It wasn’t a very happy year at the box office in 2011, and while the total for the year dropping was bad enough, some movies suffered more than others.

While there are always certain to be films each year that don’t fare well at the box office, some did spectacularly bad this year. Even bankable stars like Johnny Depp showed that not everything he touches is guaranteed to turn to fold.

As you look over this chart, keep in mind that a movie is considered successful when it doubles its production budget domestically to account for marketing costs.  Foreign box office loses a larger chunk due to international distribution deals, so even though some films have a higher total gross than their budget, it still doesn’t mean they made money.

Even though Mars Needs Moms was the biggest loser by dollar amount, I’m really focused on The Big Year.  The latter crashed and burned in such a way that it is mind boggling.  When you factor in it wasn’t even that large of a budget, to see it bring in just over $7 million worldwide, you really have to wonder how it went so horribly wrong.  We’re talking nearly art house film money here it did so badly, and its widest release point in the U.S. it had 2,150 screens.  True, huge films now come in at over 3,000 screens, but 2,150 isn’t exactly small and that means total per screen average domestically was $3,333.20.  That, by Hollywood standards, is a total disaster.

The list of films definitely has some large budget disasters, it’s also interesting to see how “modestly” budgeted films also didn’t fare all that well.  The Rum Diary was probably risky to begin with, but seeing it not even bring in its $40 million dollar budget is surprising when Depp has more billion dollar movies under his belt than anyone else.  I Don’t Know How She Does It has probably shown that the love affair with Sarah Jessica Parker has definitely come to an end.

When you add in how Happy Feet Two performed with Mars Needs Moms catastrophic failure, it also looks like the age of animated films being easy hits is quickly drawing to a close.  There was a time where every animated film brought in just insane amounts of money, but their performance has been dropping more and more lately, and these two have definitely set a new bar.

I’ll try not to laugh at how Conan the Barbarian performed, but it’s difficult to not to.  And Green Lantern … for having the biggest budget, this may actually end up being the flop that sticks in most people’s minds when they think back on 2011.

It’s obvious that even after all these years that the film studios don’t have a clue as to what they’re doing, and when a film is a “hit,” it really just has to be pure luck.

One note: New Year’s Eve is still in release, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to do a lot more.

As weekends go, this one definitely did not set the box office ablaze, and when the the final numbers come in, it may rate as the worst since 2008.  All told, the top 12 films brought in an anemic $69.7 million.

First up was the new ensemble romantic comedy New Year’s Eve that took the top spot at the box office with a paltry $13.7 million, a whopping 75% less than the similarly themed Valentine’s Day from last February.  This was well below even the lowest expectations for the film, and perhaps it will sustain itself through the holiday it’s named for, but this opening certainly isn’t going to leave to many executives happy this morning.

Coming in second was the Jonah Hill comedy The Sitter with $10 million.  This is the first comedy with Hill in the lead, and it’s pretty obvious that the film going audience wasn’t that thrilled with the concept.  I’d say color me surprised, but I’m not.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 fell to third this week with $7.9 million, bringing its domestic take to $259.5 million off of a $110 million budget. Worldwide it has broken $633.5 million. It may be annoying to see one book broken into two parts, but between this and the final two Harry Potter films, it seems that the concept sadly works.

Coming in fourth was The Muppets with just a breath of $7 million which brings its domestic total to $65.8 million. With a $45 million dollar budget this film has yet to break even and looks unlikely to do so, sadly.

Rounding out the top five was Arthur Christmas with $6.6 million.

Due next week is Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and a limited release of Mission:Impossible – Ghost Protocol.

Apparently nothing can stop the freight train that is the Twilight series.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 took the top spot at the box office for a third weekend in a row with $16.9 million, bringing its domestic total to $247.3 million off of a $110 million dollar budget. Add in its international take and the film has brought in $588.3 million. It looks like splitting the fourth and final book into two movies was the right idea.

