Talk:Box-office bomb

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. I will note that much of the opposition cited WP:COMMONNAME but did not come close to proving that "box-office bomb" was the common name. I cite comments , , , and in particular . I struggle to find !opposes who cited their sources.

Had the opposition not been so numerically forbidding (4-20 against, I believe), I would have closed this as no consensus. But the community has made their preference that this article not be moved more than clear.

Myceteae, in opposition, offers a path forward: settle on a distinction between "box-office bomb" and "box-office failure", then consider article splits accordingly. (non-admin closure) Iseult ^Δx talk to me 07:04, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

• Box-office bomb → Box-office failureBox-office failure
• List of biggest box-office bombs → List of biggest box-office failures

– The term "box-office bomb" is a non-neutral colloquialism, the meaning of which is not obvious to those not in the know about the film business and also has changed over time, and may yet change again. Although some may argue that "bomb" is the common name, WP:POVTITLE specifically states that common names may be avoided if they are "Colloquialisms where far more encyclopedic alternatives are obvious". "Box-office failure" is concise, neutral, and clear, avoiding any potential issues with POV or ambiguity.

Additionally, due to the increasingly common occurrence of blockbuster films that boast huge production budgets yet fail to make them back during their theatrical run despite earning significantly large sums, there are an increasing number of films that are considered box-office disappointments but are not described as "bombs" in the media, one such example being Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. Others, such as The Matrix Resurrections, do not turn a profit in their theatrical run, but do find an audience on streaming platforms. The lede sections of these articles neutrally describe the specific way in which they are considered to have "failed" by sources; "underperformed", "disappointment", etc., rather than "bomb".

The article title should therefore be changed so as to recognize that a film can fail financially at the box office, but not necessarily be considered a "bomb" as such. Box-office bomb should obviously remain a redirect, and the true box office bombs (the likes of Morbius, Megalopolis, and Joker: Folie à Deux) can still be described as bombs if the sources warrant it. silviaASH (inquire within) 01:32, 7 February 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. TarnishedPath^talk 09:39, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Procedural note I have added the additional proposal to rename List of biggest box-office bombs to List of biggest box-office failures for the sake of maintaining consistency in the titles of these two related articles, should this article be moved. silviaASH (inquire within) 11:58, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose the proposed title, open to a rename. Box-office "bombs" and "failures" are not synonymous. The scale of failure is also intrinsic to the definition of a bomb, which the proposed term doesn't quite capture. I am open to a renaming, but as per the recent move discussion at Talk:List_of_biggest_box-office_bombs#Requested_move_12_December_2025, the bigger problem is actually the "box-office" part. Films are not just dependent on box-office, they also get revenue from ancillary markets which also help determine whether a film is a flop, so "box-office" is something of a misnomer in this context. Another problem with both the titles is that the scope is not clear i.e. the article is specifically about films, but that is not clear from the title alone. I agree with the nominator that the existing title is problematic, but I don't think the proposed name is an improvement. The nominator argues that colloquialisms should be avoided when more encyclopedic alternatives are obvious, but I don't think there is an encyclopedic alternative that is obvious. That doesn't mean to say there isn't an encyclopedic alternative, but the question requires a bit more thought. It would be great if we could find a sensible way forward for this article and the list. Betty Logan (talk) 01:53, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

  A potential alternative could be Commercial failures in film (and List of commercial failures in film), which has some precedent in List of commercial failures in video and arcade games. As for the concern regarding capturing the scale of failure, I did address this in the move request; I feel that the article should describe box-office failure in general regardless of scale rather than focusing on "catastrophic" losses. What makes a film a "box-office bomb" is often the political dimension of the studio or distributor's public embarrassment in the industry media (something that simply isn't present in the Dead Reckoning example cited above) in addition to the pure financial losses, and that's a subjective matter that can only be properly captured by evaluating what the sources say. silviaASH (inquire within) 02:29, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

  Support your proposed alternative (coincidentally I made the same suggestion last RM) ThePoggingEditor (talk) 20:54, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

  This hits it on the nose. A "bomb" is a complete disaster. Any movie that fails to make a profit is a "failure." Any author that strives for accuracy should avoid "nothing" words (say he "rushed" to the store, not he "went." Any thesaurus can add better words for the generic "failure," depending on the specific circumstances, such as fiasco, debacle, catastrophe, disaster, blunder. A disastrous movies is not a mere failure; it is a "bomb," and has been so identified in the industry for generations. ~2026-97952-9 (talk) 19:30, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Business and WikiProject Film have been notified of this discussion. silviaASH (inquire within) 03:10, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

• Support "Box-office failure" seems to be the common name, per Ngrams. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 05:25, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

  Different concepts. The proposed rename would alter the scope of the article. While editors are free to do that, it should be done explicitly rather than as a side-effect of a rename. Betty Logan (talk) 23:37, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

• Support. I largely agree with the above discussion and, as such, I too am not sure what the absolute perfect title for this article should be. I have found "flop" to be the more common colloquialism today, making "bomb" even less appropriate to remain in the title here. Though there is certainly a colloquial difference between being a "flop" and a "bomb", but, being colloquial, these have no proper definition. I would agree that "Box-office failure" does not entirely fix the problem but I do believe it is an improvement as it is a more neutral and common name. I would also agree with silviaASH that these colloquialisms should be subtopics of an article about box-office failure (and whatever that entails according to what the sources tell us) instead of being the main topic here. As such, they need not be synonymous. I understand that "films are not just dependent on box-office" and as such using "box-office" in the title can be viewed as imprecise if we are to include all possible revenue sources, but I'm not finding the primary coverage about the financial performance of films in English reliable sources to be precise in that manner, currently or historically. And I'm not convinced the article should even try to account for those separate revenue numbers, not only because it is not very reflective of the regular coverage that discusses flops, bombs, duds, i.e. failures, but because it is rather difficult to do so, which makes it essentially impossible for us to fairly determine some reliable total number based on spotty, incomplete data and then present it as accurate here on Wikipedia. Read the entire first paragraph at List of highest-grossing films, which has specifically excluded non box-office earnings for these reasons. And I'm not convinced that the metonym "box-office" is unclear to readers that it is about theatrical film earnings because, again, this is rather obviously reflected in the coverage about film revenue that has been published in reliable sources on a weekly basis for many decades now. It is the common name for theatrical film earnings. No other name is as common and recognizable to readers. That being said, "box office" can still refer to other ticketed earnings, such as that of plays. If the focus is to correct for that, then I too cannot see "an encyclopedic alternative that is obvious". But I believe we are venturing to correct for "bomb" at this juncture, and "failure" is indeed more neutral while still being a common name as "Box-office failure" (the natural opposite of the common "box-office success"), over the non-neutral colloquials "Box office bomb", "Box-office flop", "Box-office dud", "Box-office disappointment" etc. The article where it is now is basically the opposite of "Box-office smash", which we would never title an article here. Οἶδα (talk) 09:07, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose: This article is not about films that generally underperform at the box office or could otherwise be deemed a commercial failure, it is specifically about the phrase "Box office bomb" and how it has been historically used. While it is a loaded term that should not be applied to films without adequate sourcing, it is still a noteworthy term that should be explained to readers. This move would only make sense if the article was rewritten to be about general box office failures with mention of various terms that are used. But as is I do not support the move. - adamstom97 (talk) 09:26, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

