An assertion that is complete bollocks, as you rightly point out. There are too many nitwits drinking the kool aid in obedience to the algorithmic smothering of box office fail news spun to look like a cinematic apocalypse for the sake of bloody clicks. It really pisses me off. There have always been hits and always been misses. Some of them more or less deserving than others. Box office is not a metric for a film's quality in any case.
It's also worth pointing out that "failures" often aren't, because too much emphasis is placed on opening weekends. These films often claw their money back in other ways, over a period of time. If they don't? Well, national debt sized budgets are obscene, and frankly could do with slashing. But that's a mainstream Hollywood problem, not a problem elsewhere in the world, where cinema remains as creative and vibrant as ever with more modest budgets - think British and European cinema, films from the Middle East, South Korea, Japan, the US independent scene, etc, etc.
Great article. Here's a related rant: