Calling' Life of Pi' a box office flop wouldn't be fair. It was actually reasonably successful at the box office, and is generally well thought of as a film. It was just a strange tactical choice by Rhythm and Hues Studios to make the movie, given that they were in huge amounts of debt before production even started. 'Life of Pi' did well for them, but it wasn't the miracle they needed.
The tactics required from a film company in masses of debt are simple to follow - make a low-budget film and pray it becomes a 'Blair Witch' style cult classic. Instead, they decided to incur even more debt making a massively expensive epic movie. Maybe they'd already decided their time was up, and they just wanted to go out with a bang? If a $600m return at the box office couldn't save them, it's likely the writing was already on the wall.