Jim from The Office is known for many things. He is the workplace heartthrob, the office normie, and everyone’s favorite prankster. But what people rarely discuss when talking about Jim’s character is that he’s actually kind of a jerk. Here are ten times Jim was anything but the nice guy.

Related: 10 Important Characters in Television We Never Got To Fully See

10 S1 E4 “The Alliance”

When employees at the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin find out that they might be facing downsizing, Dwight asks Jim to form an alliance to protect their jobs. While Dwight is genuinely concerned about losing his job, Jim accepts the offer to form an alliance without taking Dwight’s anxiety seriously. Jim even reveals to the camera that he will mess with Dwight and that his intentions when accepting Dwight’s offer are purely for his entertainment.

In this situation, Jim is kidding around even though Dwight is serious. Jim immediately breaks his promise of secrecy regarding their alliance to get others from the office to help him mess with Dwight. By the end of the episode, Jim literally tapes Dwight into a cardboard box while the rest of the office has a party. Not exactly the type of coworker I’d want to have.

9 S2 E9 “Email Surveillance”

The writers of this episode offered a red herring for Jim’s jerkiness in that they had him plan a staff party without inviting Michael. The episode’s drama has to do with their boss’s reaction to not being invited and the hijinks that ensue as they try to get around Michael coming to the party.

The real problem is that instead of telling everyone that Micheal isn’t invited because Jim doesn’t want to party with his boss, Jim lies to achieve his goal. He tells Dwight that the party is actually a surprise party for Michael and tricks Dwight into lying. This might seem harmless to some, but Jim is using Dwight as a means to an end. Dwight isn’t given the correct information about the circumstances of Michael being kept in the dark about the party. He is tricked into lying to his workplace superior because Jim is afraid to be honest.

Some may argue that the conclusion of the episode, where Jim joins Michael during karaoke, is his way of apologizing and making up for the situation. This is possible, but it’s just as possible that Jim sang the duet to prevent the situation from getting more awkward.

8 S2 E17 “Dwight’s Speech”

In this episode, Jim helps Dwight write a speech that he will perform in front of a large crowd full of corporate executives and employees from other branches. Dwight’s speech is successful, but the content offered by Jim is based on past speeches performed by famous dictators.

There are a few points to consider when looking at Jim’s behavior in this episode. First, just because Dwight’s speech received praise from the audience does not mean that what Jim did was right. He lied to Dwight about being an experienced public speaker in college, leading Dwight to believe that Jim knew what he was talking about. Dwight was noticeably anxious about the speech, and Jim took advantage of those nerves.

And Jim provided Dwight with source material for his speech that could have completely ruined Dwight’s career while potentially offending or triggering trauma responses in the audience members. Dwight is partially at fault here since he should have known what he was saying before performing the speech.

Jim’s jealousy and frustration with his current life situation greatly contributed to his desire to mess with Dwight. Not only was Jim eligible for the award Dwight won in his stead, but Pam had set a date for her wedding with Roy. Throughout the episode, Jim shows that he is upset and frustrated with how things are going, so he decides to distract himself by messing with Dwight in a large-scale way.

7 S3 E9 “The Convict”

So, Jim has just returned to the Scranton branch after a merger with Stamford, and with him came Karen and Andy (amongst some other short-lived side characters). Karen is Jim’s current significant other, while Andy is someone Jim met while working at the Stamford branch. In this episode, Andy asks Jim to help him get Pam to like him. Jim uses Andy’s request as an opportunity to mess with the Scranton employees.

Here, we see Jim do a few things that are very jerk-like. First of all, Andy’s personality at this point in the show is very flawed. He is quite misogynistic, yet Jim agrees to help him get closer to Pam despite the way Andy talks about women. Jim feeds Andy false information regarding Pam’s interests and then laughs with Pam about Andy’s embarrassing come-ons.

Moreover, at the end of the episode, Jim lies to Karen about the situation to avoid a potentially awkward (or telling) interaction with Pam and Karen simultaneously.

My question for Jim throughout this episode is: who does this prank serve?

6 S3 E20 “Product Recall”

Jim’s pranks are a pretty famous part of the show, especially those played on Dwight. In this prank, Jim comes to work dressed up as Dwight, imitating how he talks, his hairstyle, and his personality. Even though this prank might seem funny, when you think about what’s actually happening to Dwight, it’s difficult not to see that Jim crosses the line.

Essentially, the punchline to this Joke is Dwight’s appearance, personality, and interests. By imitating Dwight, Jim makes fun of all of these things, to Dwight’s face, in front of the entire office. Jim continues the prank even after Dwight gets upset, never stopping to consider that what he’s doing is just bullying his desk mate.

5 S5 E7 “Customer Survey”

Many people are critical of Jim in this episode because he didn’t go to Kelly’s party, so her revenge-seeking leads to poor customer survey reviews. While that might have been selfish of Jim, the true jerk move occurred during the aftermath of Jim and Dwight receiving their reviews from Michael.

Dwight and Jim are forced to role-play a customer call with Michael observing them. In this role play, Jim plays a very rude customer to whom Dwight must make a sale. Dwight, who is rightfully upset following the bad review, takes the role-play seriously. On the other hand, Jim makes light of the situation by intentionally getting a rise out of Dwight during the role play. I mean, cut your coworker some slack!

4 S5 E24 “Heavy Competition”

After Andy’s engagement is called off, he tries to convince Jim that he can’t trust Pam. Jim, who is completely aware that Andy is projecting his own problems onto Jim and Pam’s relationship, decides to play along with Andy’s theory to make an example out of Andy.

