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A 1980s version of The Last Stand would have performed well at the box office before becoming iconic on home video. The children of the movie goers of the 1980s stifled a yawn in the general direction of the film. Released during the lucrative Martin Luther King holiday, Schwarzenegger’s movie debuted in ninth place. It fell out of the top ten by its fourth day of release and never returned after its first week in theaters. The Last Stand, a movie with a $30 million production budget, grossed only $12 million in North America. It is one of the biggest bombs of Schwarzenegger’s career. Amazingly, he would duplicate the feat a few months later.

Before we discuss that failure, we should return to the subject of Sylvester Stallone. Sly and Arnie were inexorably linked throughout the 1980s as the biggest action stars in the land. The notable aspect of The Expendables franchise was the union of the two actors. Only two weeks after The Last Stand failed, Stallone starred in a project of his own. That title, Bullet to the Head, accomplished only one feat of note. It caused The Last Stand to look like Avatar by comparison.

Bullet to the Head, a movie about an assassin with a grudge, earned $1.7 million on its first day in theaters. Now is a good time to note that the movie came with a price tag of $55 million. Its weekend take of $4.5 million throws under the debuts of Oscar ($5.1 million) and Rhinestone ($5.5 million), the worst bombs of Stallone’s career. And that is before we adjust for ticket price inflation. Bullet to the Head is in discussion for the biggest bomb of 2013, grossing only $13.6 million. Its failure is total.

Seeing such performances is why Hollywood producers develop drug habits and/or alcoholism. Imagine if you watched those two movies flame out, knowing that you had just paid the same two actors to star in a $70 million production later that year. This was exactly the issue Lionsgate employees faced with Escape Plan, an October title that they later claimed cost only $50-ish million. Yes, damage control for the movie started weeks before its release. That is the tell-tale sign of a bomb.

When Escape Plan debuted on October 18, its domestic box office tally was $3.4 million. For Stallone, that was double his previous 2013 release yet still disastrous. Its opening weekend result was $9.9 million. Scarily, Escape Plan was also frontloaded. North American audiences only attended to the tune of $24.9 million. On the plus side, its overseas revenue of $78.6 million meant that it was the “best” performer of the three yet it still exited theaters way in the red on the ledger sheet since so much less of overseas revenue is recouped by the distributor. The three movies starring Stallone and Schwarzenegger cost $155 million to produce. They provided a return of $50.5 million in North America.

Had only these two stars failed, the story would be that Stallone and Schwarzenegger should have quit while they were ahead with The Expendables franchise. Alas, there is more. Bruce Willis, another member of The Expendables team, also went back to the well once too often. The project in question was another Die Hard release, this one entitled A Good Day to Die Hard.

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