  If it is indeed about the phrase and its historical definitions, then that should be corrected, given that Wikipedia is not a dictionary. However, I would very much disagree with this assessment of the current state of the article. At present, only the lede concerns the definition of "box-office bomb", and it puts undue weight on defining the term, because the bulk of the article concerns what causes a box-office failure and how a studio's business may be impacted by that failure. The lede should ideally be rewritten to reflect the actual content of the article, but this is an issue beyond the scope of this move request that does not require consensus beforehand. silviaASH (inquire within) 10:39, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

  (I have made a BOLD effort to improve the lede to resolve this issue.) silviaASH (inquire within) 10:48, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose per the reasons in the 2022 snow closed RM. Please ping its participants, thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:36, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

  Which 2022 RM was this? I see the 2025 RM for the list article linked earlier, but I don't know of any 2022 RM, and this talk page doesn't list any past RMs. silviaASH (inquire within) 11:41, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

  In any case, that 2025 move proposal was different, and as far as I can see most of the opposes there had to do with WP:CONCISE. I do not see that as relevant here; my proposed title is equally as concise as the existing one, and changing the list article to List of biggest box-office failures would be equally as concise as its extant title. Had I voted in that RM, I probably would have opposed moving the article to Masem's proposed title under CONCISE, and instead proposed "List of biggest box-office failures" as an alternative for the reasons already outlined here.

  Pinging participants of the related 2025 RM for the list article; @Masem, @ThePoggingEditor, @Herostratus, @GoneIn60, @Zacwill, @Thewolfchild, @Bluesatellite, and @Jessintime. silviaASH (inquire within) 11:48, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

  Here's the 2022 snow/withdrawn RM: Talk:Box-office bomb/Archive 1#Requested move 20 August 2022. It should be added to the top of this talk page too. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:56, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

  Thank you for the link. In looking at that 2022 RM, my primary observations there are that the nomination argument, a simple statement of WP:GOOGLEHITS, is not particularly compelling IMHO. I would not have voted in favor based on that statement. I feel that the outcome there should not bias this RM given that my arguments are significantly different (and a few people have voted in favor here already, including Betty Logan, who opposed the 2022 RM, so I do not think this will be a SNOW case as was seen there). Further pings: @Accesscrawl, @Segaton, @InfiniteNexus, and @H. Carver. (Omitted Coolcaesar and MarnetteD as they are both blocked from editing blocked and deceased respectively so there is no point pinging them.) silviaASH (inquire within) 13:22, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

  A slight correction. MarnetteD is not blocked, but died. One of our many losses. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:00, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

  Apologies for that mistake. I've corrected my comment. silviaASH (inquire within) 15:04, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

  As I say in my oppose comment above, my opinion comes from the 2022 requested move discussion, which is about the same topic as this one. Kind of presenting it into evidence, and ask the closer to read the entire discussion upon which my !vote is based. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:35, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

  The issue is that the 2022 discussion you are advancing as a substitute for any specific argument of your own consisted of, as the user Segaton first correctly addressed there, a "misrepresentation of results and coverage and misleading attempts of turning this into a "dialect" issue". Or, more specifically, the following exact issues:

  • a false claim that Google Scholar has more results for "box office bomb" than "box office failure
  • a false claim that uses of "failure" over "bomb" are in reference to Bollywood productions and thus there is an WP:ENGVAR issue
  • a false claim that Ngram data is only showing "box-office failure" as being higher because it is being used in a descriptive manner
  • unevidenced claims that "box-office bomb" is the WP:COMMONNAME
  • unevidenced claims asserting what the definition of "box-office bomb" is and is not

  A bizarre "discussion" then played out below with Segaton instead endorsing the false "descriptive manner" claim and citing a series of random websites to support a series of equally random conclusions. Then, after only 3 days and 17 hours of being open, the nominating user abruptly closed the discussion as "withdrawn" based on Segaton's proposal in the discussion that we change the article to present "box-office bomb" as having a strictly different definition than that of "box-office failure", with "box-office failure" instead being presented as being synonymous with "box office flop", which Segaton promptly did here here. All based on a specious mixture of original research concluding that related colloquial terms have "technical" definitions and thresholds, with nothing more than a Buzzfeed article to support that claim.

  Sorry, but I find that outrageous and I'm surprised that I need to explain why and that you are appealing to it as your rationale here. It is wholly unrigorous and patently biased, shirking all responsibility to examine coverage in reliable sources and instead opting for personal interpretations. The same course is being taken in the discussion here. Because, respectfully, you have provided absolutely no evidence to support your claims. The only information you have thus far offered is citing this highly questionable past discussion and making a vague comment about users here preferring a term because it is what they are "thinking" about, as well as making a series of comments where you prescribe "where the 'bomb' descriptor kicks in", with zero citations to published sources that actually delineate any of this in the way you have so confidently asserted: that "bomb" is only reserved for a specific threshold and carries an exclusive connotation. No sourced coverage that actually shows there to be any formal or consistent definitions for these terms, especially in relation with one another. None. And you, and others here, are ignoring the evidence that shows "box-office bomb" is not more common than "box-office flop". And no one has provided any real-world evidence showing that those colloquial terms carry strictly different definitions. That calls into question the entire position you and others are advancing here. They are all terms for a film that underperformed at the box office, and they have been used interchangeably with no consistent definition, which makes any attempt to define and apply them here a matter of original research. Specifically, we should not be presenting "bomb" to readers over "flop" and defining it in any distinct or meaningful way. If you disagree then please do as I prescribed below: provide the contrary evidence on this talk page that shows "bomb" has primacy in usage for this topic and provide the sources that properly, and consistently, outline "bomb" as a term and differentiate it from the term "flop". Except the data and sources I and others have already since provided indicate that "box-office bomb" is dwarfed by the other terms in common usage, even when excluding "descriptive manner" cases. This has not been properly addressed.

