It was written and directed by the guy who plays Batman, but in terms of box office receipts, Live by Night was more of a Joker.
According to Variety , the Ben Affleck crime drama is set to lose the Warner Bros studio $75m (£60m).
The film cost an estimated $65m (£52m) to make but has only made $16.5m (£13m) of it back.
Factor in the costs of marketing and distribution and the period gangster thriller looks like it’s firing blanks.
It’s a galling comedown for Affleck, whose last film as director was the Oscar-winning Argo.
It also came off the back of the stinging reviews he received for both Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and another thriller calledThe Accountant.
Yet the 44-year-old should perhaps take heart from the fact that Live by Night will occupy a fairly lowly position on any rundown of expensive film flops.
Indeed, it would have had to lose more than twice as much to challenge 47 Ronin , a 2013 martial arts fantasy starring Keanu Reeves.
With worldwide grosses of $151m (£119.4m) set against an estimated budget of £225m (£179m), the film is believed to have left Universal with a $149m (£118m) hole in its coffers.
Variety called it « one of the costliest box office flops of 2013 », citing rewrites, reshoots and a « novice » director as factors in its downfall.
Then there is Mars Needs Moms , a 2011 Disney fantasy that made use of the performance capture technology popularised by 2004’s The Polar Express.
Estimated to have cost $150m (£119.3m) to make, Simon Wells’s film took just $38.9m (£30.9m) at cinemas – landing the House of Mouse with an estimated write-down of $130.5m (£103.7m).
Other Disney offerings that had their bean-counters running for cover include 2012’s John Carter – estimated to have lost the company $125m (£99.4m) – and 2013’s The Lone Ranger , thought to have accrued losses of around $150m (£119.5m).
Yet even these may be dwarfed by The 13th Warrior , a 1999 action fantasy that is rumoured to be the biggest box office disaster ever.
We say « rumoured » because it has never been accurately ascertained exactly how much Antonio Banderas’s Viking saga cost to produce.
Could it be as high as $160m (£127m)? If so, its adjusted for inflation losses can be calculated to be around $183m – an eye-watering £145m in UK currency.
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