Even The Man of Steel isn't exempt from killing his own studio through a bad box office performance.
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00:00Not every movie can be a box office smash, and that's okay. How much money a movie
00:04takes in often has little relation to its actual quality. Plenty of films are just too niche for
00:09a wide audience, and go on to achieve dedicated cult followings once they're released on home media.
00:14But there's a difference between being a box office disappointment and being a box office
00:18bomb. And there's an even bigger difference between being a box office bomb and losing
00:22your studio so much money that they are forced to declare bankruptcy.
00:26And so with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture,
00:29here with eight movies that bombed so hard that they bankrupt their studios.
00:35Number eight, the golden compass, New Line Cinema.
00:38New Line was on top of the world back in 2007. Since 1967, the production company had built up
00:45a reputation for taking chances on oddball films that other parts of Hollywood might pass on.
00:50A Nightmare on Elm Street and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films were their greatest successes
00:55until 2003, when they produced the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was easily their most profitable
01:02investment yet, with the films grossing nearly $3 billion worldwide. Riding high on this success,
01:08New Line immediately put $180 million towards adapting another popular fantasy book series
01:14for the big screen, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Unfortunately,
01:19this stillborn film franchise did not perform quite as well as they hoped.
01:23It only took in $70 million in the United States, and while it performed much better abroad,
01:28New Line had sold the overseas distribution rights to fund the film's production.
01:32This meant that they never saw a dime of that foreign revenue.
01:36This was regarded as one mistake too much by parent company Time Warner, and New Line
01:41was swallowed up by Warner Brothers Pictures just two months after the golden compass's release.
01:46Number seven, The Lady Vanishes, Hammer Productions.
01:50Hammer Productions and Alfred Hitchcock are two titans of British cinema. Hammer is still
01:55known worldwide for its timeless Hammer horror films, such as the Quatermass Experiment and
02:00Christopher Lee's iconic performance in their Dracula adaptation. Hitchcock is, of course,
02:05known for equally well-regarded classics such as Psycho and Vertigo. So you'd think that Hammer
02:10Productions remaking a Hitchcock masterpiece would be a recipe for critical and box office success.
02:16Sadly, what looks good on paper doesn't always work out so well in reality.
02:20By 1979, Hammer's gothic horror films had fallen out of fashion,
02:25and they attempted to pivot towards more serious fare with films like The Lady Vanishes.
02:29But critics were lukewarm at best towards it, and it didn't exactly make a splash at the box office.
02:35This final financial disaster, after a long string of them,
02:38forced the studio into a long hibernation.
02:41Since a revival in 2007, they have been lending their name to the odd horror release,
02:46but they are undoubtedly a shadow of what they once were.
02:496. Looney Tunes Back in Action, Warner Bros. Feature Animation
02:54Remember when Brendan Fraser was the big star of the moment back in the early 2000s?
02:59After The Mummy hit our screens, Hollywood were determined to push him as the next big
03:03leading man and put him front and centre on most of their posters. So what went wrong?
03:08Well, apparently starring in movies like this one certainly didn't help. By all accounts,
03:13the production was a complete mess behind the scenes. Warner Bros. initially wanted it to be
03:18a sequel to 1996's Space Jam, but Michael Jordan refused to sign on again. Then they
03:23changed it to Spy Jam and tried to lure Jackie Chan into playing the title role.
03:28This also fell through, and eventually long-time Looney Tunes fan Joe Dante was brought on to
03:33direct what would become Back in Action. He received absolutely no creative freedom,
03:38and the film didn't even make its $80 million budget back at the box office,
03:42only managing to pull in $68.5 million. Warner Bros. went from planning to release
03:48more Looney Tunes movies as soon as possible to shutting down its feature film animation
03:53division entirely. Now, just for the record, I personally love this film. It is my childhood.
03:58So I won't hear a negative thing said about it, and that is all.
04:025. It's a Wonderful Life – Liberty Films In the years before World War II, Frank Capra had
04:09earned himself the title of Hollywood legend and three Academy Awards for Best Director.
04:14After returning from the war, he founded the production company Liberty Films in 1945,
04:19along with three other former servicemen. The very first film of the new company was to be
04:24It's a Wonderful Life. Unfortunately, while the Christmas classic actually did reasonably well
04:29at the box office, it was nowhere near successful enough to recoup its production costs of $2.3
04:34million, and the fledgling studio found itself facing financial ruin barely a year into its
04:40existence. It was quickly swallowed up by Paramount, who locked Capra and his friends
04:44into multi-picture contracts with their studio. Liberty Films would only go on to release one
04:49more film under its label, 1948's State of the Union, before finally being dissolved in 1951.