  So far, most of this discussion has consisted of editors simply stating what they believe to be true without providing evidence. Over and over and over and over and over again. What is going on? That is not how consensus is formed on Wikipedia. Can we please start holding this discussion to a higher standard than the 2022 one? Can we agree that it is inappropriate for users to enter a move discussion, summarily invoke WP:COMMONNAME, and then assert, without supporting evidence, what terms technically mean or do not mean? And can we accept that this constitutes speculation rather than a substantiated and careful reflection of the available literature? I remain concerned by the number of editors here who are seemingly satisfied with the complete dearth of evidence being presented for the claims being made. Thus I will continue to repeat the following: Reliable sources are the entire basis of Wikipedia, which is a compiler of already published knowledge, not a publisher of original thought. Wikipedia demands actual scrutiny of the published material about a given subject. Your votes and statements must be anchored in actual evidence derived from that material. Otherwise, you are not weighing the record, you are merely substituting your own. Οἶδα (talk) 07:51, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

• Support I do believe that there is a clear distinction here as well. Films that are demonstrated by sources to lose a lot of money can neutrally and without OR be called "box office failures", but "box office bomb", at least to me, imply films that had high expectations by a significant portion of the film-covering media and failed spectulary, in which case they actually "bombed". But that requires sources to make the distinction for us, and most of the time we're currently using "box office bomb" it is simply based on looking at the difference between budget and ticket sales and not the expected performance. Masem (t) 12:44, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:AINTBROKE. Feels like we just went though all this, like... 5 minutes ago. The article "Box office bomb" needs to retained as is because that is a specific subject worthy of an article. Should some people feel the need to create synonymous, related articles, redirects, sub-subsections, etc. for "Motion picture ventures and projects that did not realize sufficient monetary returns on investment via any commercial means" (yadda, yadda, yadda) then go right ahead. It doesn't change the fact that many films are described as "box office bombs" both in media and everyday usage. That brings us to our list article, which is a "List of the biggest box office bombs" - not all box office bombs. And as for "box office", it is a perfectly acceptable collequialism, and look no further than the main source used on the list article (almost exclusively), that being "Box Office Mojo". Our list is a popular article that many readers have no problem finding and understanding. So again, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. (And perhaps we should seek a moratorium on these move requests? Three years would be a good start...) - \\'cԼF 14:53, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

  I don't see a need for a moratorium. The last move request for the list page was in December, nearly two months ago, and the last one for the main page was in 2022, and I didn't even know about it because it wasn't noted at the top of the talk page. It's not like this is getting an onslaught of new requests from the same people; I was previously uninvolved in any of those debates and just happened to think independently that this RM was warranted. silviaASH (inquire within) 14:59, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:NPOVTITLE. 162 etc. (talk) 17:45, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
• Support per WP:COMMONNAME and above supporting arguments. Comparing "box-office flop", "box-office bomb", "box-office disappointment", and "box-office failure" in Ngram shows the latter, "failure", as the most common with "flop" perhaps the closest behind, though ranking at a distant second. In direct comparison to "bomb", a simple unscientific Google search shows 523k results for "failure" as opposed to only 215k results for "bomb" (of course, take that somewhat lightly with a grain of salt).
  Outside of the lead, this article essentially covers financial failure from a general perspective with light doses sprinkled in of what it means for a film to bomb. So the scope of the article is already naturally following suit! Should the rename proceed, we would only have to make a simple adjustment to the article, moving the aspect of bombing into its own section and redirecting "box-office bomb" to that section. Makes total sense to me. Not sure why it wasn't done years ago. --GoneIn60 (talk) 00:32, 8 February 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. Per WP:NPOVTITLE, titles are allowed to be non-neutral (or, by extension, not entirely accurate) so long as they are commonly recognizable and meet the other WP:CRITERIA. Furthermore, nobody really says "box-office failure". If you do a quick search for the term, you will only get results for "box-office bomb" or "box-office flop". I know editors often insist that there is a distinction between "bomb", "flop", "disappointment", etc., and maybe there technically is, but the distinction won't matter to the average reader. Alternative terms can be discussed and clarified in the lead. InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:58, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  Nobody really says that? Try telling that to Variety, Vulture, USA Today, and The Independent. These were found in a quick search. The real eye-opener is in what Ngram shows. Surprised (or maybe not) that you didn't mention that. -- GoneIn60 (talk) 05:19, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  That's a misread. Those articles are not describing the films as a "box-office failure", but rather describing the films' box-office performance as a "failure". You'll notice all of those sentences say "the box-office failure of ...", which can be reworded as "the failure of the box office [performance] of ...". This is different from saying "the film was a box-office bomb". If this logic isn't clicking, try replacing "box-office failure" with "box-office bomb" in those sentences; you'll find that it doesn't work. As a result, the ngram results cannot be taken at face value in this case. So, this is just an ordinary descriptive phrase, and the common name for the term for a film that failed at the box office is indeed "box-office bomb". InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:57, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  This doesn't really make much sense at all. None of these articles use the word "bomb" anywhere. They're clearly saying the films failed at the box office, but not so catastrophically (in their estimation) as to be considered "bombs", which perfectly tracks with the logic already laid out that while all "box-office bombs" are considered failures, not all "box-office failures" are considered bombs.

  I don't think having a separate article on non-bomb failures at Box-office failure would make much sense, since, as outlined, this article is not about the term "bomb" and it should not be, given that, again, WP:NOTDICTIONARY. Having "bomb" as a subtopic of this article makes far more sense than the inverse.

  As an aside, I find it very curious in this discussion that so far both the support and oppose camps are citing largely the same policies for their rationale, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in squaring these differing interpretations of the policies. What do you make of the clause in WP:POVNAME I cited about how colloquial common names may be avoided if a more neutral alternative is obvious? silviaASH (inquire within) 06:20, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  Actually, it's quite the opposite. The common phrase for a film failing at the box office is simply "box-office failure". It's all encompassing of the topic, ranging from underperforming to massive failure. On the extreme end of the spectrum is where you typically see it described as a "box-office bomb", the massive side, but it can also be used as an attention-grabbing headline like "flop". Think of these spectrums as subsets of the overall topic, which really needs a broader name. If you actually review the article, you'll realize it's covering the broader scope, not just the massive financial failure aspect. -- GoneIn60 (talk) 06:20, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  This is the same dilemma faced by 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre and HIV/AIDS, and they ultimately settled on compromises that use both the common-but-inaccurate word and the accurate-but-uncommon word. Unfortunately, we do not have a similar solution here; if we are choosing between a common-but-inaccurate word and an accurate-but-uncommon word, since we can't use both, then the former wins per WP:NPOVTITLE. Plenty of article titles on Wikipedia are misnomers, e.g. Spanish flu (not actually from Spain), Silk Road (actually multiple roads), planetary nebulae (nothing to do with planets), etc.; synonyms that are more comprehensive, neutral, or accurate for these terms exist, but they are not common. Again, the distinction between "bomb", "flop", "failure", "disappointment", etc. can be explained in the article, but the title should be the one that has the highest chance of ringing a bell for readers. InfiniteNexus (talk) 06:43, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  I think you may be overcomplicating things. The article discusses underperformance as a whole. Nearly two-thirds of the article's prose (700+ words) doesn't even relate to bombing in the sense of massive failure. If you recognize that and agree there's a difference between bombing and underperforming, then it should make sense why it's more efficient to redirect readers who click box-office bomb to a subsection within the article; it is a subtopic. If that isn't sinking in, then I'm afraid you're missing the forest for the trees. -- GoneIn60 (talk) 07:39, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  the title should be the one that has the highest chance of ringing a bell for readers

  Except you are wrong. "Box-office bomb" is not more common than "box-office flop". That undercuts the entire position you're advancing here. So I'm not sure how rooting around the bin of common-but-inconsistently-used slang terms for describing the financial performance of films ("flop", "bomb", "dud", "disappointment", "disaster", "misfire", "catastrophe"), how any of this is preferable to a neutral name that is simultaneously in common usage. Never mind the fact that it actually captures the full scope of the article without forcing a narrow or sensational framing. Οἶδα (talk) 09:25, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  Also

  but they are not common

  Not the situation here. "Box-office failure" is in common usage. Ngram already shows this Do you want me to pull up all published usage in The New York Times next? It exceeds "box-office bomb" by a large margin there. So does "box-office flop". And "box-office disappointment" exceeds both. In Variety, "flop" and "disappointment" equally exceed "bomb". Οἶδα (talk) 09:26, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  I'm not sure why you are convinced that the article cannot be moved unless it is moved to a grammatical analog of "box-office bomb". We are not required to mirror the syntax or idiomatic form of an existing title, especially when the article's scope extends beyond what that term denotes. This is easily addressed by adjusting the lead of the article from "A box-office bomb is" to "Box-office failure is/refers to". Οἶδα (talk) 08:22, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  nobody really says "box-office failure"

  Ummm.... quick search you say?

