West Side Story cost $100 million to make and pulled in $76 million at the worldwide box office. The Last Duel, also budgeted at $100 million, finished with about $30 million. News of the World made $12 million. Half a decade on, those three COVID-era flops still represent the most expensive box office losses of the pandemic era.
The financial damage is still being counted, half a decade on. Studios wrote off more than prestige projects, and the films themselves were often well reviewed. Theatrical audiences simply did not show up, and the financial damage runs into the hundreds of millions, as the 15-film tally of pandemic-era flops documents.
The $200 Million Hole in West Side Story
Steven Spielberg had spent decades teasing a movie musical before "West Side Story" arrived in December 2021. The film’s $100 million budget made it one of the most expensive musicals in recent memory, and the worldwide gross of $76 million did not come close to clearing it. The shortfall from the break-even point, once marketing and distribution were counted, was reported at over $200 million by the trade press. The figure was the largest of any pandemic-era release.
The December release put the film on the same shelf as "Spider-Man: No Way Home," which opened to over $240 million the same weekend. The Marvel blockbuster drew the younger audience that the pandemic had kept home, and it left the prestige musical with the older demographic that proved least willing to risk a theater visit.
The film earned an Academy Award for Ariana DeBose and launched Rachel Zegler’s career, but neither accolade changed the bottom line. By almost any measure, the production remains the most expensive box office disappointment of the pandemic era. The film’s $200 million shortfall stood as a warning to every studio weighing a similar bet.
Why Adult Dramas Stopped Working
The pattern that felled "West Side Story" repeated across the adult-skewing prestige slate. Jon M. Chu’s "In the Heights" had been the first major warning, grossing about $45 million against a $55 million budget.
"Nightmare Alley," released a week later, grossed just under $40 million against a $60 million budget. The earlier Warner Bros. musical "In the Heights" had posted a similar result, with the studio’s HBO Max strategy cited as part of the problem. Both films drew Oscar attention, and both lost money. The del Toro picture earned a Best Picture nomination, the kind of accolade that used to be a ticket to a longer theatrical run, and this time the nomination was an asterisk.
Tom Hanks’s "News of the World" picked a worse moment. Universal released the film on Christmas Day 2020, the same week Disney’s "Soul" and Warner Bros.’s "Wonder Woman 1984" hit streaming. The Western was marketed to the older moviegoers least likely to be in a public theater during a winter surge, and it finished with about $12 million at the box office, a total trade press at the time called "shocking" given the marketing push.
Kristen Stewart’s "Spencer" cleared its $18 million budget by grossing $25 million, and Neon lost money on the film after marketing and distribution costs. Stewart earned her first Oscar nomination for the role. The film made money only on paper.
Ridley Scott and the Phone He Blamed
"The Last Duel," released in October 2021, was the most expensive pandemic-era flop by ratio. Ridley Scott’s 14th-century period drama, with a $100 million budget, grossed just over $30 million worldwide. The film opened to $4.8 million domestically, the worst premiere of Scott’s career. Universal released the film the same weekend as "Halloween Kills."
Universal’s "Halloween Kills" brought in $50.4 million on a $20 million budget, a six-times return in its first frame. "The Last Duel" cost five times as much to make, and it made about a third of what the horror film earned on its opening weekend, as the Halloween Kills $50.4 million debut numbers show. The film suffered from the same lack of interest in adult dramas that affected "West Side Story," and Scott had the box office receipts to prove the audience was not showing up.
The millennials do not ever want to be taught anything unless you’re told it on a cell phone.
Ridley Scott, on the "WTF with Marc Maron" podcast in November 2021, blamed the box office failure of "The Last Duel" on millennials. The film’s $4.8 million opening weekend result was the worst of Scott’s career.
The Streaming Trap
The most extreme pandemic-era box office disasters were the ones the studios had already given up on. Apple TV+ and A24 co-produced "The Tragedy of Macbeth," Joel Coen’s first solo directorial effort, as a streaming title. The Shakespeare adaptation got a limited theatrical run to qualify for Academy Award consideration, and the film grossed just over $500,000. The awards campaign was the point. The box office was a footnote.
Cartoon Saloon’s "Wolfwalkers" was the most expensive film in the Irish animation studio’s history, with a $10 million budget. The film grossed $1.3 million on a limited release, and it competed for attention against other animated titles dumped onto Apple’s young streaming platform. Céline Sciamma’s "Petite Maman" earned about $2 million on the arthouse circuit in the spring of 2021, and the film’s lack of a meaningful U.S. theatrical run kept it from registering with audiences aware of Sciamma’s prior "Portrait of a Lady on Fire."