Andy wants to prove to Jim that the emotional support of a significant other, specifically Pam, is unnecessary. He tells Jim to use him as his “traveling pants,” a metaphor for emotional support. Jim spends the episode exaggerating his emotional needs, going as far as pretending to cry and have a meltdown in front of their coworkers.

As usual, most of the office is in on the joke, making Andy look foolish. Just because Jim had a reason to be frustrated with Andy doesn’t make publicly humiliating him okay.

3 S6 E3 “The Promotion”

When Jim receives a promotion that Dwight wanted and is put in charge of the Scranton branch’s day-to-day operations, Jim does not don his new position with humility. With a change in rank at a workplace, it makes sense for the new superior to change their behavior, at least somewhat. But Jim continues teasing Dwight, and he again crosses the line.

Dwight asks Jim to sign a form for him without saying “please,” and Jim says he won’t sign it until Dwight says “please.” This argument eventually leads to Dwight having to make a complaint about Jim, to Jim. During this complaint, Jim teases Dwight, asking him if he’s crying while pretending to take notes that accuse Dwight of doing things he hasn’t done.

This behavior is extremely unprofessional and shows Jim abusing his authority at Dwight’s expense.

2 S8 E4 “Garden Party”

This episode is famous for one of Jim’s most notorious pranks, where he goes to a lot of trouble just to, once again, publicly humiliate Dwight.

This prank has Dwight follow a book published by Jim describing how to throw the perfect garden party. While it might seem like a perfectly executed prank, Jim is actually tricking Dwight into embarrassing himself under the pretense that he is throwing a great party. As per the book’s instruction, Dwight does a series of performances that makes the guests at the party uncomfortable.

If the party were just for fun, it would be a little less bad on Jim’s part (though it’s still public humiliation), but Dwight was using this party to start a business hosting events at Shrute Farms. By tricking Dwight into following his instructions, Jim is sabotaging Dwight’s business and embarrassing Dwight in front of coworkers and strangers alike.

1 S9 E2 “Roy’s Wedding”

When Jim and Pam go to Roy’s wedding, he reveals to the camera that he has started a business with his college friends without Pam’s knowledge. He and Pam had already discussed the potential business plans and decided not to move forward with the endeavor. This is a big lie considering the two are married and have a house and kids at this point in the show.

Jim even goes so far as to lie to Pam’s face when they try to figure out things they don’t know about each other. By the end of the episode, it’s clear that Jim is intentionally keeping Pam in the dark.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but being a “Pam looking for their Jim” isn’t the happily ever after we should all be aspiring to.

The Office is known for its unique style of humor mixed with heartwarming moments. Yet, sometimes a joke or gag turns out to be pretty disturbing when you stop to think about it. Here are 10 times The Office got dark.

Related: Top 10 TV Shows That Wasted Great Concepts

10 S3 EP18: “Phyllis’s Wedding”

In this episode, Michael Scott is a bully to Phyllis’s disabled father. Michael even tries to shove the man back into his wheelchair when he astonishingly rises from it to walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding. Phyllis invites Michael to push her father’s wheelchair down the aisle as a ploy to get a longer vacation for her honeymoon. However, to everyone’s surprise, her father manages to walk her down the aisle by himself. This enrages Michael Scott.

Michael is most likely upset because this touching moment is upstaging his own moment, and what is really shocking is his physical reaction to this. Michael first tries to press Phyllis’s dad back into the wheelchair. When that doesn’t work, he angrily swears and noisily jerks the empty wheelchair down the aisle. In this episode, we see Michael Scott basically assault a disabled man, and that is pretty dark.

9 S3 EP21: “Product Recall”

“Product Recall” is full to the brim with awkward moments. One subtle, dark moment you may have missed is the story of Debbie Brown. Brown was an innocent floor manager at the paper mill where Creed Bratton had been “taking a year off” from his regular quality inspections. Creed caused the vulgar watermark to go by unnoticed, and Michael implied he could be fired. But Creed Bratton wouldn’t go down without a fight, so he set Debbie up to take the fall for him.

Unfortunately for Debbie, she called out from work for a dental emergency one day in the week that Creed skipped his job. That was all the information Creed needed to send Dwight out with a false lead and a mission to have Debbie fired. This secured Creed’s job, and in an apparent act of mercy, he took up a collection of money from his coworkers and started a farewell card for Debbie and her children. However, Creed only added insult to injury by stealing that money from the poor woman as well.

Debbie was just an innocent manager who met a dark fate. One week she needed emergency dental work, and before she knew it, she was an unemployed mother with no severance and not even a farewell card.

8 S4 EP13: “The Dinner Party”

Jan is one of Michael Scott’s former lovers and is known for being wonderfully unhinged. There is no denying that she has reached her peak during “The Dinner Party” as she begins to display troubling behavior. She also shows how disturbingly controlling she is of Michael.

Jan is specifically in charge of each room of the house. She has her own room for her candle business, but she also has a completely unused office that Michael does not get to use. She does not even let Michael sleep in his own bed. Jim and Pam find out that Michael is confined to sleep on a bench at the foot of the bed each night because of Jan’s space issues. Michael pointedly makes remarks about Jan’s abusive behavior throughout the night. Since Michael is clever with social situations as a salesman, it is even possible that he used the dinner party as a way to accelerate the end of this dark relationship.

