I would also include anything that was initially a flop on its original release but then found a following later such as movies like Momento. This still counts as commercial failure for the sake of this question.

Firefly. Watching Serenity, it's pretty obvious they're trying to hit several seasons' worth of story beats in as little time as possible. Seeing it as intended would have been really cool.

Honorable mentions (in no particular order):

Fight Club

The Iron Giant

Grindhouse

Waterworld

That Speed Racer movie that the Wachowski’s made. I think it’s a fun film and I feel fortunate to have found a handful of Lemmy users who also appreciate it.

Scott Pilgrim and Speed Racer were commercial failures. They are in my humble opinion two of the best cinema that get out of Hollywood. Being the commercial failures that they were Producers abandoned this side of the craft for the slop fest that we’re in now

There’s some beautiful TV series that were cancelled after one season : Firefly (Whedon is an awful being), Almost Human, Kaos, Altered Carbon (they should have cancelled it after one season, the second not only killed the franchise it killed the possibility of doing more) to name a few

I knew one guy for years who swore up and down it was the best thing he'd seen in ages. Loved that movie. But he was also a troll with really questionable taste so I just ignored it.

But I see it get brought up like this fairly frequently so unless you're all his puppets maybe ill watch it.

Obligatory Ishtar

That movie was too far ahead of its time for its own good. I remember hating it in theaters but gave it another chance recently on a friend's recommendation.

Holy shit. The world was not ready for that level of cinematography. The scene transition from the villain's office to the big race is pure art. People will be studying that one in film school for decades.

It is the only live actually movie I've ever seen that feels exactly like a cartoon. It got released in theaters for its anniversary recently and being able to watch it on the big screen as an adult was genuinely amazing.

One of them is Rock & Rule. I encourage everyone who's into cult films/animation to see it for themselves if possible, and try to seek out the Canadian version even though it's rare.

Short summary: This movie almost bankrupted Nelvana animation studios, who spent $8 million on it for it to make about $33k in 1983. The colossal flop was mostly due to the distributor MGM/UA not knowing how to market an adult-oriented animated feature and recasting/redubbing/editing the fuck out of the US release version.

To compound on the matter, the original print of the Canadian version was lost in either a fire or a flood, sources are mixed on what happened, and the remaining version is long out of print. A lone VHS copy of the Canadian version was digitized and released on DVD by Unearthed Films in 2005.

Due to the films still being officially out of print (and one version destroyed), physical copies are rare and expensive (physical Blu Ray was going for $400+ on eBay last I checked). And you're likely only going to find the heavily edited US version unless you specifically search for the 2 disc DVD set. The Canadian unedited version is non-existent online, and neither version is available to stream. The US version is on YouTube though.

Overall - great movie, great music, fantastic animation. Very 80s. It's a 10/10 to me.

Dark Matter.

I was primed onto that show after playing a lot of Fractured Space, which was also a commercial failure.

Chowder and Invader Zim

Guthenberg bible.
Many dont know it was a comercial failiure

Season 2 was just released (mostly); I don't think it was a failure. It's gotten better reviews than season 1.

Jesus. Probably most of my media library? It's genuinely a surprise when anything I really like is successful.

First thing that comes to mind is Blade Runner 2049. Film flopped hard, but it's a god damn masterpiece. Absolutely perfect way to build on the ideas presented in the original, while also playing with a whole new set of notions on top of that. Gosling continues to be incredible, the soundtrack is pure magic, and Denis Villeneuve is one of the best filmmakers in the world.

The appearance of Fight Club on your list surprised me - I thought it did well. But I looked it up - it was #1 on opening weekend but ultimately only turned a profit of $10m, which is indeed a flop. Wild considering how well regarded it is now.

The Wachowski sisters are some of the most underrated filmmakers of all time. Everyone basically wrote them off as just, you know, the slow-mo kung fu people, and it's absolutely tragic that they don't get the respect their work deserves.

Heh, I think you're referring to the wrong Dark Matter. The one I'm talking about premiered in 2015 and was cancelled after 3 seasons.

Soldier(1998) with Kurt Russell

of the only two Transformers DVDs Blockbuster had growing up, one of them was THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE. i always figured that it was the main Transformers thing, because, y'know, it's The Movie! no idea that it wildly underperformed, drew the ire of parents everywhere, and was torn to shreds by critics (who compared it unfavorably to the movie where the GoBots fight literal rocks)

granted it was vindicated by the recent theatrical rerun. i got to see the movie in a packed theater, and it finally broke even 40 years later

I dunno whether it's my favorite, but I'd have liked more Firefly episodes.

