Mortal Engines – $175 million
Following Peter Jackson’s immense success with the LOTR trilogy, it looked like he could do no wrong. In 2018, he would prove everyone wrong. He directed the post-apocalyptic film Mortal Engines, which wound up losing $75 million.
Mortal Engines didn’t have big-name actors to rely on, not that that guarantees a film’s success anyway. Despite this, due to his directing talent, Universal didn’t hesitate to give him $100 million to make the film that would go on to be one of 2018’s biggest flops. It wasn’t that the actors were bad, but the author of the book that inspired the movie, Philip Reeve, just isn’t that well-known.