Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of U.S. and Canadian box office bombs


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. If you're going to create a list based on a premise, and that premise isn't reliably defined or sourced, then the article can never be anything more than original research. Having said that, this information may be useful in the creation of a different article - some ideas have been floated below - so please contact me if userfication is required. Black Kite 21:01, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

List of U.S. and Canadian box office bombs
AfDs for this article: 
 * – (View AfD) (View log)

The article List of U.S. and Canadian box office bombs is a pointless and stupid article. This list is just a list of films that have failed in comparison to the budget in the DOMESTIC market(US and Canada). US FILMS are made for and with the INTERNATIONAL MARKET in mind. Frequently films do not break even just by the US market, but subsequently break even, and then make profit as they get distributed throughout the world. Its like having a list of musicians who have failed in the domestic market. This article is completely pointless, because films are sold throughout the world and the goal is to make a profit after international release. Thus this article merely says what films failed in the US market, when the budget of these films are budgeted with all markets in mind. I see no point to this article what so ever, i am not contesting the research of this article to which previous people have nominated it up for deletion for, but the mere irrelevance and unnotability of the article. Can someone please help me with nominated this article for deletion.

This article is like saying that the 3rd pirates of Caribbean film only just managed to avoid being a failure in the domestic market, because it costed 300 million, and only made back 309 million in the US/CANADA(domestic market), thus the film only just managed to succeed. NO. WRONG!!!!!! The film did amazingly well in the domestic market. AMAZINGLY WELL. IT BEAT THE BUDGET AND THE INTERNATIONAL MONEY HASN'T EVEN BEEN COUNTED!!!!!!!! thats an amazing feat. once international money is counted in, 960 million dollars total gross of the film.. Hence, I hope you can now see that the film didn't 'just succeed' in the us domestic market, but actually did really well, because the studio new it would make money overseas, and budgeted the film accordingly. This article just takes a stupid 'USA is the entire world' view.

delete. IAmTheCoinMan (talk) 14:49, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Film-related deletion discussions.  -- Ron Ritzman (talk) 17:54, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep the explanation paragraph needs a little re-write, but it's sourced and if any film makes less than 100% of its budget at the US box office then it usually will be seen as a failure, even if that figure is 99%. But the scope is for the US box office, so I have no problem. I would suggest that IAmTheCoinMan turns off his caps lock and rations his use of exclamation points. Darrenhusted (talk) 18:10, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. I agree with Darrenhusted. Sourcing was noted as an issue in a previous AfD, and this one certainly could do with better sourcing--from more, different sources, for starters--but that's a matter of editing. Box office bomb is a defined term in our 'pedia, so an article that would list them makes sense. I don't understand this stuff about At World's End--is that a hypothetical like example? Darrenhusted had some advice for the nominator, to which I would add that calling things "stupid" is not likely to sway many editors your way. Drmies (talk) 19:17, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I was also confused by that example, as The Golden Compass is the highest budget on the list and if POTC:AWE made $309m off a budget of $300m then it would have made 103% of its budget, and couldn't be a flop. However if any film had a budget of $300m and made only $294m then it could be seen as a failure because the budgets leave out P&A, which is usually about 10% on top of the budget. Darrenhusted (talk) 20:13, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Argh! You're using our own article on Box office bomb as the source of the definition?! I looked at that article, and there's no source for the definition, so I've stuck "citation needed" all over the lead. Fences  &amp;  Windows  23:16, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Quote: "if any film makes less than 100% of its budget at the US box office then it usually will be seen as a failure, even if that figure is 99%." No. That is your merely your opinion, International markets play a massive role in grosses, and if you look at the gross distribution, most of the higher films get at least 40% of their money from overseas markets.