Loved this movie, and just saw it in the theatre again last week and had just as much fun with it as ever.

My wife went with and had never seen it, and I asked her if her sisters would let their kids watch a movie like this today? 😆

When they got to the acid pool scene, I just heard her say "oh my god!" and I was like, yep, this and Watership Down where what we watched as 80s kids.

Treasure Planet.

It's probably a good thing that Disney's forgotten about it. I don't wanna see them try to remake it.

Dredd. Karl Urban always gets me in the door, but the movie ended up being pretty great.

This is actually the movie that prompted the question! I forced my fiancé to watch it with me last night (I'd seen it before) and he loved it!

Event Horizon. I consider it in-universe canon for Warhammer 40,000.

People will be studying that one in film school for decades.

If you have the time, this is a pretty great video studying the film

There’s so much to love about that movie. I always wondered if it would’ve been more successful if the Stallone Judge Dredd movie hadn’t been so terrible.

Almost Human

It wasn't exactly breaking new ground, the writing and such wasn't the greatest, but it was all good enough, and better than a lot of other shows out there, and I was definitely enjoying it enough to see where they went with it in season 2

Years later after I met my wife, I discovered that she felt the same way about it.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that someone at Quantic Dream felt the same way too and that's how Detroit: Become Human came to be.

Dirk Gently (the last TV show)

Better off Ted

Dead like me

firefly is the most obvious. I remember sticking around for john doe and after they canceled it I stopped watching anything that night and then john doe got canceled because its ratings dropped like a crater.

Now I kinda wanna finish grind house finally.

Interstate 60

I think those did decently enough. Chowder ran it's course (heh) after 3 seasons and Invader Zim was a victim of Nickelodeon meddling.

I’m worried that the TV show is gonna be garbage

Telling the truth can be dangerous business.

I love the songwriting scenes so much.

I love me some Michelle Yeoh, but yeah, I'm not really seeing anything that says it has a point to it beyond "Ooh, what if humans were the oppressed minority... How zany??!!!" It's got a real "Fox News telling you that straight white men are gonna get herded into camps" kind of vibe to it.

Blade Runner 2049 was technically a commercial failure by hollywood standards.

Reaper and Santa Clarita Diet.

No idea if they were flops, or if they just got canceled because the actors were up to other stuff, or writers died, or the network heads were coked up or whatever idk. They were canceled before they could finish and im sad.

Freddy got Fingered

Donnie Darko. It perfectly fits your second criterion. It was an abysmal flop in theaters, mostly because its ads got pulled because it featured ::: spoiler spoilers
a jet engine crashing into a house just 6 weeks after 9/11.
:::

It had a budget of $4.5 million and only made $500k in theaters. But it later exploded on DVD and made $10 million.

Related to that, Transformers One flopped hard despite being possibly the best Transformers movie since Transformers: The Movie.

That's not a particularly high bar to clear, but still...

Oh I have a few!

Office Space

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

The Beach

These three are probably my top favorite films of all time. I also have a soft spot for Tron Legacy

Considering it was only a season long, the Deadman Wonderland anime. Such an interesting concept, so much so that just posting this makes me wanna read the manga for the first time.

Also, had an amazing theme song, which is just an alternate version of Black Hearts & Dollar $ign$ by Fade.

Same. As far as I'm concerned that film is a depiction of what happens if you enter The Warp without a Gellar Field.

When I first saw the movie I was very unhappy because it was not at all what was advertised. I was expecting a sci-fi thriller, not Hellraiser in Space. It was quite badly marketed. If it had been marketed correctly it might've done far better.

Because it was a mediocre movie

That movie is so damn good. Every other film adapting a comic book has to make it either an origin story or some major event in canon. Dredd is literally "this is a slightly unusual but not that abnormal day for this guy" and it's absolutely riveting. And that's how the Dredd universe is: everything is intense and over-the-top.

I don't know that Water World ever got a later following, but I love it and it's still an original take on the post-apocalypse genre.

I especially love the Death Proof half of Grindhouse, but that's because I love 70s B-list chase movies.

i remember seeing the trailer and thinking man, this stinks! but then i streamed the movie on a whim and was shocked how good it was

Plus it has Paul Lemat in a rare voice role. I always thought he deserved a bigger career than he had.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

I wonder if it remembers me.

Was Life Aquatic a failure or was it just like everything else Anderson?