All three films shared the same playbook, and each was treated as a streaming launch with awards eligibility as a side benefit. The box office returns were never expected to carry the production.
| Title | Budget | Box Office Gross | Platform |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Tragedy of Macbeth | undisclosed | just over $500,000 | Apple TV+ / A24 |
| Wolfwalkers | $10 million | $1.3 million | Apple TV+ |
| Petite Maman | undisclosed (arthouse) | about $2 million | Pyramide Distribution |
Budgets were small, box office returns were smaller, and the studios assumed streaming would pick up the rest. Other studios and distributors followed the same template through the end of 2021, sending their own prestige titles to streaming after limited theatrical runs. The approach set the template for the next eighteen months of awards-season strategy.
The Worst Week to Open a Movie
Eliza Hittman’s "Never Rarely Sometimes Always" opened in U.S. theaters on March 13, 2020, and most of those theaters were closed within days. The film grossed less than $900,000 worldwide, a figure that read at the time as a footnote. Hittman’s drama about two teenage girls navigating an unintended pregnancy was called the most universally lauded indie film of its year, and the film has not found the wider audience that critical reception would have predicted.
Kelly Reichardt’s "First Cow" opened on March 6, 2020, a week before the lockdowns, and A24 had been building toward a wide release when theaters closed. The film grossed $1.3 million against a $2 million budget after the VOD pivot, and A24 was one of the first distributors to send a film to streaming in the early days of the pandemic. Rose Glass’s "Saint Maud" had been held by A24 for over a year after its 2019 festival premiere.
The horror film was finally released in January 2021 and quickly moved to VOD, where it grossed $1.6 million against a $2.5 million budget. Chloé Zhao’s "Nomadland" followed a nearly identical path to an early-winter 2021 release and went on to gross over $39 million, win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and launch Zhao’s filmmaking career. The two films shared a release strategy, and the gap in their box office results came down to marketing and timing. A24 had used the same template on "First Cow" weeks earlier.
Directors Retreat to Smaller Films
Edgar Wright’s subsequent project "The Running Man" met a similar reception, both critically and commercially, to his earlier flop. The path back to mid-budget adult filmmaking has been narrow for the directors who came off of these flops.
Rose Glass directed the 2024 feature "Love Lies Bleeding," a noir thriller that played in theaters at modest scale. Eliza Hittman directed for Peacock’s "A Friend of the Family" after "Never Rarely Sometimes Always," and she has not yet returned to the big screen with a new feature. The mid-budget adult feature has been the hardest to get financed since 2022.
Paul Schrader’s "The Card Counter" grossed $5 million against an unknown budget, a small multiple of his prior "First Reformed" ($4 million on a $3.5 million budget). Schrader has continued to make films in the same low-budget register, and Joel Coen’s "The Tragedy of Macbeth" was his first solo directorial effort. The mid-budget adult feature, the kind that costs $30 million to $60 million, has been harder to get financed in the years since, similar to the recent box office flop that found streaming success. Several of the pandemic-era directors have followed Schrader’s path.
The pattern across these careers is one of retreat. Directors whose 2020 and 2021 films missed at the box office have, in several cases, made fewer and smaller features in the years since, and a critic’s ranking of all 34 Spielberg films shows the same shift across the rest of his filmography.
The Bill Comes Due
The total cost of the COVID-era box office flops to the studios and financiers is not on a single spreadsheet, and it never will be. "West Side Story’s" reported $200 million shortfall and "The Last Duel’s" $30 million gross on a $100 million budget set the top of the range. The smaller write-downs on the streaming-dumped titles added up to one of the most expensive two-year stretches in the modern box office.
Adult dramas in 2024 and 2025 are largely streaming titles or low-budget independent features. The mid-budget prestige film is rarer in theaters than it was in 2019, and the adult-skewing drama is rarer still.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the biggest box office flop during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Steven Spielberg’s "West Side Story" is the largest by reported dollar shortfall. The 2021 musical cost $100 million to produce and grossed $76 million worldwide, finishing over $200 million short of its break-even point after marketing and distribution were counted.
Did any pandemic-era flops find success after their theatrical run?
Yes. Several of the films built strong reputations on streaming. Apple TV+ used "The Tragedy of Macbeth" and "Wolfwalkers" to anchor awards campaigns on its platform, and "Wolfwalkers" continued Cartoon Saloon’s streak of Academy Award nominations. A24 moved "First Cow" to VOD within weeks of its release, and the film found a wider audience in the streaming era.
Why did adult dramas struggle at the box office during COVID?
The pandemic audience skewed younger and event-driven. Films like "Dune" and "Spider-Man: No Way Home" pulled the demographics that had been waiting to return to theaters. Adult dramas and musicals depended on the older audience that proved most cautious about indoor public spaces during the Omicron wave and the earlier winter surge.
What is the worst release date in American cinema history?
March 13, 2020 is the date most often cited. "Never Rarely Sometimes Always" opened that day, and most U.S. theaters were closed within the week. The film finished with less than $900,000 at the box office.
Are movie theaters back to pre-pandemic attendance levels?
No. Domestic box office has recovered since the pandemic, and the gap is largest in the adult-drama and prestige-film categories that drove the 2020 and 2021 flops. The mid-budget theatrical feature remains harder to finance in 2025 than it was in 2019.
