Listen Now: The Big Flop

WHAT WENT WRONG

Sad Boom Media

Hollywood, Acting, Directing, Blockbuster, Movie, Flop, Film, Disaster, History, Tv & Film

4.9 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For over a decade, Tom Cruise was Hollywood's most bankable star, ruling Tinseltown with a million-dollar grin and a carefully crafted image. But when ditching his publicist led to couch-jumping antics, Scientology scandals, and box office bombs, La La Land’s Top Gun found himself in a tailspin that even Ethan Hunt couldn't escape.

On each episode of Wondery’s podcast The Big Flop, comedians join host Misha Brown to chronicle one of the biggest pop-culture fails of all time and try to answer the age-old question: who thought THIS was a good idea? Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer from What Went Wrong recently joined Misha to jump off the couch and into the lowest point of Tom Cruise’s career.

This is just a preview of The Big Flop. To hear the full episode, listen to The Big Flop wherever you get your podcasts, or at wondery.fm/thebigflop_whatwentwrong.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, my dear listeners, Chris and I recently had the pleasure of guesting on an episode of the
0:05.1	podcast, The Big Flop, about Tom Cruise's flop era. Yes, he had a flop era. As some of you may know,
0:11.4	I do also produce this show, and I love it so much. It was so fun to be on the other side of the
0:16.1	mic for this episode. And yes, I booked myself on my own show. I feel no shame about it. So if you want to learn more
0:21.7	about what happened when Tom Cruise fired his publicist, jumped to the couch, and let Scientology
0:26.3	take over, head to the big flop feed and give the full episode a listen. You can also listen to every
0:31.4	episode of the big flop early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. For now, here's a little taste of the big
0:37.0	flop.
0:47.5	When Mission Impossible 3 opens in May 2006, it is a major disappointment. It fails to even make its budget back domestically. It also, to this day, ranks dead last in box office
0:54.0	for the whole Mission Impossible franchise.
0:57.2	So Tom's Star Power is looking like it's in serious trouble, and his new PR strategy may have just killed his biggest franchise.
1:04.6	Which means we are now officially in Music, Please?
1:11.7	Tom's flopop Era.
1:14.0	Yay!
1:15.1	Yay!
1:16.3	So excited to be here.
1:18.2	So a huge part of what makes this Tom's Flop era is that in the wake of Tom's couch
1:24.0	moment, gossip blogs and the press are running wild with stories about him.
1:30.3	And to learn more about these tabloid stories and rumors, let's play a game.
1:40.1	I'm going to tell you some rumors that are going around about Tom in the press at this time.
1:45.1	With keywords and phrases removed, you have to fill in the blanks.
1:52.3	Now, to be totally clear, all of these are unsubstantiated rumors in the press.
	...

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