12. Stealth
Estimated Loss: $96,533,564
This was supposed to be one of the big guns of the summer 2005 season as Jamie Foxx, Josh Lucas and Jessica Biel played pilots dealing with a jet fighter’s A.I. going rogue. Rob Cohen was director, pushing up the CGI big time for the flight and fight sequences, the studio ramping it up in the marketing and expecting a big turnout. Instead, the $135 million film opened in fourth place with only $13 million and lost 55% of its audience in its second weekend. True, 2005 was a rough summer overall but many were still taken aback by how badly this movie crashed and burned, a loss of nearly $100 million that pushed Columbia Pictures closer to bankruptcy. Proof that not all CGI action fests can win over moviegoers no matter how high they try to soar.
11. Sahara
Estimated Loss: $100,365,257
Clive Cussler’s novels featuring adventurer Dirk Pitt are already blockbuster adventures and yet Hollywood just can’t seem to do them justice. As proof comes this 2005 feature that boasted Matthew McConaughey as Pitt with Penelope Cruz as his love interest. While not as terrible an adaptation as other novels to movies, the filmmakers missed some of the key turns that made the book successful and thus a convoluted plot was pushed onto moviegoers. At first, the movie’s $160 million budget appeared to be due to the hard shooting on location with bad weather and more pile-ups and the box office take of $120 million meant a loss of about $100 million to Paramount. However, a series of lawsuits between Cussler and the studio exposed how several million dollars were bribes for the Morocco government and the argument of Cussler paid $10 million alone and then suing over control. It’s actually made the movie an interesting case where the backstory was far more interesting than the film itself and for once, explains just why a massive budget was used the way it was.
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