After a summer devoid of the big screen last year, moviegoers are flocking back to theaters, though Scott Mendelson noted in his May preview in Forbes that most of the films being released this season are "smaller in scale and not aiming for blowout status. The hope is for achieving normalcy, not notching milestones." That hasn't traditionally been the case, as summer has been when Hollywood often pushes out releases it hopes will smash box-office records. Salon takes a look back over the past five decades or so—not at the blockbusters that were, but at the ones that weren't. These are the summer films with "big intentions that produced not-so-big results" and that "failed, often spectacularly." Read on for the bombs, including a movie inspired by an L. Ron Hubbard book:
- Ishtar (1987)
- Super Mario Bros. (1993)
- The 13th Warrior (1999)
- Battlefield Earth (2000)
- Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)
- The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)
- Stealth (2005)
- Evan Almighty (2007)
- Cowboys and Aliens (2011)
- The Lone Ranger (2013)
See more movies that tanked, as well as a little history behind each,
here. (M. Night Shyamalan's latest
is holding its own.)
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uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
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