Not all films pay off: sometimes the studios “stay with their own” or go to minus, but most often such mistakes are not fatal.
Today we will talk about a dozen paintings that had the opposite effect and became fatal for the creators. They hit their pockets so hard that they forced them to close the company and declare bankruptcy.
10. Titanium: After the death of the Earth | 2000
The animated films “The Lion King” and “The Little Mermaid” clearly demonstrated the interest of the viewer in full-length animation, so Fox decided to closely engage in this niche, striving, if not to bypass, then at least move Disney.
They invested everything except their souls in their project: a huge budget of $ 75 million was spent on the fees of voice actors (Drew Barrymore, Matt Damon) and advanced graphics.
There were even plans to release the game on the Playstation, but the commercial failure put an end to them.
Less than 10 million on the first weekend immediately made it clear that the project would not pay off, so the final 22 million in the United States no longer surprised anyone, nor did the closure of Fox Animation.
9. The mystery of the red planet | 2011
In the production of the strange cartoon about the Martians abducting earthly mothers, $ 150 million was swollen (and this does not include marketing expenses), and he earned less than a third of this amount.
Such a failure forced Robert Zemeckis to close his animation department, engaged in the creation of "The Secrets of the Red Planet", and also put an end to his plans to remove the new "Yellow Submarine" - a remake of the 1968 animated film about the group The Beatles.
8. Cleopatra | 1963
Now hardly anyone remembers how a film with a planned budget of $ 2 million has become one of the most expensive in the history of cinema.
As the filming took place, the costs grew and grew until they reached the astronomical size of 44 million by the standards of 1963, which currently equals ~ 300 million.
Even more striking, it seems that after a resounding failure at the box office, the picture managed to pick 4 Oscars out of 9 nominations.
Losses even forced Fox to sell 300 acres of land it owned in order to get out of the minus and somehow improve its financial balance. If not for this, she would also close and not grow into that giant of the film industry that we know today.
7. Guys what you need! | 1983
And again, the film, caressed by critics (also 4 Oscar figurines), but for some reason not accepted by the general public, which did not go to the cinema.
Based on real events, the story of astronauts could not recoup even a modest budget of 27 million, not to mention some kind of profit.
In the same year, Ladd Company studio released the animated comedy Twice Many Years Ago, which also failed. Such a “double” led to the closure of a generally good studio.
6. The naked drummer | 2008
Of all the actors who opened the way to the Hollywood series “Office,” Rain Wilson turned out to be the most unfortunate: for a long time he was called only for secondary roles, and when he finally got the main one - it was the film “The Naked Drummer”.
The third-rate comedy, shot by Fox Atomic (a Fox subsidiary created specifically for such tapes), turned out to be so bad that the parent company immediately closed its brainchild.
The actor’s career, by the way, also didn’t improve: he began to act less often, only recently appeared in Meg: The Monster of Depth, along with Jason State.
5. Island of the thugs | 1995
In the early 90's, Carolco studio was on a horse: Terminator 2 and Basic Instinct brought her both money and respect, but she failed to keep it.
Thinking to revive the genre of pirated films, she took up the "Island of Cutthroats", spending almost $ 120 million on it.
The robbers plowing the open spaces literally sunk the studio (world fees did not repel even 20% of the costs), forcing her to declare bankruptcy before the release of the last film.
4. Final Fantasy: Spirits Inside | 2001
Screen versions of video games are rarely successful, which was known even in 2001, but Square still took the risk by entrusting the production of the animated film “Last Fantasy: Perfume Inside” by Square Pictures subsidiary.
Despite the fact that the project did not overlap with the series of Final Fantasy games, the authors still hoped for the interest of gamers, because the franchise has a huge army of fans.
Their hopes were in vain and the 137 million dollars spent didn’t even come back halfway, and the studio was immediately closed.
This is even strange, given the amazing graphics (the entire cartoon is drawn on a computer) for those years, a good storyline and excellent work of voice actors, in which Alec Baldwin took part.
3. This beautiful life | 1946
This picture is a kind of “Irony of Fate” for Americans and is regularly shown before the Christmas holidays, becoming not just a classic, but a real national treasure.
However, in the year of release, the authors got some trouble: director Frank Kapra and two of his friends lost a lot of money, they had to close The Liberty, which they barely managed to open.
2. The Golden Compass | 2007
We already wrote about the ambitiousness of some failed films, but the Golden Compass will calmly give 100 handicap points to each of them.
New Line Cinema, intoxicated by the success of The Lord of the Rings, has decided to create a new franchise that can compete with him.
Remembering that the money spent on the Peter Jackson trilogy paid off many times, the bosses did not stint and allocated as much as 180 million to shoot the Golden Compass, which was their mistake.
Even the star cast with Nicole Kidman, Eva Green, Daniel Craig, and even Ian McKellen who looked in did not help out.
As a result, New Line Cinema had to calculate losses, and a little later Warner Bros. consumed it.
1. City of lies, Hotel "Artemis" | 2018
It is not by chance that 2 films are indicated here, since both of them were shot by the same studio and almost simultaneously, and both became the reason for its closure.
The first, City of Lies, a detective with Johnny Depp about the investigation of the murder of Tupac Shakur and the rapper war was due to be released in 2018, but due to the damaged image of Johnny Depp and other problems, the release was postponed indefinitely.
The Artemis Hotel also boasts stars in the lead roles (Jody Foster, Sterling K. Brown, Dave Batista), but there is no reason to be proud of this, for its exit was the last nail in the lid of the Global Road coffin that ended last year in a big minus, which caused bankruptcy.