7 S5 EP22: “Dream Team”

The cold opening for this episode starts out light-hearted and fun as Kevin tries his best to figure out how to fill in at the reception desk. A call comes in for Andy, and Kevin bumbles his way through transferring the call. It is a silly moment, and everyone in the office laughs at Kevin as he works on transferring the call. Finally, cheers erupt as Kevin successfully sends the call to Andy’s phone. Then, there is a sudden, grim cut to Andy sitting alone with tears streaming down his face as he states that the call was to inform him that his maid had died.

Andy Bernard is a character that grew up in the lap of luxury. That does not make him heartless. In fact, he is shown to be very caring. That’s why it is so dark and jarring to see him crying in grief over an individual he probably had a close relationship with in front of the backdrop of an office full of jovial celebration.

6 S6 EP8: “Koi Pond”

One episode of The Office had a scene so dark and disturbing that it was only shown during the episode’s premiere and had to be cut from all reruns. “Koi Pond” in season 6 was originally a Halloween episode, or at the very least, had a Halloween-themed cold opening. In this, the Dunder Mifflin staff decides to have a haunted house in the warehouse, and Darryl acts as a tour guide to a wagon full of unsuspecting children.

Everything goes about as well as you might expect, and the children are a little confused but not particularly scared until they reach the end of the tour. At this point, Michael Scott displays his grand finale to the haunted house—a gruesome simulation of suicide, and the children scream in horror. Michael reveals it is just a prank and tries to use the scare as a warning against suicide, but the kids are too terrified to listen. It is a shockingly dark turn of events that left everyone who watched it too disturbed to allow the scene to continue to air.

5 S8 EP18: “Last Day in Florida”

Dwight Schrute is a man of mystery, and we often see him using questionable tactics to achieve his goals. When he announces that he intends to stay in Florida, the Scranton team immediately becomes interested in opening a secret “treasure” box that Dwight has left behind. Although he has instructed them to leave it alone, their curiosity wins, and Creed is nominated to open it. At first, it seems sentimental with a picture of Dwight’s coworkers inside, until a spring-loaded dart whizzes past Creed’s head. When questioned, Dwight accidentally lets it slip that the dart is poisonous.

We can’t help but wonder, what would have happened to Creed if he had been hit by that dart?

4 S8 EP22: “Fundraiser”

After the mess that unfolds at Angela’s fundraiser, several Dunder Mifflin employees adopt elderly dogs. It is not a surprise when lazy Kevin Malone says how happy he is with his dog that never really moves. However, dread grows in the minds of his coworkers and viewers as Kevin begins to give more details that make it apparent his animal has died. Kevin even shows a photo of his dog asleep.

Fortunately, it turns out that Kevin is just horrible at describing his situation, and his dog truly is just sluggish. However, the brief moment where the audience thinks that Kevin has just shown them a picture of a dog’s corpse is enough to turn their stomachs.

3 S9 EP1: “New Guys”

Just as we breathed a sigh of relief over Kevin’s dog, he proudly announced a few episodes later that he had a crazy adventure with a turtle. The camera crew had asked Kevin how his summer was, and he revealed that he had spent the last several months trying to rescue a turtle that he had hit with his car. We are then shown scenes of him “reassembling” the turtle shell, which are quite dark and disturbing, especially for animal lovers. According to Kevin, the turtle had not even survived being hit by the car in the first place.

We can only hope that the creature had been put out of its misery, but Kevin is known to be an unreliable source.

2 S9 EP8: “The Target”

Pam struggles with her perfectionism in this episode, and it takes a dark turn. She watches her coworkers accept and laugh at themselves as they build a tower out of their customer complaint cards. She gets a little jealous and decides to earn the final card needed to complete the tower. Since she has been working on accepting her flaws, we expect her to make a mistake on purpose or let a past mistake come to light. Perhaps it is something embarrassing or silly.

Instead, Pam calls a random client on the phone and savagely insults the client and the client’s mother with a fat joke. This act alone is a dark turn for Pam, and it’s made even worse when Erin later mentions that the client’s mother had recently died and was also obese.

1 S9 EP8: “The Target”—Again!

This episode had another extremely bleak moment that brought Angela’s character into question. After finding out that Oscar had been sleeping with her husband, she had been struggling for a while. But is she capable of murder? She goes as far as meeting up with one of Dwight’s sketchy contacts and directly asks for Oscar to be murdered. Dwight, of all people, talks Angela down, and she orders for his kneecaps to be broken.

The fact remains that Angela requests a service from a hitman. That is a severe crime, no matter how upset she is. Even though things somehow worked out in the end, Angela’s intentions told a different story. If Dwight had not intervened, this could have taken an ugly turn and had very dark consequences.

The media will tell you that the communal cultural experience of going to see a movie in a theater is on its way out. While the budgets of the biggest films are going up and up, over the course of 2019 American box office revenue was down five percent. While 2018 had been up one percent, 2017 was a 25 year low. This trend towards stagnation means an ever increasing likelihood that movies will crash and burn at the box office. Let’s have a look through the wreckage…

10. Cats (2019)

Loss: $71,000,000

This adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1981 stage production had a rocky introduction to the public. That is to say that audiences didn’t so much find Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper’s whimsical visions of people imitating stray cats charming so much as they found it uncomfortably uncanny from the premiere of the trailer on July 18, 2019 on. Of course, even if an ideal balance between cat and human anatomy had been found for the characters, such as using animation (as Steven Spielberg wanted to do in the ’90s), the movie wouldn’t necessarily have had good prospects. Even back when the original premiered, the New York Times bashed Cats for not having “an idea in its head” and that it only “vaguely” attempted a story. Audiences tend to like some plot in even the most idea-free stories, which made the decision to throw $96 million into this production all the more puzzling. 

