8 Movies That Bombed So Hard They Bankrupted Studios
Even The Man of Steel isn't exempt from killing his own studio through a bad box office performance.
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00:00 Not every movie can be a box office smash, and that's okay. How much money a movie
00:04 takes in often has little relation to its actual quality. Plenty of films are just too
00:09 niche for a wide audience, and go on to achieve dedicated cult followings once they're released
00:13 on home media. But there's a difference between being a box office disappointment
00:17 and being a box office bomb. And there's an even bigger difference between being a
00:21 box office bomb and losing your studio so much money that they are forced to declare
00:25 bankruptcy.
00:27 And so with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture, here with 8 movies that bombed
00:31 so hard that they bankrupt their studios.
00:34 8. The Golden Compass - New Line Cinema
00:38 New Line was on top of the world back in 2007. Since 1967, the production company had built
00:44 up a reputation for taking chances on oddball films that other parts of Hollywood might
00:49 pass on. A Nightmare on Elm Street and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films were their
00:54 greatest successes until 2003, when they produced the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was easily
01:00 their most profitable investment yet, with the films grossing nearly $3 billion worldwide.
01:06 Riding high on this success, New Line immediately put $180 million towards adapting another popular
01:12 fantasy book series for the big screen - Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.
01:18 Unfortunately, this stillborn film franchise did not perform quite as well as they hoped.
01:23 It only took in $70 million in the United States, and while it performed much better
01:27 abroad, New Line had sold the overseas distribution rights to fund the film's production. This
01:33 meant that they never saw a dime of that foreign revenue. This was regarded as one mistake
01:37 too much by parent company Time Warner, and New Line was swallowed up by Warner Bros Pictures
01:43 just two months after The Golden Compass's release.
01:46 7. The Lady Vanishes - Hammer Productions
01:50 Hammer Productions and Alfred Hitchcock are two titans of British cinema. Hammer is still
01:55 known worldwide for its timeless Hammer horror films, such as the Quatermass experiment and
02:00 Christopher Lee's iconic performance in their Dracula adaptation. Hitchcock is, of course,
02:05 known for equally well-regarded classics such as Psycho and Vertigo.
02:09 So you'd think that Hammer Productions remaking a Hitchcock masterpiece would be a recipe
02:14 for critical and box office success. Sadly, what looks good on paper doesn't always
02:19 work out so well in reality.
02:21 By 1979, Hammer's gothic horror films had fallen out of fashion, and they attempted
02:25 to pivot towards more serious fare with films like The Lady Vanishes. But critics were lukewarm
02:31 at best towards it, and it didn't exactly make a splash at the box office.
02:35 This final financial disaster, after a long string of them, forced the studio into a long
02:40 hibernation. Since a revival in 2007, they have been lending their name to the odd horror
02:45 release, but they are undoubtedly a shadow of what they once were.
02:49 6. Looney Tunes Back in Action, Warner Bros. Feature Animation
02:54 Remember when Brendan Fraser was the big star of the moment back in the early 2000s? After
02:59 The Mummy hit our screens, Hollywood were determined to push him as the next big leading
03:03 man and put him front and centre on most of their posters. So what went wrong? Well, apparently
03:09 starring in movies like this one certainly didn't help.
03:12 By all accounts, the production was a complete mess behind the scenes. Warner Bros. initially
03:17 wanted it to be a sequel to 1996's Space Jam, but Michael Jordan refused to sign on
03:23 again. Then they changed it to Spy Jam and tried to lure Jackie Chan into playing the
03:27 title role. This also fell through, and eventually, long time Looney Tunes fan Joe Dante was brought
03:33 on to direct what would become Back in Action. He received absolutely no creative freedom,
03:38 and the film didn't even make its $80 million budget back at the box office, only managing
03:43 to pull in $68.5 million. Warner Bros. went from planning to release more Looney Tunes
03:49 movies as soon as possible to shutting down its feature film animation division entirely.
03:54 Now, just for the record, I personally love this film. It is my childhood. So I won't
03:59 hear a negative thing said about it, and that is all.
04:02 5. It's a Wonderful Life - Liberty Films In the years before World War II, Frank Capra
04:09 had earned himself the title of Hollywood legend and three Academy Awards for Best Director.
04:14 After returning from the war, he founded the production company Liberty Films in 1945,
04:19 along with three other former servicemen. The very first film of the new company was
04:24 to be It's a Wonderful Life. Unfortunately, while the Christmas classic actually did reasonably
04:28 well at the box office, it was nowhere near successful enough to recoup its production
04:33 costs of $2.3 million, and the fledgling studio found itself facing financial ruin barely
04:39 a year into its existence. It was quickly swallowed up by Paramount, who locked Capra
04:43 and his friends into multi-picture contracts with their studio.
