Netflix Removes 'Babylon' After $87 Million Loss: Why the Film Failed

As of June 7, Damien Chazelle's 2022 film Babylon, starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, will no longer be available on Netflix. Its removal comes just six months after Netflix added Babylon to its library in December 2025.

Babylon was a three-hour epic star-studded spectacle about the rises and falls of silent-era movie stars as Hollywood transitioned to talkies in the 1920s. Indirectly, it was riding the success of other projects. Chazelle had a massive hit six years earlier with La La Land, which won him an Oscar for best director — though famously, not for best picture.

Then, there was the combined star power of Pitt and Robbie, who both starred in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time In Hollywood in 2019 — another fictionalized account of old Hollywood, albeit a few decades later in the '60s.

By all means, Babylon should have been a success. Instead, it flopped — massively. It was a major failure at the box office, earning less than $65 million against its $80 million budget. After factoring in other costs, Deadlineestimated the film ultimately lost $87.4 million dollars — more than 100 percent of its production budget.

'Babylon' Polarized Critics and Audiences

It was impossible to have a neutral opinion on Babylon. You either loved it, or you hated it. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a 57 percent score among critics and a 53 percent score among fans. Lukewarm, to say the least.

People liked the film's excess and spectacle — think Moulin Rouge! — but didn't care for the jumbled, disjointed story, especially considering it went on for three hours.

While any artist presumably wants their work to be appreciated, Chazelle enjoyed how Babylon polarized people.

“It’s good to have something that stimulates conversation and debate and a lot of fierce opinions on either side," he told Business Insider. "We all knew the movie was gonna ruffle some feathers and get some people mad, and I think that’s good.” He added, "More movies should do that."

source https://www.mensjournal.com/news/netflix-quietly-removes-box-office-flop-that-reportedly-lost-87-million