  On The Guardian's website alone: Οἶδα (talk) 07:12, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  The miscommunication here may be that those of us who prefer 'Box office bomb' are thinking of the worse-of-the-worse, the major losses and not just the pretty bad "failures". That's what the article seems to be about. Lots of films will under-perform or lose a great deal of money while not being majorly anticipated or otherwise favored. These are not the bombs. The difference may be either subtle or obvious, and for many editors the obvious is where the wording 'box office bomb' reigns. Randy Kryn (talk) 09:39, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  But the article is about financial underperformance of films in general, and not the term "box-office bomb". As I already said, it should not be about the term per WP:NOTDICT, and if it was written to be solely about the term and its connotations, I'd be at AfD, arguing for a WP:TNT + soft redirect to wikt:box-office bomb, rather than RM. It's also not about "the worst" failures, but the causes of box-office failure and its potential impact on studio businesses, so the idea that the article is solely about films that "bombed" really doesn't seem to hold water either. silviaASH (inquire within) 12:11, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  Note that the nomination includes the request to rename List of biggest box-office bombs, a title which fits the description I've made above. When a film loses money it can be called a failure, when it loses a great deal of money, ruins careers, or fails not only to live up to expectations but gains an early reputation of containing little worth expecting, that's where the 'bomb' descriptor kicks in. 'Failure' doesn't carry the same connotation, and should remain an alternate name. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:37, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  Not every box-office failure is a box-office bomb, but every box-office bomb is a box-office failure. "Failure" may not carry the same connotation, but that list article is titled "List of biggest box-office bombs", not "List of box-office bombs". The inclusion of "biggest" already signals the general scale without further requiring a non-neutral slang term. Biggest failures = "bombs". And again, there is no evidence to suggest "bomb" is even more common than "flop" or "disappointment". So there is no valid reason for the list to exist at "bombs" over List of biggest box-office flops or List of biggest box-office disappointments. But these are not as neutral nor as common as "failures". As I stated above, the article where it is now is basically the opposite of "Box-office smash", which we would never title an article here. Despite the fact that "box-office smash" it is an EXTREMELY COMMON name (in reliable sources, check for yourself) for when a film earns a great deal of money, far more common than "bomb", "disappointment" and "flop", see Ngram. Οἶδα (talk) 18:39, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  Who defines at what point a film crosses over from being a "disappointment" to a "flop" to a "bomb"? You? Me? Coverage in reliable sources, the entire basis of Wikipedia, certainly has not done that. This is a recipe for a bad article. As I wrote previously, there is certainly a colloquial difference between being a "flop" and a "bomb", but, being colloquial, these have no proper definition because they are inconsistently defined. So indeed, "bomb" is certainly not synonymous with "failure", but neither is "flop" synonymous with "bomb", nor "disappointment" with "flop". Different publications use these labels interchangeably, presumably according to the respective writer's own informal thresholds, which makes any attempt to define and apply them here a matter of original research. I would note that List of biggest box-office bombs pertains specifically to the "biggest" box-office failures, not to all "bombs", because that would be an impossible, biased task. Reliable sources do not apply the term consistently enough to support using it as any kind of objective classification. There is no good reason for us to dip our toes into this lexical morass by forcing any of these slang terms as the article title here and having the entire article be about the precise (yet inherently imprecise) scale of a given colloquial term. In fact, the article here doesn't even try to limit itself to "bomb", or any other single slang term. Οἶδα (talk) 18:11, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

  you are approaching the actual issue with this article, which is gradual scope creep from "films that have spectacularly failed and are are described as having *bombed* in reliable coverage" to "nearly every large film since ~2000 that didn't make money". The edits by @SilviaASH just cemented the second definition by rewriting the lead to fit it, which of course does make the title seem inappropriate in retrospect. There is no reason for both this article to exist and be about the subject of box office bombs, while also having a list of commercial failures analogous to the highest grossing movies list. (Her strange reading of WP:NOTADICT notwithstanding, there are hundreds of articles about specific terms, if they have enough coverage and material to warrant one).

  The article should be split, the lead reverted and a new list article for commercial failures created. This is a real term with real relevance and changing it to a softened version that no one actually uses as a term, as laid out above, does not fix that issue. Gradually transforming an article to be about a different subject is a fundamentally flawed approach. — jonas (talk) 00:26, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

  I don't see how having separate articles on two different types of commercial failure in film is useful, especially when this article is already so short and it is intuitive to cover different degrees of commercially failing films in one article rather than arbitrarily splitting them. If those two articles had already existed, I would be nominating them for merging into a single article on WP:NOPAGE grounds. Regardless of if the move goes through or not, I firmly Oppose any split. silviaASH (inquire within) 04:14, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

  @Jonas1015119: What you've claimed here is demonstrably false. The article's scope has extended far beyond the term "bomb" for essentially its entire history, well before any recent edits to the article by silviaASH. It has covered the overall topic of box-office failure (as compared to success) for ages now. Check the revision from the past 20 years if you don't believe me. Here is the article in 2023, and in 2020, and in 2017, and in 2014, and in 2010, and in 2007. If you go all way the back to 2004 when the article was created in 2004 then, yes, the stubby article covered only the term "bomb" at that point in time. But the article's title or lead section suggesting that the article's focus is only the term "bomb" does not change the fact that its body has instead covered box-office failure in general. And if you do look at the page history you will notice the article has never exactly been high-quality or developed with great sourcing, and a shocking amount the content has remained similar over time. So there is nothing "fundamentally flawed" about the proposal here. The opposite is true. "Box-office failure" captures the full scope of the article, currently and historically.

  "changing it to a softened version that no one actually uses as a term"

  I am growing tired of people on this talk page continuing to baselessly claim this to be a fact while completely ignoring the actual usages in reliable sources, which, I will repeat, is the entire basis of Wikipedia, which is an encylopedia, a compiler of already published knowledge, not a publisher of original thought. Any of our personal biases for/against a term has no relevance to what should be reflected on Wikipedia. You say "there are hundreds of articles about specific terms, if they have enough coverage and material to warrant one", as if to suggest that the coverage and material about "bomb" (its definition, its history, its examples) exceeds that of "failure" or "flop". But, respectfully, anyone can flippantly claim things like this, but without proof of the actual said coverage it's just hot air. Completely unevidenced. And likely based solely on what first comes to one's mind, as opposed to a proper examination of the sources that have been published. As I already alluded to above, after deeply investigating the coverage in high-quality mainstream English newspapers, journals and books, the opposite appears to be true. If need be, I can again exhaust this talk page with the usages, in all directions.

