Over the last few decades, the average budget of the movies that come out of the Hollywood system have ballooned, to say the very least. As such, major movies can lose a staggering amount of money if they fail to bring in loads of cash at the box office. For example, The Adventures of Pluto Nash managed to lose roughly $93 million when it was released in 2002.
While it is mind-boggling that a studio can lose that much money due to the poor performance of a single film, The Adventure of Pluto Nash’s catastrophic failure is amazing for another reason. After all, The Adventures of Pluto Nash starred Eddie Murphy, an actor who at one point was such a sure thing at the box office that he was one of the most in-demand stars in the world. In fact, so many people were willing to line up to see Murphy on the big screen that the studios were happy to pay Murphy a fortune to star in their films.
Becoming A Megastar
When Eddie Murphy joined the cast of Saturday Night Live, it is very safe to say that the show was struggling. Thankfully for everyone involved, Murphy was so hilarious on SNL that he brought the show back from the brink almost single-handedly. After proving his comedy chops on television, Murphy leaped to the big screen when he starred in 48 Hrs., a film that became a runaway hit. After that initial success, Murphy would go on to star in several hit films including Beverly Hills Cop, The Golden Child, and Coming to America.
Around the same time, Eddie Murphy was cementing his legacy as a box office titan, he was busy taking other areas of the entertainment business by storm. For example, Murphy became a surprisingly successful singer since his single “Party All the Time” performed better than expected. More importantly, Murphy became one of the most successful comedians in the world after Eddie Murphy: Delirious and Eddie Murphy: Raw took the world by storm.
Incredible Failure
According to cbsnews.com, The Adventures of Pluto Nash was made for $100 million and it only brought in $7.1 million at the box office. As a result, Warner Bros. Pictures is said to have lost $92.9 million solely due to The Adventure of Pluto Nash’s poor performance.
Whenever a film becomes a complete and utter flop, there tends to be a lot of different reasons for that. In the case of The Adventures of Pluto Nash, that certainly holds true. One of the most obvious reasons why the movie failed so completely is that at the time, Eddie Murphy’s career was on a pretty remarkable downward slide. After all, in 2002 and 2003 Murphy starred in many forgettable movies that underperformed, including I Spy, Showtime, and The Haunted Mansion.
Of course, it would be wildly unfair to put most of the blame for The Adventures of Pluto Nash’s performance on its star. After all, the trailer put out for the movie was so obviously bad that it certainly convinced a lot of moviegoers that paying their money to see the film would be a mistake. Worse yet, The Adventures of Pluto Nash holds a 4% rating on Rotten Tomatoes as of the time of this writing. If there was anyone who was on the fence about going to see the film, the overwhelmingly negative reviews the movie received likely convinced them to stay home.
Complicated Career
In the years since The Adventures of Pluto Nash was released, Eddie Murphy’s career has been a story of many highs and lows. In fact, it is safe to say that Murphy played a key role in the success of many films and in the failures of others. On the negative side, over the last couple of decades, Murphy has starred in several stinkers. For example, A Thousand Words, Meet Dave, Norbit, and Imagine That were all movies that were headlined by Murphy and widely panned.
Fortunately for fans of Eddie Murphy, he has proven that he is still a very talented performer several times since The Adventures of Pluto Nash was released. First off, Murphy was so stellar in Dreamgirls that it could be argued that performance was among the best of his career. More recently, Murphy headlined Dolemite Is My Name, a film that is so good that a lot of people felt it deserved Oscar nominations, including one for Best Actor. Finally, in 2019 Murphy returned to Saturday Night Live as a host, and millions of viewers were overjoyed to see how funny he was on that stage once again.