25 Great Movies That Flopped
23. Sahara (2005)
In the 2005 film “Sahara” Matthew McConaughey, Penelope Cruz, and Steve Zahn team up to create a hilarious, romantic, and action-packed film in which the trio engages in several adventures across the Sahara desert in an effort to retrieve stolen treasure.
It was based on the novel of the same name, written by Clive Cussler.
If you’re thinking that such a film is bound to be a box office hit in terms of popularity, you’d be right. In fact, that’s what makes “Sahara” so odd when it comes to box office financial failures.
While it was number one in the box office its first weekend and continued to be very popular, the film still lost a whopping $100.3 million. There is nearly unanimous consensus that the reason for the financial loss came not from the quality of the film, but from the enormous expense of producing and distributing it.
The treasure hunt meets spy movie vibe won audiences over and continues to be a hit today. But unfortunately it left producers wishing the recovered treasure in the film was real and could cover the disastrous financial loss.