With seemingly everything stacked against it and toxic test audience reception, even $115 million in advertising couldn’t save it. It opened to $6.6 million in the US on December 20, 2019, and its legs/overseas numbers were so bad that a loss of $71 million was assured. With surprising slowness, Universal read the room and withdrew the disaster from Oscar contention. Still, as unsuccessful as it was as a family musical, Cats will probably live for decades as a cult horror spectacle. 

9. Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Loss: $80,000,000

No one was expecting a Star Wars movie to lose money. Since 1977, every Star Wars movie had been highly lucrative, no matter how much it had been attacked by both fans and critics. Even that 2008 animated film The Clone Wars, much cheaper than even the original film after 31 years of inflation and more critically condemned than the punching bag of a movie The Phantom Menace, made more than eight times its budget. So what made this movie based on the origin of one of the most popular characters in the franchise lose Disney money, even at a time when every Disney Star Wars film before and since made more than a billion?

A big part of the problem was a troubled production. The original writer/director team of Phil Lord and Chris Miller were fired part way through production and replaced with Ron Howard, meaning that a huge percentage of the movie was very expensively reshot. It was such a hectic situation that rumors started regarding Alden Ehrenreich supposedly needing an acting coach, although Ehrenreich was adamant to Vanity Fair that the truth was the directors had brought a friend on the production who consulted for the entire cast. Solo also came out only five months after the critically acclaimed but audience-dividing Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which left very little time for anticipation for the new movie to build up. 

8. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Loss: $83,000,000

Despite its obscurity with mainstream audiences, this film at least had some pedigree with the science fiction crowd. Based on the 1969 French comic strip Valerian and Laureline by Jean-Claude Mézières, it either very heavily influenced the art design of the Star Wars original trilogy or bore a staggeringly coincidental resemblance, down from the designs of planets to costumes and plot points (such as putting a character in suspended animation in metal). Luc Besson was relatively hot off his 2014 hit Lucy when the trailer for Valerian was released, so the possibility of a success was there for the $180 million spectacle. 

When the film premiered in America to a weak $17 million and test audiences giving it a relatively dismal B-, many fingers were pointed at the casting as the cause for failure. Neither star Dane DeHaan or Cara Delevigne were particularly tall stars, so their relatively similar heights and facial features gave many audience members the subconscious feeling that the romantic leads looked related. Their performances were also criticized for a lack of chemistry and general woodenness. Really though, what actor could deliver dialogue like, “If you don’t help me find Valerian, this bullet is going to find you” convincingly? We have unusually precise numbers for how many people lost their jobs over it. Besson’s production company Eurocorp laid off 22 people, a bit above a quarter of its personnel, in the wake of the release.  

7. Town & Country (2001) 

Loss: $90,000,000

This movie was not supposed to be a huge production. Originally it was planned to be a relatively modest 1998 release with a budget of only about $45 million. After all, it’s not a spectacle film. It’s a relationship comedy about star Warren Beatty’s character cheating on his wife, and Gary Shandling’s character coming to terms with his homosexuality. So why did the result more than double its budget, get delayed by three years, and end up so bad that the studio never screened it for critics? 

According to Michael DeLuca, who greenlit and produced the project for New Line Cinema, the central problem was that the movie began production without a finished script. Hence there were numerous rewrites, reshoots, and the story had no momentum. Even screenwriting legend Buck Henry of The Graduate fame couldn’t fix the script. So it was that this $90 million movie with about $10 million in advertising grossed only about enough to cover its marketing budget. It was the last time Warren Beatty received significant media attention until an Academy Awards show in 2017 that was only slightly less disastrous.   

6. A Wrinkle in Time (2018) 

Loss: $100,000,000

Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 Newberry Award-winning novel about the Wallace children traveling through space to save their physicist father from a giant brain has a troubled relationship with the Walt Disney Company. In 1975 Disney attempted to adapt it and abandoned the project. Even worse was in 2003, because there they succeeded and made the embarrassingly cheesy and rushed TV movie of the book, which the author bashed in an interview. Finally in 2018 the story got to inflict its final damage on Disney when its March release failed spectacularly despite performances by such stars as Oprah Winfrey. 

Why the failure? Potentially, part of the problem is that the story is just not the kind that’s suitable for motion picture adaptation, since it doesn’t fit neatly into a three act structure. Also, considering the story is the kind where a tesseract (the bending of space time as a means of conveyance similar to the method used in Frank Herbert’s Dune) is explained at length, it’s not really the kind of film with room for pulse-pounding action or whimsy, although critics like Tasha Robinson of Vulture magazine went after it for being childish anyway.   

It could also be argued that director Ava DuVernay wasn’t a good fit for the production. Her prior largest project was the relatively modest 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. biopic Selma, which at $20 million had a budget less than a fifth of the one she managed for Disney. Most of her work was also socially conscious dramas and documentaries with tones vastly different than kid-friendly fantasy. It’ll no doubt be awhile before she ever gets hired to make another film like this, and it seems unlikely she’ll even want the gig.  

5. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)

Loss: $125,000,000

This is not usually included in lists of legendary movie bombs, if for no other reason than people don’t seem remember it ever existed. It’s certainly not a movie that lacks pedigree. It was made by DreamWorks and stars Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Michelle Pfeiffer. The plot of Sinbad needing to retrieve the Book of Peace is pretty straight-forward, and the quality of the animation has been praised. It also received mixed to decent reviews, with Roger Ebert for one giving it three and a half stars out of four. 

