Movie theaters were devastated in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic closed cinemas and movie studios pushed releases into 2021. This year brought much-needed hope for theaters, most recently in the form of "Spider-Man: No Way Home."
The movie opened over the weekend with $260 million, by far the biggest domestic opening of the pandemic and the second biggest of all time behind "Avengers: Endgame."
But the industry is still on the road to recovery, and some of the year's biggest box-office misfires highlight how the pandemic has changed the movie business, perhaps for the long term.
Notably, adult dramas like "West Side Story" and "The Last Duel" have struggled. "Nightmare Alley," which just hit theaters over the weekend, made less than $3 million.
Older moviegoers have been the slowest to return to theaters, but it also reflects a trend that had emerged before the pandemic. IP-driven tentpole releases that cater to a younger demographic, mostly of the superhero variety, do the most business (and even those have underperformed this year compared to pre-pandemic business, save for "No Way Home").
Musicals have also fallen flat, from "West Side Story" to "In the Heights" to "Dear Evan Hansen."
But sometimes the box office wasn't the only way to gauge a movie's success, as media companies reorganized around their streaming businesses during the pandemic.
Warner Bros. released all of its movies this year simultaneously in theaters and on the streaming service HBO Max. Some of those movies flopped hard at the box office, such as "Reminiscence" and the "Sopranos" prequel "The Many Saints of Newark."
But Warner execs urged that the box office wasn't the only measurement of success, particularly for the latter.
"Yes, the box office was not quite as big, but back again to the demographics of whose going to theaters," Ann Sarnoff, the WarnerMedia Studios and Networks CEO, told Deadline. "On the other hand, you see 'Sopranos' pop into the top 10 of the most viewed series on the service. It's given it an entirely new life ... It's literally lifted the 'Sopranos' franchise in a new way, so you can't measure it in and of itself in the box office."
Some movies were just outright flops with no streaming component, even IP-driven movies like Paramount's "G.I. Joe" origin story "Snake Eyes."
Beyond this year, Warner Bros. and other studios have promised to release their theatrical films with an exclusive 45-day window (reduced from the pre-pandemic traditional window of 75 days to 90 days). But theaters and streaming will coexist in some capacity beyond this year, and it's likely that studios would still judge releases on a movie-by-movie basis.
Below are 10 of the biggest flops of the year at the box office, ordered by release date. Insider included the US and global box office for each movie, and the production budgets if available, based on data from IMDb (unless otherwise noted):