Colossal video game movie flops

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BORDERLANDS

Production budget: $115 million / Box office: $31 million
We already know that Eli Roth/Liongate's lavish feature film adaptation of Gearbox's hyper-popular looter shooter is one of the biggest film flops of recent years. The production company spent a staggering $115 million to complete it and another $35 million on marketing and that apparently does not include reshoots or the compensation for the understudy director Tim Miller (Deadpool), which should reasonably mean that Lionsgate spent even more on this film that has so far stopped at $31 million recorded. A hysterical flop, simply put.

TEKKEN
Production budget: $30 million / Box office: $1.6 million
Making a fun, colourful, hard-hitting and successful feature film based on the Mishima clan's long-standing feud shouldn't be too difficult. A group of iconic characters fight their way up a tournament ladder to ultimately get the chance to challenge the champion, Heihachi. I'm picturing a modern and ultra-clean Bloodsport, nothing more, nothing less. That's not quite what the producer behind Broken Arrow and Marked for Death, among others, had in mind, however, and instead forced a poor writing team to come up with a lot of their own nonsense. Lousy acting and pointlessly invented, convoluted mythology made this a mess of lousy quality, and the film company lost several millions of dollars as a result.

FAR CRY
Production budget: $30 million / Box office: $743,634
There are few directors who can even challenge the West German ultra-weirdo Uwe Boll when it comes to pure, concentrated badness. The old man has churned out more crap than a normal old anus and perhaps his worst work is Far Cry, loosely based on Crytek's genre-defining, super stylish debut title of the same name. Far Cry cost $30 million to produce and around $10 million to market. In the end, it made about 2% of its total budget.

ALONE IN THE DARK
Production budget: $20 million / Box office: $12.7 million
Another one of old wolf Uwe's lousy crap films is Alone in the Dark, based on Infograme's old horror classic, and although it didn't do as badly at the cinemas as Far Cry, it's still one of the real stinkers of the Ball. Alone in the Dark cost just over $20 million to complete and grossed around $12 million, making it a monster flop. Considering that a film that costs, say, $20 million to make for the film company itself has to make around $40 million to break even (cinemas take about 50% of the ticket money), it is particularly amazing that after all these record fiascos, Uwe was still allowed to continue making films for many, many more years after Alone in the Dark and Far Cry.

BLOODRAYNE
Production budget: $25 million / Box office: $3.7 million
Majesco's beloved action sequel was turned into a feature film in 2005 by Uwe Boll, which not only bored the hell out of the audience with lousy direction, lousy acting, lousy effects and lousy cinematography/editing, but also cemented itself in film history as one of the biggest flops of all time. Mr Boll spent $25 million on the production while the film earned only $3.5 million at the cinema.