***A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB MUST-READ BOOK OF NOVEMBER 2024***
"A wild success." - Publishers Weekly
"A surefire hit." -Library Journal STARRED review
"A brilliant star turn." -Andrew O'Hagan
A riotous and revealing story of Hollywood's most spectacular flops and how they ended careers, bankrupted studios and changed film history.
"Failure fascinates, for all the reasons that success is a drag..."
From grand follies to misunderstood masterpieces, disastrous sequels to catastrophic literary adaptations, Box Office Poison tells a hugely entertaining alternative history of Hollywood, through a century of its most notable flops. What can these films tell us about the Hollywood system, the public's appetite-or lack of it-and the circumstances that saw such flops actually made? Away from the canon, this is the definitive take on these ill-fated, but essential celluloid failures.
