6. Heaven’s Gate
Estimated Loss: ~$121,000,000 (adjusted for inflation)
No director has self-destructed his career as spectacularly as Michael Cimino. After winning Oscars for Best Picture and Director for The Deer Hunter, Cimino could make any movie he wanted. He chose a little-known historical incident that he blew out of proportion and United Artists made the mistake of backing him. The stories are legendary: Tearing apart an entire Western town set just to build it a few inches higher; setting the record for the most feet of film ever shot by doing 50 retakes of a single scene; wasting four hours a day driving cast and crew to and from the remote locations; killing so many horses in the climactic battle scene that it created the “no animals were harmed…” credit for movies; and delivering his cut of the film to UA executives, saying he could stand to lose 15 minutes tops…then showing them a five and a half-hour movie. The budget ended up at $55 million which, in 1980, was the equivalent of nearly $275 million. Its opening was raked over the coals by critics (Vincent Canby’s infamous review claimed Cimino “sold his soul for The Deer Hunter and this is the Devil coming to collect”), the movie pulled to be edited but still failing after its second release and UA basically ruined as a studio afterward. While some critics claim it has merits, most cite it as the epitome of self-indulgent filmmaking run amok and a legend among mega-flops.
5. John Carter
Estimated Loss: $121,630,450
It took decades for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ science fiction pioneer to reach the big-screen in March of 2012. It took ten days for Disney to declare the movie an utter disaster of epic proportions. Many felt Andrew Stanton bit off too much with this huge undertaking, the casting of Taylor Kitsch as Carter a surprise and the movie not backed as much as it could have been. To be fair, it does look like a movie that cost $263 million with its amazing FX and vistas of Mars but it’s clear Stanton was overwhelmed by putting it all together. The true death blow, however, was that the movie was saddled with one of the worst advertising campaigns of all time. First, Disney changed the title from John Carter of Marsconvinced that (after Mars Needs Moms bombed) the planet was somehow box office poison. Stanton himself worked on the marketing which totally failed to mention the character’s history and thus the movie came off as a rip-off of Star Wars and Avatar rather than how every sci-fi property of the last century has been influenced by Burroughs. While not terrible, the reviews were mixed and the movie sunk big time with Disney forced to take a loss of nearly $200 million. They would rebound with The Avengers only a couple of months later but fans of the character still mourn the grand opportunity lost and how Carter and Burroughs deserved much better.
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