Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops by Tim Robey is an irresistibly sharp and entertaining deep dive into the grandest misfires ever to hit the silver screen. Rather than rattling off a dry list of flops, Robey, drawing on years as a respected film critic, crafts vivid, often hilarious portraits of 26 films whose spectacular failures reveal as much about Hollywood’s ambitions as its blind spots…
Beginning with early cinematic misadventures like Intolerance (1916) and winding through notorious disasters like Doctor Dolittle (1967), Heaven’s Gate, Gigli, and Cats, the book is more than a guilty pleasure romp through cinematic train wrecks. It dissects exactly how these projects imploded, be it runaway budgets, misjudged casting, wild creative swings, or simply the bad luck of opening opposite cultural juggernauts. Robey’s tone crackles with dry wit and knowing amusement, yet he never lets the humour drown out genuine curiosity about why such colossal failures happen in an industry built on dreams.
Part of what makes the book so compelling is the way each chapter unfolds almost like a miniature cautionary tale: the hubris of producers, the gamble of revolutionary technology that doesn’t quite work, or the fatal mismatch between filmmaker vision and audience appetite. Some flops, Robey shows, were doomed from conception; others were simply unlucky, overshadowed by cultural shifts or bigger, better films landing at the same moment.
What keeps it from becoming just a catalogue of mockery is the undercurrent of affection for cinema itself. Even when a film’s failure is staggering, Robey treats it as a necessary part of Hollywood’s creative churn – where spectacular miscalculations sometimes pave the way for future innovations. There’s also an unexpectedly thoughtful exploration of how these failures often reflect deeper industry anxieties, whether about changing social mores, technological leaps, or the eternal struggle to balance art and commerce.
Some readers might wish for slightly deeper dives into certain films or more even coverage of modern box-office bombs. And the punchy, roughly ten-page-per-film format occasionally leaves the sense that there’s more behind the scenes left untold. Yet it’s hard to complain when the storytelling is so engaging and the perspective so shrewd.
Box Office Poison ultimately celebrates the strange, fascinating truth that Hollywood’s biggest disasters are as revealing (and often as entertaining) as its greatest triumphs. It’s a witty, insightful and oddly affectionate ode to cinematic calamity. For movie lovers, history buffs and anyone fascinated by the thin line between genius and disaster, this is a compulsively readable journey through the glorious wreckage…
In his hugely acclaimed alternative history of Hollywood, Tim Robey leads us through a century of its most notable flops. From Freaks to Land of the Pharaohs, Dune to Speed 2, and Catwoman to Cats - here is the definitive take on these ill-fated, but essential celluloid failures.
'Expertly researched.' SIGHT & SOUND
'A rollicking, gossipy triumph.' DAILY TELEGRAPH
'Amusing and wince-inducing in equal measure.' INDEPENDENT
