Box Office Poison: Hollywoods Story in a Century of Flops
By (Author) Tim Robey
Faber & Faber
Faber & Faber
4th February 2025
7th November 2024
Main
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Film guides and reviews
Film: styles and genres
791.430979494
Hardback
352
Width 153mm, Height 234mm
'An instant classic . . . funny, sharp, entertaining.' ANDREW O'HAGAN, author of Caledonian Road
A riotous and revealing story of Hollywood's most spectacular flops.
'Failure fascinates, for all the reasons that success is a drag . . .'
From grand follies to misunderstood masterpieces, disastrous sequels to catastrophic literary adaptations, Tim Robey's hugely entertaining Box Office Poison tells an alternative history of Hollywood, through a century of its most notable flops.
Freaks, Land of the Pharaohs, Dune, Speed 2, Catwoman, Cats: what can these films tell us about the Hollywood system, the public's appetite - or lack of it - and the circumstances that saw such box office disasters actually made Away from the canon, here is the definitive take on these ill-fated, but essential celluloid failures.
Since 2000, Tim Robey has reviewed films, written features and conducted interviews for the Daily Telegraph's arts pages. He appears regularly on Radio 4's Front Row and Monocle FM Radio, contributed to R4's now-defunct Film Programme, and appeared as a sofa guest on BBC Film 2015-2017. He gave Cats zero stars, but has now seen it four times. His favourite film is Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998).