25 Great Movies That Flopped
16. The Astronaut’s Wife (1999)
But unfortunately even top names such as these couldn’t save “The Astronaut’s Wife” from being a box office disaster.
Even though the film’s plot was bizarre, that’s the running theme across most science fiction films, making its failure even more surprising.
The premise of the film is that two astronauts go into space on a mission. An explosion occurs and there are two minutes of darkness where communication is lost. The two astronauts agree to never speak about what happened during those two minutes and come back to Earth.
Spencer, played by Johnny Depp, loses his partner when, after returning to Earth, he bleeds to death at a gathering. To make matters stranger, his partner’s wife then commits suicide. Charlize, Depp’s wife in the film, asks him what happened during the two minutes of darkness, to which he offers her a thorough explanation. After he tells her, though, his demeanor becomes very strange.
Eventually Charlize discovers that Depp is not her husband but an alien who took over his body during the two minutes of darkness. To make matters more complicated, Charlize’s character discovers she is pregnant with twins and that Spencer, or rather the alien who assumed Spencer’s looks, is on a mission to control them.
While the plot was interesting and most fans of the film ardently support it, when it came to the box office it was lost in space.