  But you say "no one actually uses as a term, as laid out above". I am unsure what you are referring to because this has not been "laid out". All that exists is InfiniteNexus stating "Those articles are not describing the films as a "box-office failure", but rather describing the films' box-office performance as a "failure". You'll notice all of those sentences say "the box-office failure of ...", which can be reworded as "the failure of the box office [performance] of ...". This is different from saying "the film was a box-office bomb" ... As a result, the ngram results cannot be taken at face value in this case. Except we can actually account for this: Ngram already shows that "a box-office failure" exceeds "a box-office bomb", the same is true without hyphens. You can also expand it to "was a box-office failure" too, and again without hyphens. So I cannot accept "No one actually says 'box-office failure' as a term" any longer here. It is completely unevidenced and a convenient excuse to handwave away actually researching the important details, perhaps appealing to intuition instead. And your own intuition is not a reliable source: it is WP:OR. I would be curious what @Betty Logan has to say about this because they also made this "descriptive manner" claim in the previous move discussion at Talk:Box-office_bomb/Archive_1#Requested_move_20_August_2022. Despite the aforementioned data indicating otherwise. You can also perform the same adjusted searches on Google Scholar: "a box office bomb" (270 results), "a box office flop" (836 results), "a box office failure" (1,060 results), as well as "was a box office bomb" (99 results), "was a box office flop" (380 results), "was a box office failure" (523 results). Well? And regardless, as I already wrote above, I'm not sure why anyone is convinced that the article cannot be moved unless it is moved to a grammatical analog of "box-office bomb". We are not required to mirror the syntax or idiomatic form of an existing title, especially when the article's scope extends beyond what that term denotes. But it nevertheless remains false to claim that "box-office failure" is not is in common usage as a term in the same way "box-office bomb" is.

  Which brings me to your claim "This is a real term with real relevance". As I mentioned earlier, coverage in reliable sources, the entire basis of Wikipedia, has not sufficiently defined these colloquial phrases. They have no proper definition because they are inconsistently defined. So while our intuition may say that "bomb" is not synonymous with "failure", and "flop" is not synonymous with "bomb", and "disappointment" is not synonymous "flop", that remains unevidenced. Different publications use these labels interchangeably, presumably according to the respective writer's own informal thresholds, which makes any attempt to define and apply them here a matter of original research. So again: Who defines at what point a film crosses over from being a "disappointment" to a "flop" to a "bomb"? You? Me? No. Reliable sources do, if they have done so, and it has not been proven that they have. So please provide the contrary evidence on this talk page that shows "bomb" has primacy in usage for this topic and please provide the sources that properly outline "bomb" as you have defined it here, particularly in contrast with the other colloquial terms like "flop". Without evidence to substantiate your claims, continuing this level of back-and-forth here is not productive. One man's "bomb" is another man's "flop". There is no good reason for us to wade into this impossible-to-define mess of slang terms by presenting "bomb" to readers over "flop" and defining it in any meaningful way. No reliable sources have consistently done so.

  I would note that a series of editors have more recently tried to insert the claim that "A box-office bomb is technically worse than box-office flop." into the article, citing only this BuzzFeed article which, underneath a Lindsay Lohan gif, includes the unqualified remark "Well, a bomb is technically worse than a flop for starters, but they're kinda used interchangeably." This was questioned by user Unknown Temptation, who wrote, "Is this a real "technicality" or the opinion of a buzzfeed staffer? Is this really a fixed definition, like respiration being technically different to breathing though often confused?" Another user removed it shortly thereafter, and MarnetteD immediately restored it citing "previous discussions on the talk page". It was later removed by Drmies, who wrote "let’s not have BuzzFeed define our language for us. “technically” requires much more." Indeed. It was then restored a month later by another user, which was rightly removed by Thewolfchild and MikeAllen. Apologies for my length here, but I am rather perturbed by the lack of rigor in this discussion. The previous move discussion in 2022 was equally abysmal, riddled with non-evidence and false information from top to bottom, and coming from many of the same folks who have participated again here. Many of you are not engaging with the new evidence here, seemingly choosing to rest on your laurels instead. A common name is not what you think rings a bell, not what sounds familiar from past reading, not what you reckon is most commonly used in reliable sources, not what you think you already know. It is what the evidence actually bear out. Your !votes must be sustained by evidence. Otherwise I can only assume you are comfortable having your bias confirmed. Οἶδα (talk) 10:58, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

  Well, I'm not reading all that (and would advise keeping comments concise if you want to persuade other people), but skimming through it, wow, I genuinely do not recall participating in that RM four years ago — that was a while ago! Going through it again, I think it's possible some things may have changed in the years since (for example, the Google Scholar results I described no longer hold true), but the fundamental arguments remain valid. As I and others have noted, the alleged distinction between "bomb", "flop", "disappointment", "failure", "dud", and its countless other synonyms is (1) not clearly defined or universally accepted, so we are not in a position to make a judgment; (2) a content concern inappropriate for discussion in an RM; and (3) doesn't matter, because we are not required to use the most accurate, all-encompassing, or "neutral" term. I oppose moving this article to a generic (i.e. WP:NDESC) name just to accomodate complaints of inaccuracy and non-neutrality (the latter of which is silly, because "failure" and other synonyms are just as non-neutral). As I wrote in my previous comment, the apparent popularity of "box-office failure" in sources is likely due to it being used in a generic, descriptive context, since "bomb" is an industry-specific term whereas "failure" is just an English word. And yes, we should absolutely consider not only the quantitive evidence presented but also the qualitative ones — that's like, decision-making 101. InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:55, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

  I do have to agree that keeping comments concise helps foster a productive debate. Long-winded replies (especially in a RM) are more likely to obfuscate the point and derail conversation. That said, I disagree with your #2. All aspects of our article titling policy are in play, and if it can be shown that the content of the article is not in line with the current title, then it most certainly becomes an appropriate topic for a RM discussion. You don't have to search too hard to find strong sources like Variety (highly-reputable trade source) or CNBC (highly-reputable non-trade source), which define a bomb as a special kind of failure where a film loses a massive amount of money. The article we're discussing in its current state doesn't do that. As I mentioned above, it spends 60% of its real estate talking about any kind of failure, even the non-bomb kind. Hence, the need for a more appropriate title.

  If this doesn't happen now, it will likely happen eventually. Another article covering commercial failure in film will eventually pop up, and we'll be back here discussing a merge. GoneIn60 (talk) 06:42, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

  You're assuming that "bomb" is not synonymous with "failure", which, again, is not up to us to decide. More importantly, most readers won't care about the difference, so there's no point in being pedantic about the definition. InfiniteNexus (talk) 06:54, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

  Failure just means "lack of success" or "falling short" – a description that also applies to films that are not bombs. These discussions often devolve into pedantry when editors are not able to agree over basic definitions. Readers may or may not ultimately care, but that has no bearing on whether the title is correct. It's important that titles accurately reflect the scope and depth of the topic at hand. -- GoneIn60 (talk) 08:10, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

  If this doesn't happen now, it will likely happen eventually.

