How Jonah Hex Became DC’s Most Notorious Box Office Disaster!

2020s superhero movies, once considered unbeatable at the box office, have tarnished the reputation of comic book companies. Marvel Studios, which was virtually indestructible in the 2010s, has produced financial failures such as Thunderbolts, The Marvels, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. In contrast, DC Comics’ movie universe has churned out flops like Joker: Folie a Deux, The Flash, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, along with money-losing titles affected by simultaneous releases on HBO Max, such as Wonder Woman 1984 and The Suicide Squad.

Prior to the 2020s, both Marvel and DC productions (alongside properties from other comic book publishers) were sometimes linked with box office failures. For DC, some of these financial disappointments included characters like Catwoman and Green Lantern, as well as a potential blockbuster from 2010 that became one of the largest DC Comics disasters in history. The film titled Jonah Hex suffered an unprecedented box office collapse in June 2010, so severe that the entire Flash debacle appears to be a minor fender-bender by comparison.

How Badly Did DC’s Jonah Hex Do?

Initially generating much anticipation in the late 2000s, Jonah Hex boasted an impressive lineup of talent that included Josh Brolin, fresh off his Best Picture Oscar win for No Country for Old Men, and Megan Fox, who had just starred in the highly profitable Transformers films. The film’s directors, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, were well-known for their work on cult favorites like Crank, making Jonah Hex a potential blockbuster western hit.

Initially, Neveldine and Taylor were meant to direct Jonah Hex, but by the time filming began, they had already stepped down. Instead, Jimmy Hayward, who previously directed Horton Hears A Who!, took up the director’s chair for this troubled production. The movie faced numerous issues and extensive reshoots. Warner Bros. started promoting Jonah Hex in late April 2010, only seven weeks before its June 18th premiere, a move that suggested the studio had little faith in this film. As expected, Jonah Hex opened to a meager $5.37 million domestically, even though it was screened in over 2,800 theaters. At the time of its release, Jonah Hex held one of the ten worst domestic opening weekends for films that debuted in more than 2,700 theaters.

As a film enthusiast, I can’t help but share my thoughts about “Jonah Hex.” The CinemaScore it received, a C+, mirrored the grim whispers among audiences for a mainstream PG-13 action blockbuster. True to form, this movie proved incredibly frontloaded and raked in over half of its total domestic earnings in just its opening three days. Domestically, it grossed $10.54 million, with a mere $475,579 from overseas markets. Globally, it managed a dismal $11.02 million haul, falling far short of covering its $47 million production budget. In the annals of comic book movie flops, “Jonah Hex” certainly stands out as one of the poorest performers.

How Badly Did Jonah Hex Do Compared to Other DC Films?

Compared to other live-action DC Comics movies, the debut of Jonah Hex ranks as one of the poorest, second only to Steel’s dismal $870,068 opening in August 1997 when adjusted for inflation. Even without considering inflation, Hex still had a weaker domestic launch than many 1980s superhero films such as Supergirl and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Interestingly, Catwoman managed to collect three times the amount earned by Jonah Hex during its North American premiere in July of 2004.

Despite having a budget of $47 million, Jonah Hex didn’t need to match the scale of Wonder Woman to be profitable. However, its domestic earnings of only $10.54 million completely outweigh its budget. If Jonah Hex had been made with a budget similar to the first Insidious film ($1.5M), there was no chance it could have been profitable. The intrigue lies in the fact that this mid-budget major studio production, boasting well-known actors, ended up being such a significant failure. Considering ticket price increases and the prevalence of superhero movies, it’s unlikely another DC Comics adaptation will underperform to this extent again.

The poor performance of the film “Jonah Hex” cannot be blamed solely on the unpredictable nature of Western films at the box office, last-minute marketing efforts by Warner Bros., or the character’s lack of recognition. This was a poorly made movie that generated negative word-of-mouth long before its release, and its dismal box office earnings are a reflection of this fact. Even modern comic book movies can find solace in the knowledge that they didn’t perform as poorly as “Jonah Hex” did.

Jonah Hex is now streaming on Hulu and The Roku Channel

2025-06-17 00:40

How Badly Did DC’s Jonah Hex Do?

How Badly Did Jonah Hex Do Compared to Other DC Films?

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