04:47 Liberty Films would only go on to release one more film under its label, 1948's State
04:52 of the Union, before finally being dissolved in 1951. Capra later wrote of this failed
04:58 venture that its purpose was to 1. Influence the course of Hollywood films, 2. Make four
05:03 former army officers independently rich, and 3. Virtually prove fatal to my professional
05:08 career. Ouch. Truly his own worst critic.
05:12 4. Battlefield Earth - Franchise Pictures Say the words "box office bomb" to somebody,
05:17 and there's a strong chance that this will be one of the films they think of first. John
05:21 Travolta, a devout Scientologist, had been trying for years to get an adaptation of L.
05:26 Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth greenlit. In 1998, he finally found a financial backer
05:31 in the newly founded Franchise Pictures, and things just went downhill from there.
05:36 Upon its release in 2000, Battlefield Earth was savaged by every critic alive, amateur
05:41 and professional. Everything from the acting, to the direction, to the special effects was
05:46 torn to shreds, and the whole fiasco ended up making only $29.7 million against a $73
05:53 million budget. John Travolta, newly restored to the spotlight thanks to Pulp Fiction six
05:58 years prior, found his reputation once again in tatters. The people running Franchise Pictures
06:04 were later found guilty of inflating the budget of the likes of Battlefield Earth and other
06:08 features to scam investors and filed for bankruptcy in 2007, leaving behind nothing more than
06:14 a legacy of dodgy dealings and awful movies.
06:18 3. Mars Needs Moms - Image Movers Digital Robert Zemeckis has had a varied career, to
06:24 say the least. You'll find well-regarded successes in his filmography such as Forrest
06:29 Gump or Back to the Future, but you'll also see more than a few misfires like What Lies
06:33 Beneath or Welcome to Marwen. While he didn't direct Mars Needs Moms, it was made by his
06:39 company Image Movers as part of a joint venture with Disney, and his fingerprints are all
06:44 over it.
06:45 The odd motion capture animation that Zemeckis had previously used in A Christmas Carol was
06:49 on full display again, and it looked just as unsettling here. In fact, the entire thing
06:54 just looks downright ugly. Audiences seemed to think so too, as the movie took in only
06:59 $39 million against its $150 million budget, which cemented it as Disney's biggest financial
07:06 disaster ever.
07:07 Even before the film's release, Disney and Image Movers announced that Image Movers Digital,
07:12 the division that made the movie, would be closed down. Shutting down your company after
07:16 your release fails is one thing, but going bust before the movie is even released? That
07:20 has got to hurt.
07:22 2. Heaven's Gate - United Artists
07:25 From the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, Hollywood was a hotbed of experimentation. Legendary
07:31 pioneers like Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, and Francis Ford Coppola were being given
07:36 unprecedented freedom to make the kinds of films they wanted to make, free from the studio
07:41 restrictions of the preceding decades. This era gave us some of the greatest American
07:46 films ever made, but it all had to end sometime.
07:49 Still riding high from his best picture-winning classic, The Deer Hunter, director Michael
07:54 Cimino decided to write a tale about a dispute between land barons and settlers in 1890s
08:00 Wyoming.
08:01 Upon its release in 1980, Heaven's Gate was derided by every industry publication as one
08:06 of the worst movies ever made. The critical thrashing was so bad that United Artists actually
08:11 pulled it from the theatres after just one week. They attempted to release it again a
08:15 year later in a slightly shortened director's cut format, but that also performed horribly,
08:21 only taking in $3.5 million against its $44 million budget.
08:26 Not only did Heaven's Gate put United Artists out of business, with the failing studio eventually
08:31 becoming part of MGM, it brought an end to the freedom that maverick directors had enjoyed
08:36 in Hollywood for so long.
08:38 1. Superman IV The Quest for Peace - The Cannon Group
08:42 When the first Superman feature film hit cinema screens in 1978, it changed the landscape of
08:48 film forever. With its groundbreaking use of special effects and genuinely emotional
08:53 moments, it was the first indication for Hollywood that superhero movies might be worth investing
08:58 in.
08:59 The film was followed by three sequels in an attempt to cash in as much as possible
09:03 on this new franchise. But being in something only for the money can be perilous. Sometimes
09:08 you still luck out and get a halfway decent end product, and other times you get Superman
09:13 IV.
09:14 The film looks noticeably cheap the whole way through, a result of having its $36 million
09:19 budget slashed in half. A particularly hilarious example is a scene in which Superman is supposed
09:24 to be approaching the United Nations building in New York City. Of course, any viewer with
09:28 even a vague idea of what that building looks like can see that Superman is not even in
09:33 America.
09:34 The scene was in fact shot in Milton Keynes, with very little effort made to hide that
09:38 fact. The Cannon Group, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy even with the movie's reduced
09:43 budget, was brought out by Pathé Communications the following year, and soon ceased to exist
09:49 altogether. Not so super, man.
09:52 And that concludes our list. If you think we missed any, then do let us know in the
09:55 comments below, and while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap
09:59 that notification bell. Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be
10:03 found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie
10:07 with WhatCulture, I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.