Tentpole Trauma
A podcast where we look at movies that came with hype and high hopes, but left with crushing disappointment, either critically, at the box office, or both.
- Update frequency
- every 10 days
- Average duration
- 92 minutes
- Episodes
- 158
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2025
Justice League (2017)
The DCEU was poised to make their play for Avengers style glory with Zack Snyder's follow-up to the divisive Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but after tragedy struck the director was forced to l…
Fright Night (2011)
Horror remakes were all the rage at the turn of the previous decade, as were vampires, so an updated version of the 1985 hit Fright Night was all but inevitable. Armed with a strong cast that feature…
Howard the Duck
George Lucas adapting a Marvel comics property should be a license to print money, right? Directed by Lucas collaborator Willard Huyck, the 1986 adaptation of Steve Gerber's beloved comics character …
Aeon Flux (2005)
In a post-Matrix Hollywood, the prospect of adapting Peter Chung's cult anime hit seemed like the opportunity to kick-start another FX heavy sci fi franchise. Get Girlfight director Karyn Kusama to d…
Men in Black: International
In honor of Black History Month we're covering the obvious choice...Men in Black: International! Directed by filmmaker F. Gary Gray this continuation of the Will Smith fronted franchise was sure to …
Tenet
Hold on a second... is this really fair? Christopher Nolan's mega-budget time travel spy thriller came out at the height of the pandemic, can its relative box office failure accurately be blamed on t…
Lady in the Water
Grindhouse
Coming off the 90s you'd be hard-pressed to find a cooler pair of directors than Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, and when they decided to bring their love of Grindhouse cinema to the mainstre…
Lifeforce
Take the director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the writer of Alien, and you've got yourself an 80s sci fi horror hit, right? Well, not so much. Tobe Hooper's 1985 schlockfest Lifeforce deliver…
Jennifer's Body
Teaming Girlfight director Karyn Kusama with Oscar winning screenwriter Diablo Cody for a female-driven horror film seemed a tantalizing prospect in 2009; add to that the presence of then white-hot s…
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
20 years after dazzling audiences with The Fifth Element, auteur Luc Besson returned to epic sci fi to adapt the beloved French comic Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. The trailers promise…
Dreamcatcher
A Stephen King adaptation helmed by Hollywood legend Lawrence Kasdan with a cast that features Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Timothy Olyphant, Jason Lee and Damian Lewis would seem a solid recipe for …
John Carter
Trapped in development hell for close to 100 years, Edgar Rice Burroughs' pulp science fiction superhero John Carter of Mars finally got his big shot to become a blockbuster film franchise in 2012 wi…
Doctor Sleep
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Despite years of dormancy, a hand-off to Disney and troubled productions, the Star Wars brand wielded unlimited power at the box office — at least until the lackluster performance of 2018’s ill-fated…
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
The Platinum Dunes 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street boasted a new Freddy Krueger in Jackie Earle Haley, a big budget and top shelf visual effects...so why did it seemingly kill the franchise…
The Wolfman (2010)
Hoping to bring the Universal monsters back in a big way, Joe Johnston’s big budget Wolfman remake featured a top shelf writer, a strong cast and high production values. So what went wrong? That’s th…