Read 'Fences and windows' comment below. He has a good strong argument explaing the reason this needs to be deleted. IAmTheCoinMan (talk) 02:08, 17 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete. Totally irredeemable. The decision of Wikipedia editors to define a box-office bomb as they do is based entirely on a single source, Box-Office Mojo, which isn't a reliable source. Another source used as an external link, the Boston Globe, defines box-office bombs by their international takings. The decision to only include US and Canadian films and define their success only by their US and Canadian box-office sales is horribly parochial, and the definition of a box-office bomb is very subjective. Is a film that is successful like the Golden Compass but which had a huge budget and made most of its money outside the US really a "bomb"? If a film with a stupidly big budget fails to make a profit but tops the box office list, is that a bomb or just a reason to fire the producers? Is a bomb defined by not breaking even, or is it defined by nobody wanting to see it? Zyzzyx Road is supposed to be the top bomb of all time, but it was deliberately only shown on one screen for six days. Fences  &amp;  Windows  23:10, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak Delete per 'fences and windows'. if the definition of box office bomb given was multiply, reliably sourced, and if the article name was more precise (list of north american film releases with theatrical revenue less than production costs), maybe. but it appears that the definition of box office bomb may be irredeemable. I favor deleting lists with subjective inclusion criteria, and thought this may be one of those. the inclusion criteria, however, are precise (thank you for that), but the problem is greater than that. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 02:56, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete this list as written because it gives excessively undue weight to one marginal source's definition, which appears to be highly questionable. It would be possible to have a similar list where each film was cited to a reliable source calling it a box office bomb or financial failure or something similar. The external links section of this article would be a good place to start. *** Crotalus *** 15:15, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak keep There is a need for a sortable table of films where the total expenses exceeded the total revenue. However, I agree with CoinMan and Fencewindows that there are problems with the entries on the list, particularly in comparing the total expense against domestic revenue (U.S. and Canada) rather than total revenue.  And I see no reason to include "foreign films", where we're comparing Euros spent "over there" to dollars earned "over here", since the point is that this purports to be about films made in North America.  Finally, although I have no problem with defining a bomb, what's a "Canadian film"?  Does that include something filmed in Vancouver or Toronto for mass marketing far beyond Canada, such as Superman II?  Why do the U.S. and Canada need to be merged for a film list? Mandsford (talk) 16:30, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment The U.S. and Canada are merged because the headline "domestic" box office receipts (in both Box Office Mojo and the daily papers) are the combined U.S.-Canadian total for the film. Eluchil404 (talk) 21:03, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Precisely. For decades, the Americans have included Canadian receipts in their "domestic" revenues, much to the annoyance of Canadians, who then have this predominantly-US box office ranking shoved back in our faces, as though it has some sort of relevance for us. Varlaam (talk) 23:31, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete: It might seem like this article would would work but there is an insurmountable problem with it in that there is no commonly accepted definition of box office bomb. An attempt to create such a definition for the purposes of the article would constitute original research. The de facto standard currently being used, that domestic box office is less than 60% of production budget, is an arbitrary cutoff with no bases in a reliable source. Even accepting a definition that might seem reasonable is fought with difficulty. Finances in the film industry are enormously complex and are often not completely above board. In addition to production costs, marketing and and distribution costs account for a large percentage of the actual investment in a movie. In addition to domestic box office, foreign markets, DVD sales, merchandising etc. are significant revenue streams. The article only lists production cost and domestic box office and as Mandsford pointed out this seems arbitrary, but there is a good reason for it in that these numbers are often all that are available publicly; studios tend to hide the remaining numbers. So the actual profit or loss for a given movie is impossible to determine here. Given all this, the determination of whether a movie is a 'bomb' ultimately comes down to a matter of of opinion. This isn't necessarily fatal though, opinions can be obtained from notable sources or by reliable poling then they may used in an article (e.g. Films considered the greatest ever). In this case however, notable sources such was well known movie critics rarely go on the record to call a movie a bomb or equivalent term, and sites such as Box Office Mojo give financial data only, leaving the interpretation to user. There are many lists of worst movies that may be quoted, but there don't seem to be many lists of biggest bombs out there and what there is comes from dubious sources. (I think the reason for this is that reliable sources come up against the problems listed above.) In short, while the topic may be interesting or deserving of coverage, there is simply no objective way to make the determination for inclusion on the list that's implied by the article name. This may not seem very important but keep in mind that many movies are subject to POV based attacks (e.g. political documentaries), so inclusion of exclusion of a movie on this list could be politically motivated and lead to accusations of Wikipedia being politically biased. Given the actual criteria for inclusion and the fact that no further conclusions can be drawn, the name of the article should really be "List of movies whose domestic box office does not exceed 60% of its estimated production budget". This exactly describes the article but with this title it's obvious that it's an arbitrarily defined list that does not pass WP:IINFO. There are few notable bombs, but these are already represented in Box office bomb. I know this comment is very long, but this article has already gone through two AfD's and I'm trying to anticipate the arguments that were given then. This is not a simple issue and I believe that the reason the AfD's did not result in deletion before is that the people participating in those debates did not fully understand or appreciate the problems inherent in this article. I've have been an active editor of this page recently, but only to bring it to the standard of not being an embarrassment to Wikipedia by removing blatant OR and unwarranted conclusions.--RDBury (talk) 10:48, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete as per Fences&Windows and RDBury. Sourcing and scope are both deal-breakers, and while sourcing could conceivably be improved, the inappropriate scope is insurmountable.  Horologium  (talk) 15:17, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep and rewrite and move to List of worldwide box office bombs and only do films that failed to outgross their budget worldwide. Matty-chan (talk)
 * Weak keep Box office bombs are certainly notable enough even in the context of US/Canada takings alone. However I would take out all the rows of non-yellow or red coloured movies to increase the relevance. 203.31.52.137 (talk) 01:17, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep, precedent of significant discussion of lists of box office bombs in independent reliable secondary sources, including books, news, , scholarly sources . Cirt (talk) 13:56, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * There are some problems with your cites. Most of them don't have lists, since you only searched for "box office bombs". Secondly, the criteria are not consistent; most of the Google News archive searches discuss how movies which don't do well in theaters do very well in the home video market, which begs the question of whether or not they are bombs. There is also the age issue to consider; some of those references date back to the 1980s or earlier, which limits their usefulness in a list more than 20 years after the fact. Also, three of the five citations in Google News discuss Asian movies in Asia, which are explicitly excluded from the criteria for this list; the two remaining ones use the term without discussing it, although one of them actually links to the Wikipedia article box office bomb as a reference. Some widely known bombs such as Fantasia, Tora, Tora, Tora, Bringing Up Baby, and Leonard Part 6 are missing from the list, which indicates that it is incomplete, and there are other issues with the criteria for the list that cannot be solved simply by adding more references. (See the talk page for the on-again, off-again history of Waterworld on this list; it did exceptionally well outside the U.S. and Canada. The scope of the article is probably inappropriate for a global project.) There's nothing word with an article on the concept, but this list is a different animal altogether.  Horologium  (talk) 15:41, 23 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete per Horologium above. The problem is any definition precise enough to support a well sourced list is not widely used.  Thus either the criteria for inclusion or the list members must be original research.  Eluchil404 (talk) 19:32, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.