Why was this a box office flop

I've always thought this movie was awesome, it has tons of action and brilliant special effects for it's time. The only thing that disappoints me is the cliffhanger ending and the lack of a sequel.

I think the next best thing would be to reboot this classic.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/BoxOfficeBomb/NumbersThroughB

Big Trouble in Little China (1986) — Budget, $20 million (not counting marketing costs), $25 million (counting them). Box office, $11.1 million. This movie's original failure in theaters thanks to distributor 20th Century Fox also releasing Aliens the next week led to director John Carpenter to return to lower budget features and got a planned sequel cast into limbo until BOOM! comics continued it in 2014. Carpenter would not return to directing big budget features until the 90's, by which point he got ensnared in a line of bombs that blacked out his A-list directing career. This movie quickly became a Cult Classic on home video and with critics, with one of the major Big Bads in the Mortal Kombat franchise note and a recurring enemy in a few other series being based off this film's villain (Jackie Chan's cartoon had two villains that took elements from this movie's villain note , and the second to appear was voiced by James Hong, who played BTILC's Big Bad). A remake is being made with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

https://lebeauleblog.com/2013/08/03/what-the-hell-happened-to-kurt-russell/5/

Big Trouble raced to beat The Golden Child to theaters. Carpenter commented, “How many adventure pictures dealing with Chinese mysticism have been released by the major studios in the past 20 years? For two of them to come along at the exact same time is more than mere coincidence.” Big Trouble in Little China managed to beat The Golden Child to theaters. Both films received mixed reviews. But Big Trouble flopped at the box office. The Golden Child was a hit based on Murphy’s popularity at the time, but it failed to live up to expectations based on Beverly Hills Cop.

Like a lot of Carpenter’s films from this period, Big Trouble developed a cult following on video.

Despite what people seem to think nowadays, how a film does at the Box Office doesn't necessarily indicate the quality of the movie.

I'd say that was probably even truer pre-internet. There wouldn't have been forums like this one or Twitter or anything like that to create a buzz for a movie. You relied on TV advertisement, and maybe posters on busses or at the cinema to tell you what was coming out. If a movie wasn't advertised very well, less people would go and see it irregardless of the quality of the film. Also, as has been stated, if it came out at the same time as a lot of bigger movies that were getting more publicity, that would've also harmed it.

This won't have been the only film that has been released that did poor at the Box Office but got critical acclaim once it was out on video/DVD or started airing on television.

You'll find many great movies that are considered classics today, were originally theatrical flops. Among them are the likes of The Highlander, The Thing, Martin Scorsese's Hugo, The Iron Giant, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, The Wizard of Oz in it's original run, etc.

Big Trouble was no different. The main reason it failed is a reason that many of them fail: the studio didn't know how to properly market it, or barely bothered to market it. Some movie studios do this incredibly stupid thing, where they will spend millions of dollars, plus time and effort, to get a movie made, and then because some idiot in power "doesn't get it" or doesn't believe it can be a hit, will "send it out to die". Basically sabotaging it and setting it up for failure. That's what happened with Big Trouble in a nutshell, and it was such a negative experience for Carpenter that he swore off big studios for several years after.

But honestly, this film is a masterpiece in its own way, and I consider it a strong argument for John Carpenter's best film, up there with The Thing and Escape From New York.

Some great responses on this thread (and a very minimal amount of unhelpful ones, surprisingly enough).

As a fellow teen back when this was released, though, I can clear up a couple of issues that pop up repeatedly on this thread throughout the years:

(1) COMPETITION: Not an issue. Ticket prices were WAAAAAAY lower then than they are now, and it was common for moviegoers to see EVERY summer blockbuster, even when they opened too close to one another.

Lines around the block were common back then, for every theater on every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.

Now, back in the same town, the last packed house I attended was "Endgame" on opening night.


(2) RACISM/REVERSE-RACISM: Also not an issue. "Political correctness" was barely a blip on the radar (and really only exploded into the national zeitgeist in 1987 with Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind").


(3) MARKETING: The real culprit.

The only racism this movie suffered from was the racism of the studio execs who couldn't accept a non-white hero (Dennis Dun) and a bumbling white protagonist (Kurt Russell). Whether they, themselves, were racist is less important than the fact that they ASSUMED the movie-going public WOULD be racist.

That's why "whitewashing" was and still is a thing.

Studio execs are notorious for this. As I mentioned in this thread years ago, "21" featured a mostly-white cast whose real-life counterparts were exclusively Asian-American.

And ... most importantly, I can confirm from experience that there was almost zero marketing for this film.

Actually, I'd only read about it much earlier in a Fangoria magazine, and knew to expect it. But I never saw any commercials, trailers, or pretty much ANYTHING other than the poster on the theater when it actually opened.

Some posters have very aptly compared this film in tone and appeal to "Ghostbusters." Aside from featuring SNL alumni with proven box-office draw, THAT film had a TON of marketing, starting with an early viral campaign months before release consisting of Ghostbusters logo posters (just the logo, no words) popping up all over Manhattan and L.A.

1986: "Damn. This movie is retarded."

21st century Idiocracy retards: 'tats wat maeks it so gud lmao'