boxofficeflops2 movies movieextras Virgin Media
There have been many flops in the history of cinema, but few have the
distinction of bringing down a studio: Michael Cimino's western was such a
drain on United Artists that they ended up being sold to MGM. Much of the
overruns can be placed at the director's door - at one point he ordered an
entire town set to be razed to the ground and rebuilt, at a cost of $1.2m, simply
because he felt the buildings were too close together.
Sample review: "It is something quite rare in movies these days - an
unqualified disaster." (The New York Times)
Dances with Wolves, Kevin Costner's first movie as director, made him the
toast of Hollywood and scooped him a pair of Oscars. His second, though, got
a far chillier reception, making back just $17 million of its $80m budget.
It seemed audiences weren't quite ready to see him as a Shakespeare-quoting,
post-apocalyptic mail-man, though that didn't stop him following it up with
another letter-related movie, 1999's Message in a Bottle.
Sample review: "What emerges is a simplistic melodrama of mushy patriotism,
stilted romance and hollow morality." (San Francisco Chronicle)
Demi Moore's career never quite recovered from this supposedly raunchy
comedy, which sold itself on the promise of its leading lady's assets yet
left the few people who saw them feeling somewhat shortchanged. As a single
mother who turns to stripping to make ends meet, Moore could have learned a
lesson from Showgirls - she appears topless for only two minutes of the
film's two-hour running time. She still pocketed $12m though.
Sample review: "Who told Demi Moore she can act? The weight of her
inadequacy drags down what might have been an enjoyable summer movie." (The
Washington Post)
Madonna has got more than a few clinkers on her resume - the likes of
Shanghai Surprise, Body of Evidence and The Next Best Thing spring
immediately to mind - but her ill-starred collaboration with director
husband Guy Ritchie takes the cake. The Material Girl turned Kabbalah Queen
got some of the worst reviews of her career for her performance as a spoilt
heiress in a movie so lousy it didn't even get a cinema release in Ritchie's home
country.
Sample review: "New ways of describing badness need to be invented to
describe exactly how bad this film is." (Newsday)
Released three years after its completion, this troubled Warren Beatty
comedy is thought to be the costliest box-office bomb of all time, having
only made back $6.7m (domestically) of its $90m budget. The real calamity, though, is how
so much moolah came to be spent in the first place on a film with stars
(Beatty, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn) and a story (ageing lothario struggles
to juggle his younger girlfriends) clearly past their sell-by date.
Sample review: "A muddled, unfocused comedy of manners that has become a
legend for its desperate script rewrites and ruinous schedule over-runs."
(The Guardian)