"Anonymous" among 2011's worst movie flops of the year

Former Godzilla director Roland Emmerich made a film this year that branched out from his usual blockbuster routine.

Gone are the heavy special effects and large armies battling against an unstoppable force...instead replaced with character drama focusing on Shakespeare's past.

And for this Emmerich now finds his first official movie flop.

Blogs.indiewire.com created a great article highlighting the most financial disastrous movies this year, and "Anonymous" is included.

Interestingly enough, it's not due to large amounts of money being lost.

The film was made for $30 million and made nearly $15 million worldwide. So adding in DVD, rentals and television rights it will eventually recoup its cost.

And there were plenty of other films this year that lost FAR more money.

It seems it was included because (again) this is Emmerich's first official flop.

Here's how the article nicely describes it:

But when the maker of "2012," "Godzilla" and "Independence Day" tries to make a Shakespearean drama? Audiences could barely care less. It surely doesn't help that the cast, including Rhys Ifans, Rafe Spall and David Thewlis, aren’t exactly stars and the title surely does the picture no favors either, even if it does fit the film quite well. Budgeted at $30 million, the movie grossed a pitiful $14.8 million worldwide, and only $4.4 million of that figure came from domestic audiences. At one point, Sony was hoping some kind of Oscar talk would coalesce around the movie, but that moment faded fast.

In any case I recommend everybody to give the article a read. It gives a good analysis on why other films flopped this year too:

Blogs.indiewire.com: 2011 By the Numbers, the year in box office flops