets add a basketball scene here, or let's get the people who made Police Academy 4 edit this film, and everything goes off the rails. Beautiful disasters are sometimes too many cooks, the wrong cast, the wrong time, or the director checks out. Sometimes it's all of this and more. Tim Robey is a film critic for the Daily Telegraph, and he loves movies too, one can tell. Box Office Poison: Hollywood's Story in a Century of Flops is a look at films that failed in ways that changed careers, an industry, or was tarred with a brush that it never deserved, and await their closeup and applause.

The book begins with the ideas behind the book, and in the writing makes it clear that Robey is not going for the easy jokes of making fun of movies, but wants to understand what went wrong, or in a few occasions why people missed what is actually an important film. There are many reasons a film bombs, and a lot of it comes from well there being too much of something. a studio might have a vision, a director another, and none of that appears on the screen. A casting coup might go wrong, a Star Wars appears and sucks up all the audience dollars. Too much is spent on the spectacle, that the story is forgotten. Or a story that means so much to one person, can mean little to an audience at the time. Some of these films are actually good, some quite good. Robey goes into detail from first ideas, making of, reception and legacy and what he thinks of the film.

This was a much better book than I thought, and one that I enjoyed quite a bit. A lot of books about folly in Hollywood are written in an almost scolding way. Look at these rich people, and their wacky ideas. Robey actually likes movies, which is rare today. Even better he likes to write about them, and has the skill to make it both informative and interesting. And makes one want to seek these films out, no matter what previous viewings might have been like. Robey uses interviews, behind-the-scenes stories, and bits from other works to give an idea of what was going on, and when things might have gone wrong. Robey rarely blames people, maybe Cats is the exception, understanding that creativity is sometimes messy, and assigning blame on a project that has many hands and millions of dollars is hard. A real labor of love, and one that reminds me why I enjoy film, and even after all these years still find the idea of movies magical. Even the failures.

I received a free ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

Phewwwww I laughed, I cried, I counted the hours I wasted watching a bunch of these films in my life.

A wonderful retrospect of crap films throughout the last century or so and what makes them stand apart from other “bad” movies. There’s a very fine line between a forgettable bad movies and a game changing one, and the nuances are examined thoughtfully. A great book for lovers of movies, good and bad

***Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book***
If I had to pick a favorite nonfiction genre of books, it would have to be books about movie making and all of the behind the scenes drama and triumphs. While it is a blast to read how our most treasured and successful movies miraculously came together, it’s almost twice as much fun reading about big budget movies that bomb spectacularly.

Box Office Poison is the best book I have ever read about the topic of big budget bombs. A lot of the usual suspects are covered in glorious detail (Gigli, Cats, Cutthroat Island), but it also covers many that I (and most other people) have either never heard of or have forgotten completely. The added bonus is that it covers films from the earliest days of Hollywood movie productions all the way up to the CATastophe (hehe) that is Cats. The writing is witty, easily digestible and had me struggling to put it down for the night and I finished it in about 3 or 4 days.

This is a must read for any movie fan, especially ones curious as to how a production with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars can go so so wrong.

Man I loved this. My movie knowledge isn't as extensive as my tv knowledge, and I haven't even seen most of the movies Tim Robey dives into. Turns out that didn't matter, because this was so compulsively readable. Each flop gets its own chapter and none of them are boringly drawn out. He gets right to the point about what went wrong, whether it be from the inception of the plot to fiascos on set to creative visions simply not appealing to a wide audience. Not much space is devoted to summarizing each movie synopsis, which I also really appreciated. I liked that the problems spoke for themselves, and there was no need for a drawn out play-by-play of what we see on screen.

I feel like I would have really enjoyed this book more if I was more of a cinephile. While I've heard of many of the movies mentioned in this book, I haven't seen a lot of them, which means that I didn't get a lot of the jokes made about the film.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

loved reading about the movies and what made the such poison. while yes there were the obvious one's that were bad , others were fine to me. I really like speed racer and it was great learning about all the issues to get movies made and how much they made overall.