Unfortunately, it had the rotten luck of coming out at the same time that Pirates of the Caribbean was redefining the pirate movie paradigm. It also was a 2D movie at a time when 3D movies were becoming fashionable. Thus it joined Treasure Planet and Titan A.E. in the ranks of Early Aughts cartoons that were just barely behind-the-times enough to lose tens of millions of dollars. 

4. Monster Trucks (2017) 

Loss: $125,000,000 

The first thing audiences heard about this movie about monsters hidden under truck hoods that function as engines was that even before it was released, Paramount’s financials revealed that they expected to lose $115,000,000 on it. The second thing that they heard was that the story for the movie had been literally inspired by Paramount president Adam Goodman’s four year-old son. Not the most encouraging of news. 

Adding to this movie’s problems was the fact the main monster Creech was initially so terrifyingly designed that it made children in test audiences scream. Rerendering it into a more “ugly cute” design cost tens of millions of dollars. That helped explain why this movie, which sounds like a combination of a kids cartoon from Nickelodeon in the ’90s and E.T., had its budget climb to $125,000,000. No wonder the studio ended up pushing its release back around two years. Add all that together, and it’s not surprising that it turned out losing $115,000,000 was actually a highly optimistic projection of how bad this project was for Paramount, as it was about ten million short of the real figure. 

3. King Arthur Legend of the Sword (2017)

Loss: $150,000,000

Guy Ritchie is probably still best known as the U.K.’s answer to Quentin Tarantino, in terms of highly stylized gangster movies, so he might seem like an odd fit for a medieval fantasy story. Of course, to many he had seemed like an awkward fit for the Sherlock Holmes films, and those made bank. Plus in this Warner Brothers movie Arthur starts out as a street tough who has to fight his way to the throne, playing more to Ritchie’s style. The fact the actor playing Arthur was Charlie Hunnam, who to this day is still best known for playing Jax on the TV show Sons of Anarchy, was not too encouraging, but it hardly ensured doom. 

Critics were consistent that what did the movie in was editing choices. For example, characters are introduced complete with backstories long after they’ve already been part of the action. Monsters are added near the end without set up, let alone explanation. The fights are often too choppy to follow the action properly and get excited by it. Still, at least Guy Ritchie’s abilities served him well enough for 2019’s Aladdin remake to be a smash hit, so he seemed to take the editing lessons of this film to heart. 

2. Mortal Engines (2018)

Loss: $175,000,000

This was not a cash grab or a trend chase. Producer Peter Jackson wanted to adapt the young adult novels of Philip Reeve, featuring cities on gigantic tank treads, to the big screen since at least 2011, but he put that project on hold for five years to make the Hobbit trilogy for Warner Brothers. By 2015, he was still so burned out that he handed the job of directing the adaptation to Christian Rivers, a second unit director for the Middle Earth films. The Mortal Engines books were more niche than they were mainstream hits, and yet even their fanbase had to put up with a change in aesthetics of the book from steampunk to modern, and for the protagonists to be aged up. Universal also had the issue that the leads were not major stars, with the highest profile performer being Hugo Weaving filling in the villain role.   

Unfortunately for Universal this movie came at a time when the post-apocalyptic young adult film genre was out of fashion. Critics bashed the film for being overly derivative, and audiences couldn’t work up substantially more enthusiasm, either. At least Peter Jackson had the consolation of his simultaneously released film They Shall Not Grow Old becoming a critical darling and, despite being composed largely of World War I archival footage, grossing more in the US ($17.9 million) than his mega-budget passion project ($15.9 million). 

1. John Carter (2012)

Loss: $200,000,000

There have been attempts to adapt Edgar Rice Burroughs’s landmark sci-fi story A Princess of Mars to the big screen since 1938. John Carpenter had been developing a John Carter of Mars movie for years. Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton chose the project, bringing 30 years of love for the source material and enough Pixar clout that his demands of no executive interference were met. 

Warning signs began flashing when the studio requested footage for the first teaser trailer. Stanton had not scheduled his shoot for the “epic” shots to be completed first, a mistake attributed to Stanton’s inexperience with live action. It left mostly footage that played up the movie’s romance, thus lessening the impact for many viewers’ first impression of the movie. 

In interviews, Stanton admitted he had wildly overestimated just how prominent John Carter was in the public imagination. While the story was extremely influential, it had been imitated so much in the decades since its publication that John Carter himself felt like a knockoff. So even as the production scrambled to cobble together footage to sell the movie’s scale, it backfired so badly that a Super Bowl ad actually lessened interest in the movie among test audiences. If nothing else, John Carter and many of the other movies on this list are painful lessons that sometimes if a project is long in Development Hell everyone should just learn to let it go. 

Dustin Koski cowrote A Tale of Magic Gone Wrong, a book about fairies that have to save their village after everyone turned into monsters.

Despite what Disney and Marvel would have us believe with the MCU, there’s no magic formula for making box office gold. Everyone who makes a movie fully expects it to succeed and do well, but sometimes that’s not in the cards. While there are some movies that are critically maligned and do poorly overall, when a high-budget movie fails miserably the losses can be staggering.

10. The Adventures of Pluto Nash Lost $96 million

If you don’t recall Eddie Murphy’s The Adventures of Pluto Nash you’re in good company. The 2002 film cost over $100 million to make and it was a massive science fiction comedy extravaganza. Or at least that’s how they described it, since barely anyone actually went to see it. It grossed a paltry $7 million at the box office.

The movie is so bad that even its star Eddie Murphy claims trying to watch it causes him to weep openly. It’s one thing for critics to savage a movie, and Pluto Nash has a dismal 4% on Rotten Tomatoes, but it’s quite another when even the star admits that the whole movie was absolutely terrible. 

