Top 10 Movies That Almost Bankrupted Studios

What started as a $2 million project ended up as a $44 million historical drama. Converted to today, we are talking about more than 400 million. Elizabeth Taylor was the first actress ever to demand (and receive) a salary of millions, but the real costs were in the insane logistics: production moved from England to Rome, sets were rebuilt and the affair between Taylor and Richard Burton caused constant distraction. Although the film grossed a lot, the loss was so great that Fox had to sell their backlot to survive.

Carolco Pictures did everything they could with this pirate film, but the production seemed cursed. From fired actors to broken sewer pipes in the water tanks: everything went wrong. The film is still remembered as one of the biggest flops of all time. Carolco filed for bankruptcy before the film even reached theaters. The pirate genre was “radioactive” in Hollywood for years after this, until Jack Sparrow revived it almost ten years later.

While all eyes were on Cleopatra, Samuel Bronston Productions was working on its own historical epic. The largest outdoor set ever built for The Fall of the Roman Empire was a 92,000 square meter replica of the Roman Forum. Sophia Loren played the leading role, the costumes were beautiful, the battle scenes spectacular. But the public had had enough of toga epics. The film returned only a quarter of its $19 million budget. Three months after its release, Samuel Bronston Productions was bankrupt. It was the end of a studio that had recently produced El Cid and 55 Days at Beijing.

Michael Cimino was given carte blanche after his Oscar success with The Deer Hunter, and United Artists knew that. The shooting of this western took ten months and the budget quadrupled. Cimino was such a perfectionist that he replayed scenes dozens of times. The result was a commercial debacle that destroyed United Artists; the studio was acquired by MGM shortly afterwards. It also marked the end of the era when directors had complete power over large studio budgets.

Steven Spielberg warned Kevin Costner: “Never film on open water.” Costner ignored the advice and literally saw his sets sink during hurricanes. The costs rose to $175 million, an absolute record at the time. Although the film still grossed quite a bit worldwide, the damage to its reputation was enormous. Only years later, through the sale of DVDs and amusement park attractions, did the film crawl out of the red.

After the triumph of Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola wanted to make something modest. That modesty quickly disappeared. His romantic musical, shot entirely on the sets of his own Zoetrope Studios, grew from $2 to $26 million. Coppola experimented with revolutionary video techniques and had all of Las Vegas recreated in the studio. Critics were scathing, audiences stayed away. One from the Heart grossed less than $700,000. Coppola lost his studio and remained in debt for a decade. He had to make films like The Outsiders and Peggy Sue Got Married to pay off his debts. It was not until 1992 that he was officially out of financial trouble.

With Antonio Banderas and a budget creeping towards $160 million, this should have been a hit. But after disastrous test screenings, the film was almost completely re-edited and partly re-filmed. The chaos was so great that actor Omar Sharif temporarily stopped acting out of sheer frustration. The film only grossed 61 million, leading to one of the biggest write-offs of the 1990s.

Media mogul Lew Grade wanted a spectacle, but got a financial iceberg. Just building the water tank in Malta cost millions. When the film flopped, Grade spoke the legendary words: “It would have been cheaper to sink the Atlantic than to shoot this film.” His production company barely survived, but would never produce at this level again.

Disney bet everything on the film adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic science fiction from 1912. Director Andrew Stanton, the Oscar winner behind Finding Nemo and WALL-E, made his live-action debut with a budget of 263 million dollars. But Stanton treated the production like a Pixar project: endless rewrites and reshoots. The marketing was disastrous. The original title John Carter of Mars was shortened to just John Carter, for fear of association with the recently flopped Mars Needs Moms. The generic trailers failed to excite anyone. Disney had to write off a $200 million loss, the largest in the studio's history to that point. Studio boss Rich Ross resigned.

Just a year after John Carter, Disney tried to launch another franchise with The Lone Ranger. Johnny Depp as Tonto, Armie Hammer as the masked hero, Gore Verbinski behind the camera: the Pirates of the Caribbean team would repeat the magic. But Westerns are hard sellers, and the budget ballooned to $250 million after delays due to bad weather, injured stuntmen and a fatal accident. The criticism was scathing. The film opened against Despicable Me 2 and was crushed. With a worldwide revenue of 260 million on a total of 400 million in production and marketing costs, Disney had to write off another loss of 190 million. Disney ended its long-standing collaboration with producer Jerry Bruckheimer shortly afterwards.