In April 2015, The Hollywood Reporter noted that Warner Bros. was preparing to “flood the market” that summer with a slate of nine films designed to fill the gap left by the absence of Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy and the “Harry Potter” films. At the time, Warner’s domestic distribution chief Dan Fellman told the outlet, “It will be tough work, but I think it will pay off.”

In some ways, WB’s approach did pay off. The Dwayne Johnson-led “San Andreas,” produced on a budget of $110 million, raked in $474 million worldwide. And while “Mad Max: Fury Road” didn’t fare quite as well, making $380 million worldwide on a $150 million budget, it did at least garner critical acclaim and remains one of the best movies in the “Mad Max” saga. But one big-budget Warner project failed spectacularly on both a critical and commercial front.

A Peter Pan origin story starring Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard the Pirate alongside Levi Miller as Peter Pan doesn’t sound like it would have been an out and out disaster. But it was, and it lost Warner Bros. a heck of a lot of money.

“Pan” was a Peter Pan origin story from Joe Wright, who had previously directed a Best Picture Oscar nominee with “Atonement,” a unique action thriller with “Hanna,” and a solid historical drama that also garnered Academy Award nominations with “Anna Karenina.” As such, there was no indication that his Peter Pan origin story would prove to be as big a flop as it eventually was, but “Pan” failed at the box office in spectacular fashion.

2015 was full of box office heavy hitters, from “Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens,” which made more than $2 billion worldwide, to “Jurassic World,” which wasn’t far behind with $1.6 billion. Unfortunately, such a stacked year left little room for Wright’s film to succeed, which for Warner Bros. meant losing a sizable chunk of change.

The studio had given Wright $150 million to make his film, and that’s pretty much exactly what the film made in terms of its global box office receipts. That might not seem like a catastrophe but considering studios typically get half of the domestic box office and less for some international markets, plus the fact Warners would have spent a significant amount on marketing, it meant the studio lost a lot of money — roughly $150 million according to reports at the time.

What was the problem? Well, aside from 2015 being so stacked with blockbuster offerings, critics largely agreed: “Pan” was just bad.

Originally planned for a June 2015 release, “Pan” was shunted back to October, ostensibly to give it some space among that year’s crowded slate. Envisioned as a spectacular visual tour de force, the movie was also initially intended for an IMAX release, with Warners releasing a featurette extolling the VFX team’s efforts to craft a stunning 3D experience. But when “Pan” debuted on October 9, 2015, it did so in regular theaters and not on IMAX screens.

That anticlimactic debut was just the beginning of Joe Wright and WB’s troubles. “Pan” made what The Hollywood Reporter dubbed a “disastrous” $15.3 million in its opening weekend, ultimately going on to gross just $35 million domestically. According to THR, Warner’s global marketing spend was $125 million, which brought the total cost of “Pan” to $275 million. The movie’s $151.5 million global take was, then, more than a little disappointing — especially since Warner Bros. had also seen the Henry Cavill-led “The Man From U.N.C.L.E” bomb at the box office earlier that same year.

Of course, the critical drubbing “Pan” received didn’t help. Reviewers were merciless in their assessments of the film, which currently bears a lowly 26% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics took particular issue with the extent of the film’s CGI work. As the Times’ Kate Muir wrote, “The overuse of CGI effects in ‘Pan’ is exhausting and incomprehensible, even within the crazed logic of a fairytale.” Elsewhere, “Pan” actually had Donald Clarke of the Irish Times yearning for a reappraisal of Steven Spielberg’s “Hook,” a film the director himself had no faith in even while shooting it. 

Likewise, the “positive” reviews for “Pan” could barely be described as begrudging, with Robbie Collin of the Daily Telegraph writing, “Jubilantly uncool […] perhaps one of the best compliments you could pay it is that it could have been written 100 years ago.” The fact this review has been deemed “Fresh” by the RT curators might say more about the site itself, though. Perhaps the most damning indictment, however, came from Peter Travers. In his one-star Rolling Stone review, he described Wright’s film as a “joyless, juiceless […] theme-park ride from hell.” If I were Warners, I would’ve put that last part on the posters just to drum up some business from confused moviegoers.