Because movie budgets are a little tricky to wrap your head around, and they also factor in things like marketing costs on top of it as well as adjusting for inflation, at least one source claims that the total loss for Pluto Nash tops $130 million. 

9. Stealth lost $96 million

In 2005 anyone probably would have thought a movie in which Jessica Biel and Jamie Foxx have to tangle with artificially intelligent killer fighter jets would have been a good idea, right? That’s a big yes and no.

The studio that financed the movie for $135 million definitely thought it was a good idea. Audiences who didn’t actually go see the movie did not.  With a healthy marketing budget that was really trying to push it, when it managed to pull in $77 million at the box office it wasn’t as small a loss as the budget makes it seem. All told, it’s estimated that the movie lost about $96 million. 

Stealth sits at 13% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Roger Ebert called it a dumbed down Top Gun. If you recall, no one ever claimed Top Gun was very smart in the first place. 

8. 47 Ronin Lost $98 million

The Keanu Reeves movie 47 Ronin is what is known in Japan as a Chushingura. It’s a fictionalized account of the real-life events surrounding 47 masterless samurai, known as ronin, who sought to avenge the death of their master.

The story has been made into a film no less than six times but never was the story as big and extravagant as when Keanu starred in it back in 2013. It had a staggering $175 million budget, the highest ever for a debut director. And in a very telling sign, the movie sat on the shelf for two years after it was produced. That’s never good.

47 Ronin lost an estimated $98 million and the blame has been put, in part, on Carl Rinsch and his first time directing chops. It only has 16% on Rotten Tomatoes and many critics accused it of being both boring and cliche. 

7. Lone Ranger Lost $190 million

There are a number of movies that have been called cursed over the years. Poltergeist was one such movie, famously said to be cursed from the first installment through to the third of the series. The Lone Ranger is another film which definitely deserves to be considered for that honor, assuming you believe in such things.

The production of The Lone Ranger was hampered by numerous problems. It suffered delays as well as massive budgetary issues. At one point the budget had reached almost $300 million, and Disney had to shut down production to retool everything. That resulted in some cuts to special effects and other parts of the budget until it was scaled back to a lean, mean $215 million.

There were accidents on set with the stunt people involved, and a crew member even drowned during the production. Disney was fined $60,000 for safety violations and some inclement weather destroyed sets and cost even more money on the budget.

When the film was finally released and the bad reviews rolled in, the result was Disney chalking the movie up to $190 million loss.

6. Mars Needs Moms Lost $111 million 

In 2011, Mars Needs Moms seemed like a sure thing. The legendary Robert Zemeckis, who was responsible for iconic movies like Forrest Gump and Back to the Future, produced the motion-capture animation. The film itself was based on a book by writer and cartoonist Berkeley Breathed. It almost seemed worth the $150 million budget.

When you factor in marketing it’s believed that Disney probably invested about $200 million in this movie. Which is why when, on its opening weekend, it only pulled in $6.9 million people started to get worried. The final gross of the film was about $39 million, which means lost anywhere from $111 million to $161 million, depending on which numbers you want to work with. 

Rubbing salt in the wound, when it was released overseas it somehow made even less money: only $2.1 million throughout 14 countries. The question needs to be asked then, how did the movie that had so much talent behind it end up failing so miserably? The problem may have been in the execution.

Mars Needs Moms used motion capture technology, the kind of stuff we as audiences really took a shine to with characters like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, or the Na’vi from the movie Avatar. The problem was the way it was used in Mars Needs Moms was less cool, and what at least one person described as creepy. 

5. Titan AE Potentially Lost $120 Million on a $85 Million Budget

On paper, the animated film Titan AE looked bulletproof. Director Don Bluth, who created classics like The Secret of NIMH, The Land Before Time, and An American Tail was helming a sci-fi animated film featuring the voice talents of Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, Bill Pullman and many other well known stars.

Behind the scenes, things were pretty ugly during the production of the movie. For starters, Don Bluth was not the original director. The film was already $30 million into the production before the original director was fired and Bluth was hired alongside Gary Goldman. According to Goldman, the initial $30 million was used to do some pre-production art and nothing else. 

The movie blended traditional 2D animation with 3D animation, which didn’t seem to be a conscious choice from the get go. According to Goldman, they just abandoned the 2D idea halfway through production and finished it with 3D because that’s what was new and cool at the time. 

The movie ended up losing somewhere between $70 million and $120 million on an $85 million budget. It also saw the head of Fox Studios fired by Rupert Murdoch, and the closing of their Phoenix Animation Studio, which had produced two major bombs including the earlier animated film Anastasia.

4. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas Lost $125 million

Proving that there are no guarantees with animated movies no matter how much effort goes into them, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas bombed like a case of Molotov cocktails. The film was produced by DreamWorks Studios, and featured voice acting from Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Michelle Pfeiffer. That all sounds great in theory, but the reality was not.

For unknown reasons, Sinbad was turned into a Sicilian in this movie, completely ignoring the source material, which was just one of several issues. According to DreamWorks, the budget for Sinbad was $60 million. That number should be looked at with a bit of skepticism, as the former head of DreamWorks David Geffen said in an interview that the movie actually lost the studio $125 million. No amount of advertising budget can more than double the losses of a movie, so DreamWorks may have been playing a little fast and loose with their numbers, or their co-founder Geffen just had no idea what he was talking about. 

The movie had extensive marketing tie-ins with Baskin-Robbins, Hasbro, M&Ms and more. When it debuted, it didn’t even out-gross Finding Nemo, which had already been in theaters for six weeks. 