04:56Capra later wrote of this failed venture that its purpose was to 1. Influence the course of
05:01Hollywood films, 2. Make four former army officers independently rich, and 3. Virtually
05:06prove fatal to my professional career. Ouch, truly his own worst critic.
05:114. Battlefield Earth Franchise Pictures
05:15Say the words box office bomb to somebody, and there's a strong chance that this will
05:19be one of the films they think of first. John Travolta, a devout Scientologist,
05:23had been trying for years to get an adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth greenlit.
05:29In 1998, he finally found a financial backer in the newly founded Franchise Pictures,
05:33and things just went downhill from there. Upon its release in 2000, Battlefield Earth
05:38was savaged by every critic alive, amateur and professional. Everything from the acting to the
05:44direction to the special effects was torn to shreds, and the whole fiasco ended up making
05:49only $29.7 million against a $73 million budget. John Travolta, newly restored to the spotlight
05:56thanks to Pulp Fiction six years prior, found his reputation once again in tatters. The people
06:02running Franchise Pictures were later found guilty of inflating the budget of the likes
06:07of Battlefield Earth and other features to scam investors and filed for bankruptcy in 2007,
06:13leaving behind nothing more than a legacy of dodgy dealings and awful movies.
06:183. Mars Needs Moms Image Movers Digital
06:22Robert Zemeckis has had a varied career, to say the least. You'll find well-regarded successes
06:27in his filmography such as Forrest Gump or Back to the Future, but you'll also see more
06:31than a few misfires like What Lies Beneath or Welcome to Marwen. While he didn't direct Mars
06:37Needs Moms, it was made by his company Image Movers as part of a joint venture with Disney,
06:42and his fingerprints are all over it. The odd motion capture animation that
06:46Zemeckis had previously used in A Christmas Carol was on full display again, and it looked
06:51just as unsettling here. In fact, the entire thing just looks downright ugly.
06:56Audiences seemed to think so too, as the movie took in only $39 million against its $150 million
07:02budget, which cemented it as Disney's biggest financial disaster ever. Even before the film's
07:08release, Disney and Image Movers announced that Image Movers Digital, the division that
07:12made the movie, would be closed down. Shutting down your company after your release fails is
07:17one thing, but going bust before the movie is even released? That has got to hurt.
07:222. Heaven's Gate, United Artists
07:25From the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, Hollywood was a hotbed of experimentation.
07:31Legendary pioneers like Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, and Francis Ford Coppola were being given
07:36unprecedented freedom to make the kinds of films they wanted to make, free from the studio
07:41restrictions of the preceding decades. This era gave us some of the greatest American films ever
07:46made, but it all had to end sometime. Still riding high from his Best Picture-winning classic,
07:52The Deer Hunter, director Michael Cimino decided to write a tale about a dispute between land
07:57barons and settlers in 1890s Wyoming. Upon its release in 1980, Heaven's Gate was derided by
08:04every industry publication as one of the worst movies ever made. The critical thrashing was so
08:09bad that United Artists actually pulled it from the theatres after just one week. They attempted
08:14to release it again a year later in a slightly shortened director's cut format, but that also
08:19performed horribly, only taking in $3.5 million against its $44 million budget. Not only did
08:26Heaven's Gate put United Artists out of business, with the failing studio eventually becoming part
08:31of MGM, it brought an end to the freedom that maverick directors had enjoyed in Hollywood for
08:37so long. 1. Superman 4, The Quest for Peace, The Cannon Group
08:42When the first Superman feature film hit cinema screens in 1978, it changed the landscape of film
08:48forever. With its groundbreaking use of special effects and genuinely emotional moments,
08:53it was the first indication for Hollywood that superhero movies might be worth investing in.
08:58Naturally, it was followed by three sequels, in an attempt to cash in as much as possible
09:03on this new franchise. But being in something only for the money can be perilous. Sometimes
09:08you still luck out and get a halfway decent end product, and other times you get Superman 4.
09:13The film looks noticeably cheap the whole way through, a result of having its $36 million
09:18budget slashed in half. A particularly hilarious example is a scene in which Superman is supposed
09:24to be approaching the United Nations building in New York City. Of course, any viewer with even a
09:29vague idea of what that building looks like can see that Superman is not even in America.
09:34The scene was, in fact, shot in Milton Keynes, with very little effort made to hide that fact.
09:39The Cannon Group, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, even with the movie's reduced
09:43budget, was brought out by Pathé Communications the following year, and soon ceased to exist
09:49altogether. Not so super, man. And that concludes our list. If you think we
09:53missed any, then do let us know in the comments below, and while you're there, don't forget to
09:57like and subscribe and tap that notification bell. Also head over to Twitter and follow us there,
10:03and I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
10:07I've been Ellie with WhatCulture, I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.