Box Office Poison, Tim Robey
Box Office Poison, Tim Robey
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Box Office Poison
Hollywood's Story in a Century of Flops

Author: Tim Robey

Narrator: Tim Robey

Unabridged: 8 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/05/2024


Synopsis

"A wild success." — Publishers Weekly

"A surefire hit." —Library Journal STARRED review

"A brilliant star turn." —Andrew O’Hagan

A riotous and revealing story of Hollywood’s most spectacular flops and how they ended careers, bankrupted studios and changed film history.

"Failure fascinates, for all the reasons that success is a drag…”

From grand follies to misunderstood masterpieces, disastrous sequels to catastrophic literary adaptations, Box Office Poison tells a hugely entertaining alternative history of Hollywood, through a century of its most notable flops. What can these films tell us about the Hollywood system, the public’s appetite–or lack of it–and the circumstances that saw such flops actually made? Away from the canon, this is the definitive take on these ill-fated, but essential celluloid failures.

Robey covers a vast century of flops, including: Intolerance; Queen Kelly; Freaks; Sylvia Scarlett; The Magnificent Ambersons; Land of the Pharoahs; Doctor Dolittle; Sorcerer; Dune; The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; Nothing But Trouble; The Hudsucker Proxy; Cutthroat Island; Speed 2: Cruise Control; Babe: Pig in the City; Supernova; Rollerball; The Adventures of Pluto Nash; Gigli; Alexander; Catwoman; A Sound of Thunder; Speed Racer; Synecdoche, New York; Pan; and Cats.

From Daily Telegraph film critic Tim Robey, this is a brilliantly fun exploration of human nature and stupidity in some of the greatest film flops throughout history.

About Tim Robey

Since 2000, Tim Robey has reviewed films, written features and conducted interviews for the Daily Telegraph's arts pages. He appears regularly on Radio 4's Front Row and Monocle FM Radio, contributed to R4's now-defunct Film Programme, and appeared as a sofa guest on BBC Film 2015-2017. He is the co-author of The DVD Stack I & II (Canongate, 2006/7). He gave Cats zero stars, but has now seen it four times. His favorite film is Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998).


Reviews

Goodreads review by Chrissie on April 18, 2025

Review to follow.......more

Goodreads review by Patrick on November 09, 2024

What a wonderful book this is. Brimming with humour and wry erudition, Tim Robey’s debut book chronicles the history of film through the industry’s most catastrophic failures. Robey writes persuasively with wit, clarity and, on a couple of occasions, schadenfreude, as he takes in movie calamities su......more

Goodreads review by Peacegal on December 03, 2024

Obviously, for there to be blockbusters, there also have to be box office flops. This is the story of movies that many would like to forget--from the earliest days of cinema into the new millennium. This one is a lot of fun, with occasional sobering or sad asides.......more

Goodreads review by John on November 04, 2024

While I question the inclusion of some of these films as representative of Hollywood history, and the author's snark toward several entries gets a little tiresome, the idea behind this book makes sense, and it's worth a look.......more