3. Cutthroat Island Lost $147 million

It’s not often that a movie does so poorly it kills an entire genre of film, but that’s what Cutthroat Island seemed to do. The Renny Harlin directed movie, starring Geena Davis in a swashbuckling adventure, did so poorly Hollywood didn’t make another pirate movie for over a decade. 

It can’t be overstated just how awful this movie’s whole legacy is. The budget for Cutthroat Island was $115 million back in 1995. Its box office take was $10 million. This was so bad, it actually made it into the Guinness Book of World Records as the greatest financial loss in film history at the time. When you adjusted for inflation today, you’re looking at a loss of $147 million.

The IMDb facts page for the movie reads like a rogue’s gallery of bad ideas and terrible mistakes. One actor was fired for getting drunk and mooning Geena Davis. Star Matthew Modine explained that some of the budget went for the shipping of dozens and dozens of cases of V8 for the director to drink on set. They had to be shipped from the United States to Malta, and apparently an entire room of the vegetable juice was left at the end of filming. On top of that, three cameras were used to film every single shot which resulted in massive amounts of unused film at the end of production. 

Harlin is said to have fired the chief camera operator from the set, which resulted in dozens of other crew members quitting in solidarity. The blame can’t solely be put on Harlin’s shoulders though, as he tried to quit production realizing just how bad the movie was going to be, as did Geena Davis. The studio refused to stop production. 

2. Gemini Man Lost $111 million

Betting on Will Smith is usually a smart choice when it comes to Hollywood. Many of his early films were massive blockbusters, like Independence Day and Men in Black. Everyone has a miss once in a while though, and Smith definitely missed the mark with his 2019 sci-fi flick Gemini Man.

Estimates place Gemini Man‘s losses at around $111 million. A number of factors seem to have come together to make the movie fail so badly. For starters, it was filmed at 120 frames per second for a 3D release. High frame-rate movies like that have a curious effect on audiences. 

While it seems like higher frame rate and crisper detail should make a movie a more exciting and interesting experience for viewers, what happens is the movie becomes so real and clean looking it removes some of the magic and glamor we expect from movies. While it’s hard to define, the result is that audiences just don’t like the way it looks. 

The other problem with the movie was that the storyline was pretty generic and not interesting. It wasn’t necessarily a bad movie, but being so run-of-the-mill and then having so many reviews dominated by the technological aspects of the high-frame-rate meant that no one was really trying hard to sell the movie. 

1. Terminator: Dark Fate Lost $120 million 

The Terminator franchise is one of the most unusual in film history. The first one made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star, proved James Cameron as a blockbuster filmmaker, and started the ball rolling on one of cinema’s most famous characters. 10 years later when we got Terminator 2 it became one of those rare times when a sequel surpasses the original. And then things took a turn.

Rise of the Machines, Salvation, and Genisys were all fairly underwhelming at the box office and for critics. But then James Cameron returned to the franchise with Dark Fate and brought series star Linda Hamilton back as well. It felt like a recipe to take us right back to the legendary status of T2: Judgment Day. Or at least that’s what it seemed like at first. 

Dark Fate opened at $29 million at the domestic box office. Respectable numbers for a low budget film, but not for something of this caliber. The budget for Dark Fate was estimated at somewhere around $185 million. In order to break even the movie needed to make about $450 million. That put the movie on track to lose a staggering $120 million overall.

Despite having the original director and cast back, and even being critically praised for being the best film in the franchise since Terminator 2, it seems that audiences had just had enough of Terminator after so many bad movies in a row.

Everyone has a favorite snack or quick lunch that they munch on in the office. But you should think carefully about your choice before your next snack break. We want a snack that will keep us going until the next meal, and we want it to be tasty. But, at the same time, we don’t want to alienate our colleagues or have to scrape salsa off our keyboard.

An office is a social space you share with your workmates; it is simply good manners to think about them when you choose your snack. If you are new to an office, find out if there is a “Snacks Code of Conduct” in operation.

If one of your co-workers insists on eating snacks or food that you find offensive, think about introducing such a code in your workplace. It’s the small things that drive us nuts. (In fact, nuts are on this list). Here are ten not safe for the office snacks.

10 So Long Smelly Sandwiches

Boiled eggs have their place at the breakfast table, but you shouldn’t eat them in the office. A boiled egg and tuna sandwich might be a quick, easily prepared snack, but your co-workers will probably not thank you for eating it. Tuna has quite a strong smell, but mix it with boiled egg, and you have a combination that will ensure that your co-workers will steer clear of your desk. Unless that is what you are going for.

What’s happening with your boiled egg is that iron in the yolk reacts with sulfur in the white, creating that noxious bad egg smell. This only occurs if the egg has been overcooked and the yolk is yellow. A perfectly cooked boiled egg has a deep orange yolk and doesn’t smell.

There is a lively debate online about the smelliest ingredient in a boiled egg and tuna sandwich. For me, the boiled egg would win out every time, but there is strong support for tuna. Perhaps it’s best to avoid tuna sandwiches altogether.

9 Avoid the “Popcorn” Button

Oh, Orville Redenbacker. You’ve done too many offices dirty. This hot, crunchy, buttery delight is perfect for movie theaters, but it doesn’t belong in the office! First of all, no matter how careful you are, popcorn gets everywhere. You’ll find grease smudges on the keyboard, popcorn down your shirt, and kernels stuck between your front teeth.

But hang on… there’s more.

