Eddie Murphy has had a decent career but I don’t think that his movies ever matched his work on Saturday Night Live. One glaring example of that would have to be "The Adventures of Pluto Nash" from 2002. Are you ready for this? Eddie plays a nightclub owner who is fighting with the mob. Sounds fairly feasible except when we learn that it is the year 2087 and the club is on the moon! This loser cost $100 million to make and returned a whopping $4.4 million at the U. S. Box office. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.
One of my favorites and a strong candidate for the all-time turkey movie award has to be "Gigli" from 2003. I like Ben Affleck and felt sorry for him during his relationship with Jennifer Lopez. He is a decent actor and seems like a genuinely nice guy and here he was tied up with a woman who can’t sing or act, has an inflated ego, and has somehow convinced a portion of the public to like her. As the hot couple of 2003, they just had to make a movie together and that was "Gigli". Unfortunately, this mess of silly scenes with an unpronouncable title was a showcase for Lopez (of course!) and was a major flop. Here are the figures: production costs of $56 million plus about $30 million more in promotional costs with first weekend box office receipts of $3.8 million. Will someone please put a cork in that bottle of red ink!
The above are notable losers. Then there are the unexpected winners that made great profits with low production costs like "The Blair Witch Project" (1999), "Tadpole" (2002), and "Star Wars" (1977).
I guess it proves that you can never accurately overestimate or underestimate the tastes of the movie going public.