  Yes, by me. Οἶδα (talk) 06:45, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

  Well, I'm not reading all that

  Completely valid reaction. I am nothing if not longwinded. But this discussion is madness and needs a reality check. If you are interested in learning more about the previous RM from four years ago, I would ask that you please consider what I wrote in my reply above to Randy Kryn.

  As I and others have noted, the alleged distinction between "bomb", "flop", "disappointment", "failure", "dud", and its countless other synonyms is (1) not clearly defined or universally accepted

  What? That's the point I have been making throughout the entire discussion.

  so we are not in a position to make a judgment

  Except we already are. We are choosing to present the term "bomb" over the term "failure", and even over the term "flop", despite reliable sources demonstrating those two terms are in greater common usage than "bomb". So this RM is no longer "just to accomodate complaints of inaccuracy and non-neutrality".

  As I wrote in my previous comment, the apparent popularity of "box-office failure" in sources is likely due to it being used in a generic, descriptive context

  Wrong. You keep repeating this. I've already provided evidence above that accounts for the "descriptive manner" uses and it clearly demonstates that claim to be false. "Box-office failure" still trounces "box-office bomb" when excluding "descriptive manner" cases. Cheers, though. Οἶδα (talk) 06:18, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

• Split/Oppose per the reasons laid out in my reply above. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonas1015119 (talk • contribs)
• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. Rreagan007 (talk) 03:23, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

  still a bit weird how so many of the comments are either "support per WP:COMMONNAME" or "Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME" and a good amount of the oppose comments don't really seem to be saying where they're getting the impression that "bomb" is the common name or substantively answering the COMMONNAME arguments of the support side... but okay silviaASH (inquire within) 04:23, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

  "Weird"... that is an understatement. Οἶδα (talk) 07:55, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose. I find the arguments for the change unconvincing. They do not overcome the opposition here and in the two prior RMs. They also do not properly address the stated concerns. 'Bomb' here is part of an acceptable NPOV title since the term is, and has been, widely used. 'Failure' is hardly a neutral term, anyway. A persistent problem seems to be how to actually define a box-office bomb, failure, flop, etc. That's an important issue but is largely beyond the scope of an RM. It has been suggested that 'box-office failure' and 'bomb' might have different definitions. That should be settled as a content matter first. If that results in article improvement and a clearer scope, it is *possible" that the resulting content would warrant a different title, although I do not relish another RM here… —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 19:54, 13 February 2026 (UTC)
• Comment: Interesting discussion so far! I did a quick read-through and some WP:SET checking and want to re-read the discussion. I generally agree that "box office bomb" as it is, is not quite as commonplace as one may think. However, I think we are being too explicit about the term. What I noticed is that "bombed" at the "box office" (covering variations) is much more prevalent than searching explicitly for "box office bomb". Focusing on Variety, you can see here that "bombed" is prevalent. (When using "failed" instead, it seems less connected to the box office.) For Ngrams, I added "bombed at the box office" and "failed at the box office" as seen here, and you can see "bombed at the office" be higher (though the fail-related ones stay higher). In general, though, it feels like we need more of a general box office performance article that can cover various metrics (like summarizing second weekend in box office performance) and measure of overall success (e.g., overperformance vs. underperformance), and this article would be a sub-article of the main one in some form. Will think and research more, but feel free to comment on if it matters or not that "bombed" is more prevalent. EDIT: I do see that "flopped" is pretty prevalent, possibly moreso. I wonder if it has to do with avoiding a more violent-sounding word. Erik (talk | contrib) 21:26, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

  Thanks Erik. That's kind of the same path I was on. There's a broader topic at play here. From a bird's eye view, the topic would be box office performance, but a slightly more focused or narrow view, the topic becomes about underperformance at the box office. Nearly 60% of this article focuses on underperformance. If you were strip that away and cover that in a different article (which we can certainly do), then you would be left with only 2-4 paragraphs covering the bomb aspect. That wouldn't really justify a standalone article. At the end of the day, the sub-topic of massive underperformance would easily fit inside of the larger article about underperformance.

  The long way around is to create that article and eventually merge the two. The shorter path is to rename this one now and continue developing it. Seems like consensus here is leaning in the direction of the longer path. -- GoneIn60 (talk) 23:00, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

  The long way around is to create that article and eventually merge the two.

  The discussion so far has ignored the evidence silviaASH and I have presented that clearly shows the title of this article has been at odds with the article itself for essentially its entire history, with users insisting, for no valid reason at all, that this article must remain titled "bomb" because it is a term, and it is a term they recognize, and they feel the term should have an article on Wikipedia. Yeah...what? As I stated already above: I'm not sure why anyone is convinced that the article cannot be moved unless it is moved to a synonym of "box-office bomb". We are not required to mirror the syntax, idiomatic form or even the meaning of an existing title, especially when the article's scope extends beyond what that term denotes. Fine...I guess. Nothing is stopping me from neutering this article of general underperformance coverage, leaving little more than the stub that existed back in 2004, then proposing to merge the glorified WP:NOTDICT stub into a larger article about underperformance that I will be forced to create as a result of this bizarre RM. And as I briefly alluded to above, it is rather surprising that no one is discussing just how low-quality and poorly developed this article is, with a shocking amount its content having remained the same over the past 20 years. Well, not that surprising given how little research has been done by the commenters here. After deeply examining this term more than I would like to admit, I can confidently say the current article is horribly inadequate, as it does not remotely capture the substance or depth of the published sources discussing the term. The content and sources included are exceedingly arbitrary and disproportionate under WP:WEIGHT. So I'm not exactly sure what we're preserving here, and why here, when here has never really been the "here" here. Οἶδα (talk) 07:44, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

  Thank you Erik for actually doing an examination of the reliable source coverage and the data derived from it, not just relying on what "one may think". Far too much of that has overtaken this discussion. I admit that when I first entered this discussion I too was inclined to believe that, for sure, "box-office bomb" had to be the most common term. But my intuition was not only WP:OR, it was wrong. Because anyone who properly examines the literature must come to the conclusion that, at the very, least "flop" exceeds "bomb" in common usage. That explodes the entire notion that "bomb" has primacy for the topic here. Οἶδα (talk) 06:44, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose as scope change. Lots of films can be failures; that's over-inclusive compared to the intended scope. "Bomb" is stronger. We'd need something like "catastrophic failures" to keep scope, since a film that costs 50 million but makes 49 million is a failure but not a "bomb". Per Betty Logan, not opposed to potential rename on box-office part, as the income generated by a film is not solely tied to the box office, especially in the era of streaming. Turning Red was made for streaming platforms but got a tiny 2-week window in theaters for example. SnowFire (talk) 17:48, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