While a microwave might seem simple to use, somehow, people still screw it up. Have you ever actually used a microwave where the popcorn button was accurately timed? When you accidentally leave that bag of “Butter Lovers” in too long, that extra minute can leave your office smelling like burned popcorn for the next millennium.

8 Don’t Be Shellfish

You have to be very careful with shellfish. Shellfish accumulate heavy metals, which are passed on to you when you eat them. Many people are allergic, so tell your colleagues that your salad contains shellfish if you share it.

Another problem is with reheating. If you reheat shellfish (or any fish for that matter) in the office microwave, the fatty oils break down and release a strong fishy smell. The following person who wants to use the microwave won’t thank you for this since their hot pocket will taste a wee bit fishy.

7 Curry is NSFW

Okay, curry is amazing. I’m going to be the first one to say that. The flavors are absolute heaven. But a big dish of curry just doesn’t belong in your lunch bag. Curries typically have a heavy scent that not everyone loves. And the smell of curry can stick around for a lot longer than you’d want.

The reason for this dish’s intense aroma is because it’s full of fragrant spices and herbs like cardamom, ginger, cumin, coriander, cloves, and turmeric. While these ingredients pack curry full of health benefits, it might not be the best idea to bring this into your next “Lunch and Learn” meeting. But if you’re absolutely dying for Indian or Thai food at work, try getting a few co-workers together for a group order. After all, “Working together is success.“

6 Peanuts? You Must Be Nuts!

On a recent flight from Antigua to London, a 14-year-old girl suffered a severe allergic reaction (known as anaphylaxis) when a fellow passenger opened a bag of peanuts. The girl didn’t eat a peanut, she didn’t even touch one, but the proximity was enough to cause her to black out.

Fortunately, a nurse was on hand to administer oxygen and give the girl two shots from an EpiPen. In this case, the girl’s mother had asked staff to tell passengers not to eat the complimentary peanuts, but one passenger took no notice.

There are many benefits to eating peanuts. They cut the risk of heart disease, are an excellent source of proteins, and help you concentrate. An ideal snack, it would seem, but not if you are going to send a colleague into anaphylactic shock.

5 Donut Bring Any Krispy Kreme

“There are donuts in the breakroom!”

It’s the announcement we all love and hate. Donuts are completely irresistible. And there’s a biological reason for this: we crave high-calorie, high-fat food because it gives our body an energy boost. When we eat a donut, we get a dopamine rush to the brain that urges us to eat just one more (this time with sprinkles).

But donuts are nothing more than deep-fried cake dough with no food value. If you look into an empty box of donuts, you will see that the bottom is coated with oil, as is your stomach lining. Still, people insist on bringing donuts into the office, even though most people are trying to eat healthy on some level. Try to eat just one—show Jill from accounting that you have iron willpower.

No, it’s best to reserve donuts for special occasions and not have them constantly around the office.

4 Don’t Pack Anything with Garlic

Garlic has a lot going for it. Among other benefits, it can:

• Reduce harmful cholesterol levels
• Protect against some cancers
• Act as an antibiotic
• Help ward off the onset of Alzheimer’s and dementia
• Give your immune system a boost
• Cut high blood pressure levels

Unfortunately, it is also pungent and lingers on your breath for a long time. You might not notice this yourself, but you might find that some of your colleagues keep their distance if you snacked on a garlic-rich snack.

There are some things that you can do to combat garlic breath. Try drinking milk after your snack, eating some parsley, or thoroughly brushing your teeth.

3 Beware the Big Gulp

Soda, we love it and hate it at the same time. Soda may be a sweet drink with a pick-me-up of caffeine, but this forbidden nectar can be deadly when consumed in abundance. And many of us like to consume it in abundance. Drinking soda while mindlessly working can increase sugar consumption, caffeine consumption, chemicals, and even artificial coloring.

Instead, try grabbing cold water with a lemon wedge. Not only will you save money as a daily soda—or three or four—will add up, but your desk will also stay free from sticky spills while your body will remain more alert without a caffeine headache numbing your thoughts.

2 No Kimchi for Me

You must have a cruel streak and dislike your workmates if you bring kimchi to the office. Kimchi has many beneficial properties, but it also has a strong, pungent smell that will quickly dominate your office space and linger for hours. That it is smelly is hardly surprising as fermented cabbage is the main ingredient.

Believe it or not, some Korean scientists are hard at work trying to reduce the smell of kimchi to make it more acceptable to western taste buds, but purists insist that the smell is an integral part of the kimchi experience. This may be so, but bringing it to the office is not a good idea.

So far, not many people are likely to bring kimchi to work. But it is becoming increasingly popular, and it is only a matter of time. Better to introduce a no-kimchi rule beforehand.

1 The Bottomless Bag of Chips

Let’s be honest—half your potato chips will disappear the moment you open the bag. Your colleagues might help themselves to one or two, and before you know it, the entire bag is gone. And you’ll find Dorito’s fingerprints are all over that contract.

And don’t get me started on the loud crunching coming from the next cubicle!

But you’re not missing much. Chips are devoid of healthy ingredients and high in fat, calories, and salt. They fill you up and are temptingly convenient, but they bring you no benefits at all. You might as well nibble on your pencil for all the good that potato chips do you—in fact, your pencil would be a healthier option.

Also, brown chips may contain acrylamide, which might increase your chance of contracting cancer. Acrylamide forms naturally as a result of cooking temperatures. Manufacturers are trying to reduce the amount of this chemical in their chips by changing the cooking temperatures – but there is still a risk.

If you like munching on something while you are typing away, then try substituting healthier alternatives such as dried fruit, kale chips, or trail mix.