Aug 25, 2026 · 1h 52m
A flop draft turns movie failure into a judgment call
The Flops Movie Draft
The panel tests whether commercial losses, critical disasters, career damage, and later cult status can belong in the same category.
- 1The draft distinguishes genuine release disappointments from movies that became successful or beloved only later.
- 2Roger Ebert’s zero-star reviews become a category for debating critical severity, taste, and cultural afterlife.
- 3The final slates favor films whose failures reveal changing audiences, damaged careers, or unrealized franchise ambitions.
Don't miss
The panel debates whether The Shawshank Redemption can be drafted as a flop despite becoming widely successful and beloved later.
The brief
Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins host Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan for a draft built around a deceptively hard question: what actually counts as a flop?
The panel separates release disappointment from later cult success, weighing box-office expectations, reviews, marketing, career damage, and the strange afterlife of movies such as Waterworld.
Their categories turn failure into a strategy game: star bombs, sub-25% Rotten Tomatoes scores, Roger Ebert zero-star reviews, major losses, and failed franchise launches.
The selections range from Freddy Got Fingered, Ishtar, and The Thing to West Side Story, Blackhat, Salt, and Josie and the Pussycats.
The standout dispute arrives when The Shawshank Redemption is considered: can a movie qualify as a flop if audiences never truly regarded it as one?
Featuring
Bill Simmons
Roger Ebert
Rotten Tomatoes
Ridley ScottListen to the full episode and explore every guest, topic, and moment on PodLume.