  What exactly would you say the "intended scope" is? The article as it was prior to the beginning of the move discussion (though it hasn't changed much) mostly seems concerned with films that failed to recoup their budgets during their initial theatrical runs, which as I stated before could be "bombs" but could also simply be "underperforming" or "disappointments" depending on the degree of failure. I would not be opposed to rescoping the article to also consider financial failures outside the context of theatrical runs, but it'd be nice to see some more clarity regarding what exactly that might be proposed to look like. Maybe some more discussion about my early alternative proposal for the title Commercial failures in film might be warranted? silviaASH (inquire within) 13:56, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

  Intended scope and actual scope are two very different things. The article's title should reflect the actual scope of the article in its current state. -- GoneIn60 (talk) 18:49, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

  Re above two comments: The fundamental issue here is that most films lose money (if measured by their initial box office receipts). A topic that covered 50-80% of all films is over-inclusive and misleading, as many of these films in fact do fine financially in the long-term, and some lose money but in a respectable way that's covered by a studio's other successes. The appropriate place to discuss this general case would be something like Hollywood accounting or a (yet nonexistent?) article like Economics of the American film industry that deep dived how movies make money. My understanding of this topic is that it should be exclusively focused on films that took a major, major bath. Cutthroat Island took out the studio that made Terminator 2! Cases like that. That topic of the very most money-losing films should exist somewhere under some title, and making more articles is cool but shouldn't imply rescoping the mega-cine-catastrophe topic. SnowFire (talk) 16:47, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

  My understanding of this topic is that it should be exclusively focused on films that took a major, major bath

  And yet it's not. So it's not a scope change, which is the basis of your opposition here. Οἶδα (talk) 07:46, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose per Myceteae and SnowFire. The current title accurately describes the content.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:43, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

  The current title accurately describes the content.

  That is patently not true. The content is broader than the title implies. The majority of the article covers why films lose money and how they recoup it, which aligns more with explaining box‑office underperformance, not the concept of a "box-office bomb" where a film loses a disastrous amount of money. Οἶδα (talk) 08:31, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose since as Betty Logan stated, "failure" is not synonymous with "bomb" in reflecting the significant degree of failure. "Failure" covers bombs/flops and mere underperformances. WP:PRECISION applies in capturing that (and would support "flop" similarly). I found the Ngram Viewer results to be too explicit in its queries, and it is book-centric where this scope seems much more referenced in periodicals. In my WP:SET, using the film periodicals as domains and ProQuest US news sources, I found "box office" and variations of bomb much more common and fits WP:COMMONNAME in association with this topic. ProQuest showed many more bomb-based results relevant to this scope than failure did (you can try it out using it via WP:LIBRARY). Basically, the concept of this outcome is being "nounified" from "bombed at the box office" to just "box office bomb", so it's more of a noun-based description than a locked-in official-esque term. If a reader reads online elsewhere about films bombing at the box office and are curious what Wikipedia will say, they'll likely nounify it and type "box office bomb". This clearly talks about the topic even when box office bomb is only used in an image caption. When comparing "box office" and bomb results to "box office" and fail, I ultimately the former to have more direct association with the scope of this topic, with "failure" sometimes used more generically in contrast.

I do recognize that this article has too much content about box office underperformance in general, which seems to make some doubt the standalone potential of this scope. To better figure that out, I think we need a more general box office performance article under which the extraneous content can belong (along with other relevant details). I'm not quite sure if this should mean "box office bomb" could ultimately be relegated to just a section in such an article. In my research, I found some books about box office that could help for either the broader article or this article, but was not able to preview it to determine what kind and level of detail could be extracted. I feel like if we could have that general article and talk about how successes and failures are measured in general, then it would be easier to assess and hone the scope of this article. I sort of wonder if this article would not benefit from more of a "History" section with what films have bombed over time and the contexts in each they happened, which the standalone list does not cover.

If some kind of general article and deeper research could happen, I would be open to revisiting a RM discussion or a discussion to merge. Erik (talk | contrib) 14:01, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I think we need a more general box office performance article ... I'm not quite sure if this should mean "box office bomb" could ultimately be relegated to just a section in such an article.

I've come to accept that this is the likely route we're taking. We can develop both articles along their respective scopes and see where we end up. Then if a merge still seems appropriate down the road, we can cross that bridge when we get there. Although I think we end up in the same place (given Οἶδα's comments above about how little the bomb article has evolved in 20 years), it's still a reasonable approach. -- GoneIn60 (talk) 20:30, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

+1 here. I find this to be probably the most reasonably argued oppose rationale, and the proposal for a more general article is a good one. Although there is no consensus for a move, there does look to be a consensus that there are editorial issues with the article's content and its scope, so those should ideally be resolved before another move or a merge is considered. silviaASH (inquire within) 00:21, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Apologies for another long reply, but to properly address this requires probing the points raised. Of course, feel free to not read any of this.

So now we're shifting from "Box-office failure" can't be used because it is not an official term like "Box-office bomb" but is rather probably being used in a "descriptive manner" to "Box-office bomb" is not an official term so we must weigh every descriptive permutation of "bomb" with "box office" against every descriptive permutation of "failure" with "box office"? And that this indirect usage should, for some reason, dictate which "unofficial" fixed term is actually the most commonly used name and thus should be the title here? Interesting concept, but I'm not certain how exactly that fits with established procedure of determining a WP:COMMONNAME. Or how all of those permutations could even be properly measured, weighed, and synthesized according to some objective criteria to arrive at some conclusion, of what I don't know. And as I stated twice already above: I'm not sure why we're convinced that Wiki policy dictates that the article cannot be moved unless it is moved to a synonym of "box-office bomb". We are not required to mirror the syntax, idiomatic form or even the meaning of an existing title, especially when the article's scope extends beyond what that term denotes.

Further, in my WP:SET, using newspapers and film periodicals as domains, as well Google Scholar and Ngram Viewer, I still find "box-office failure" and "box-office flop" to be the far more WP:COMMONNAME for this topic. "Box-office failure" is in common usage and, per Ngram, exceeds "box-office flop" and "box-office bomb", including without hyphens. Ngram also already shows that "a box-office failure" exceeds "a box-office bomb", the same is true without hyphens. You can also expand it to "was a box-office failure" too, and again without hyphens. For fun, you can even see how antonyms of "bomb", like "hit" and "smash", rank against these terms (and without hyphens), only to be trounced by the antonym of "failure": box-office success (without hyphens). And as you already alluded above, adding "bombed at the box office" and "failed at the box office" shows "bombed at the office" higher than "box-office bomb", but still not higher than "failed at the box-office" and "box-office failure". But again, I'm not sure how data about such variations of phrase could even be appropriately factored into the equation here. You can also perform the same searches on Google Scholar: "box office bomb" (496 results), "box office flop" (1,380 results), "box office failure" (2,830 results) and the adjusted searches: "a box office bomb" (270 results), "a box office flop" (836 results), "a box office failure" (1,060 results), as well as "was a box office bomb" (99 results), "was a box office flop" (380 results), "was a box office failure" (523 results). And on ProQuest: "box office bomb" (4,243 results), "box office flop" (8,308 results), "box office failure" (6,891 results) and the adjusted searches: "a box office bomb" (1,587 results), "a box office flop" (4,251 results), "a box office failure" (2,219 results), as well as "was a box office bomb" (571 results), "was a box office flop" (1,697 results), "was a box office failure" (1,039 results).