Coming in second was The Muppets with a hefty 61.7% drop from their opening weekend. They brought in $11.2 million, but that was somewhat expected with their opening having been a holiday weekend.

Third place went to the Martin Scorsese children’s book adaptation, Hugo. It went into a wider release this weekend which kept its decline down to 32.9% to bring in $7.6 million.   This brings its domestic total to $25.1 million with no word yet on what the budget was or how it’s doing internationally.  Considering the advertising push I saw for it in England, I’m thinking this may be a film more targeted at the international audience.

Arthur Christmas, may be another film with more of an international play behind it. You couldn’t escape the promotional push on this film over there, and seeing as it’s doing better on the international front, I can see why. It came in fourth this weekend on the domestic front with $7.3 million.

Coming in fifth was Happy Feet Two which may be shaping up to be one of the biggest disappointments of the year. It brought in $6 million this weekend bringing its domestic total to $51.7 million. Seeing as the original did over $41 million its opening weekend, you can see things are not going well here.

The big releases for next weekend are the star-studded New Year’s Eve and the comedy The Sitter.  The latter looks especially painful and formulaic.

The first part of the final Twilight film easily won the box office this weekend, surprising no one.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 raked in $139.5 million this weekend, falling short of the second film’s (New Moon) $142.7 million, but still an impressive hall none the less.  There really isn’t much else to say except … one more film to go and then we can forget this garbage series.  (yeah, I said it)

Coming in second was the animated Happy Feet Two with a somewhat disappointing $22 million compared to the original’s $41.5 million opening weekend.

Immortals fell a worrisome 62.5% from its opening weekend, bringing in only $12.25 million. This brings its 10 day domestic total to $53 million off of a $98 million budget.

Landing in fourth was Jack & Jill with a 52% drop to $12 million, and shows a definite weakening in the former gold standard of Adam Sandler films. Perhaps the audience has finally realized what Sandler himself has said that he just plays the same character over and over?

Puss in Boots rounded out the top five with $10.7 million, bringing its total to a pretty disappointing $122 million.

This week’s big releases include Arthur Christmas, The Muppets and Hugo, so it’s all family driven productions as we head into the Thanksgiving weekend.

On a side note, I will be in England next week on vacation, but I do still plan to bring you the weekly box office report because, well, it fascinated me week after week.

It seems if you put men in armor and make a movie all shiny, people will rush out to see it.

The same folks who produced 300 came back with another period film, Immortals, and it did okay, but not exactly the best.  After a $15 million Friday, the domestic gross came in at $32 million for the entire weekend which means it fell off sharply.  It pulled in $36 million internationally this weekend as well which was healthy, but off of a $75 million budget this film has a ways to go.  Comparatively it pulled in less than half of 300‘s $70.9 opening weekend and even Clash of the Titans‘ $61.2 million.

Jack & Jill had the second lowest opening of any Adam Sandler comedy with $26 million.  With no clue on the budget yet we’ll have to see how this performs, but it would seem the luster is finally wearing off of Sandler.

After last week’s surprising second week strength of Puss in Boots there was some speculation that the third weekend would see a huge fall.  Surprisingly it only fell 22.9% and brought in $25.5 million, and could see it land in second place when the final numbers come out.

The  Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy comedy Tower Heist fell 45.1% to $13.2 million to land it in fourth place.  That’s an average performance in a second weekend for a comedy, but on a $75 million budget and only $43.9 million domestic thus far, things aren’t looking good for this movie to hit profitability while still in the theaters.

Rounding out the top five was the smaller release, J. Edgar.  It pulled in $11.4 million from a somewhat limited release with 1,910 screens.  (in comparison, Immortals had 3,112.)

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas fell 54.5% to land in sixth with $5.9 million, and in eighth was Paranormal Activity 3 which brought in $3.6 million, finally breaking the $100 million dollar mark off of a $5 million budget.

Next week will see Happy Feet Two and … unfortunately … Twilight: Breaking Dawn part 1.  Get ready for a stupid amount of money to come in.