Videos by ComicBook.com
Even before the 2020s, though, Marvel and DC adaptations (as well as properties from other comic book companies) could be attached to box office flops. For the latter outfit, box office flops included Catwoman, Green Lantern, and one particular would-be 2010 tentpole that remains one of the biggest DC Comics disasters ever. Jonah Hex went down in flames so badly in June 2010 that it makes the whole Flash debacle look like a minor box office fender-bender.
How Badly Did DC’s Jonah Hex Do?
Though a punchline today (if it’s even remembered at all), Jonah Hex started out as a high-profile project with lots of buzz-worthy talent from late-2000s. Josh Brolin signed on to headline the feature roughly a year after headlining No Country for Old Men, a Best Picture Oscar-winning title. Megan Fox was set to play the film’s leading lady in one of her first major roles after the exceedingly lucrative Transformers films. Original filmmakers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, meanwhile, were late 2000s genre cinema cult favorites thanks to the 2006 Jason Statham feature Crank. Putting them all together for a blockbuster western, suggested Jonah Hex had the potential to be a hit.
By the time cameras started rolling on Jonah Hex, Neveldine and Taylor were no longer the directors. Horton Hears A Who! helmer Jimmy Hayward instead directed the feature, which was plagued with problems and hefty reshoots. Warner Bros. eventually began the Jonah Hex marketing campaign in late April 2010, just seven weeks before its June 18th release date, an ominous sign of how little confidence the studio had in this title. Unsurprisingly, Jonah Hex opened to just $5.37 million domestically despite playing in just over 2,800 theaters. In fact, at the time of its release, Jonah Hex had the 10th worst domestic opening weekend ever for a movie that launched in over 2,700 theaters.
Audiences gave Jonah Hex a C+ CinemaScore, which reflected dreadful word-of-mouth for a mainstream PG-13 action blockbuster. Unsurprisingly, Hex proved incredibly frontloaded and ended up making more than half of its lifetime domestic gross in just its first three days of release. Grossing $10.54 million domestically and only $475,579 overseas, Jonah Hex had a dismal $11.02 million worldwide haul, which meant it came nowhere near turning a profit on a $47 million budget. In the pantheon of comic book movie flops, Jonah Hex was an especially poor performer.