I'm also uncertain of the relevance of a single WP:BUSINESSINSIDER article and its language choices to this topic and I would hope we could discard such low-tier sources from our consideration here and, more importantly, in the article itself. Because while we shouldn't be relying on single disreputable sources like Buzzfeed (see above) as our basis for what is defined in the article, we also shouldn't be relying on single reputable sources (CNBC) for those definitions either. As I alluded above, the article for this topic has never been impressive because the content and sources included are rather arbitrary and disproportionate. That being said, the literature for this term is also rather inconsistent too, which makes it difficult (perhaps impossible) to produce a well-developed article for this topic. Which is why I believe this article for a colloquial term is more of a WP:DICT article and would serve readers better as a stub, that is of course if we are forced to keep it here despite it not having been the broader topic of the article since the time it was an unreferenced stub all the way back in 2004, after which time it was redirected to List of movies that were financial failures, then restored as a stub in 2006. But again, while I'm not impressed with many of the conclusions shared here, they are about this article's title. They have no impact on how we adjust this article's content to fit its alleged scope, or how we create other articles to cover content outside of that scope. In general, this discussion is a lot of time spent trying to interpret a set of colloquial terms by a bunch of people who I would predict have little interest in actually developing the article LOL. Even after 15+ years and post- the 2022 move discussion, the article has not meaningfully developed or even changed much further. SAD! But perhaps that reflects the reality of making an article for a term such as this one. Thank you for actually doing some deeper research and considering how we move forward, but I'm not too optimistic about where this ends up. I too would dread the task of improving this article.

And to your first point, you say "failure" is not synonymous with "bomb" in reflecting the significant degree of failure. "Failure" covers bombs/flops and mere underperformances. But sorry, that is still original research on your part. Because, again: while our intuition may say that "bomb" is not synonymous with "failure", and "flop" is not synonymous with "bomb", and "disappointment" is not synonymous with "flop", that remains unevidenced. Different publications use these labels interchangeably, presumably according to the respective writer's own informal thresholds, which makes any attempt to define and apply them here a matter of original research. So who defines at what point a film crosses over from being a "disappointment" to a "failure", to a "flop" to a "bomb"? You? Me? No. Reliable sources do, if they have done so, and it has not been proven that they have. If you disagree then please do as I requested twice already above (to no avail): provide the contrary evidence on this talk page that shows "bomb" has primacy in usage for this topic and provide the sources that properly, and consistently, outline "bomb" as a term and differentiate it from the term "flop". Presenting "box-office bomb" to readers over "box-office flop" and "box-office failure" does not reflect what reliable sources have consistently done. That, to be clear, is what we are doing here. We are not presenting variations of phrases that can be derived from the recognized names of this topic. So I am not sure why it would be appropriate for us to attempt to deduce which variations of phrases have primacy for this topic and thus conclude that readers will proceed to nounify it in their searches and that the resulting "noun-based description" should be the article title here. That conclusion extrapolates from uncertain premises about naming conventions to equally uncertain speculations about reader behavior. Οἶδα (talk) 08:12, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Oppose: "Box-office bomb" is the colloquial WP:COMMONNAME and is synonymous with "box-office failure", "box-office disappointment", "box-office disaster", and other variations (which all redirect here). The genesis of these terms all mean the same thing. It is not up to us to interpret how these sound or make some feel. Yes, "bomb" is WP:JARGON, but it does not fall under WP:WEASELWORDS, MOS:PUFFERY, or WP:EXCEPTIONAL because there are a plethora of reliable sources using and covering this term. Rather than debating the semantics of this article title, it would be best to deduce which variation of the term is more often applied to specific films and handle that on a case-by-case basis, rather than unilaterally altering it based on a perceived bias. If the majority of sources call it this, then that is the term we predominantly use and explain it as needed. Being a "box-office bomb" is not an opinion, it is a neutral factual statement that is dependent on reputable sources verifying it. Just be careful for low-tier sources using it as loaded language. No need to fix something if it isn't broken. — Trailblazer¹⁰¹🔥 ^{(discuss · contribs)} 00:27, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

You state "Box-office bomb" is the colloquial WP:COMMONNAME but do not provide evidence for that claim. That sums up half of this discussion. If "the genesis of these terms all mean the same thing" then you must prove that reliable sources most commonly use it for this topic over "failure", "flop", "disappointment" etc. So far the evidence presented here has not demonstrated that. I can only continue to repeat the following: Reliable sources are the entire basis of Wikipedia, which is a compiler of already published knowledge, not a publisher of original thought. Wikipedia demands actual scrutiny of the published material about a given subject. Your votes and statements must be anchored in actual evidence derived from that material. Otherwise, you are not weighing the record, you are merely substituting your own. That is why I couldn't agree more when you say "It is not up to us to interpret how these sound or make some feel" and " it would be best to deduce which variation of the term is more often applied" so that we represent that to readers both here in the title and through what we include in the article. Οἶδα (talk) 08:20, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

If you think there is an issue with what the common name for this term is, then you would need to provide multiple high-quality reliable sources that dispute the longstanding consensus. A variety of articles from a single source (The Guardian you specifically referred to above) is not enough to prove the common name is different. Without substantial evidence, I cannot support this proposal. — Trailblazer¹⁰¹🔥 ^{(discuss · contribs)} 02:30, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose "Failure" is actually a less accurate word. It's recently been mentioned that streaming receipts are starting to displace box office. The industry term "box-office bomb," describing the attempt to recoup production thru box-office alone, is a better descriptor that "failure" which might be misleading. NotBartEhrman (talk) 23:13, 27 February 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose - A box office bomb is a different term than a box office failure. Guz13 (talk) 23:23, 1 March 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose. It's a good topic and the article covers it well and is well sourced. The current title is a good, natural English description of the (excellent) content, the title is in current English unambiguous (although, as the article fascinatingly points out, the original meaning was the very opposite), and recognisable. Nom states meaning of which is not obvious to those not in the know about the film business... I'm not particularly in the know but the current title has been part of my English since I first learned as a toddler that motion pictures existed. No problem to solve. Andrewa (talk) 04:23, 2 March 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose as the more WP:COMMONNAME based on the preponderance of evidence. Alansohn (talk) 18:26, 7 March 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose as per the WP:COMMONNAME arguments listed out in more detail by others above. RandomEditsForWhenIRemember (talk) 19:34, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose: the term "bomb" is overwhelmingly the common term. Renaming this to not hurt anyone's feeling is deeply misguided. CapnZapp (talk) 09:33, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

  Although I've accepted that this request is likely not going to be successful, I feel that describing my proposal as being "to not hurt anyone's feeling" is a gross misrepresentation of my arguments. That's not why I proposed this at all. silviaASH (inquire within) 23:04, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

  The proposer of this name change suggested the new name in the interest of neutrality, not to guard someone's feelings. They provided logical arguments backed by policies and examples. Even if I am mostly impartial to which way this RM goes, I think you unfairly discount the arguments made with your second sentence that, to be frank, didn't add any value to the discussion. ThePoggingEditor (talk) 00:27, 11 March 2026 (UTC)