Box Office Bombs
17:02 Share

As people in the entertainment industry like to say, show business is show business. As much as motion pictures are an art form, it is also a business, and in many cases, a very big business. Motion picture studios will often invest hundreds of millions of dollars into a film, expecting to see a return on their investment. Most of the time, a film will break even. However, in a few spectacular cases, a disastrous film has ruined a studio.

Learn more about box office bombs and some of the worst performing movies in history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by NerdWallet. When it comes to general knowledge and history, you know I've got you covered. But who do you turn to when you need smart financial decisions? If your answer is NerdWallet, then you're absolutely right. And if it's not, let me change your mind.

The nerds at NerdWallet have spent thousands of hours researching and reviewing over 1,300 financial products. And they have the tools you need to make smarter financial decisions. Looking for a credit card? Go beyond the basic comparisons, filter for features that matter to you, and read in-depth reviews. Ready to choose a high-yield savings account? Get access to exclusive deals and compare rates, bonuses, and more. House hunting? View today's top mortgage rates for your home sweet home.

Make the Nerds your go-to resource for smart financial decisions. Head to nerdwallet.com forward slash learn more. NerdWallet, finance smarter. Disclosure, NerdWallet Compare Incorporated NMLS 1617539.

Shopify doesn't just meet you where you are. We meet you where you're going. Shopify is the only commerce platform relentlessly focused on one thing and one thing only, commerce. We challenge the status quo so that your business can do bigger, better, and focus on building what's next so that you're always moving further, faster. For enterprise brands that believe there's a better way, there's Shopify.

Learn more at shopify.com slash enterprise. Before I go any further, this episode is not about the worst movies of all time. That would be a highly subjective list. And even though there are ways to take an objective approach to determine what the worst movies are, such as looking at IMDb or Rotten Tomato rankings, it's still a pretty subjective list.

Also, there are bad movies and then there are movies that are so bad that they're good. Some bad movies can still be quite successful and are not box office bombs at all. So in this episode, I want to focus on films that were financial disasters. In most cases, films that performed poorly at the box office were pretty bad. However, that hasn't always been the case.

In terms of nominal box office losses, almost all of the biggest box office bombs have occurred in the last 10 years. This is more a function of inflation than anything else. Over time, production costs have increased, meaning that anything with a large production budget can potentially have enormous losses. However, if you adjust for inflation, there are films from years past that were just as devastating to the studios that financed them, even if the numbers weren't as large.

So, with that, let's start with the film that's considered one of the first major box office bombs, D.W. Griffith's 1918 silent film epic, Intolerance. Griffith released Birth of a Nation in 1915, which is widely considered to be one of the first true epic films. It was a retelling of the story of the creation of the Ku Klux Klan. The film was a box office smash earning tens of millions of dollars with a production budget of only about $100,000.

However, it was a horribly racist film. Its depiction of black people was at the level of a minstrel show. The NAACP condemned the film at the time and it was believed to have inspired a resurgence in the Ku Klux Klan soon after the film was released. In response to his critics, he created his next film about intolerance throughout history.

The film was massive, with an initial runtime of three and a half hours. Its production budget was $375,000, almost four times that of Birth of a Nation, and the most ever spent on a film at that point. Film reviewers praised the film, which is still considered to be one of the greatest films of the silent era today. In fact, some, like Pauline Kael, said it was the greatest film ever made. However, it didn't have a fraction of the box office success that Birth of a Nation did.

We don't have accurate box office data from 1918, but at best, the film only recouped its initial investment. How did such an anticipated film that was highly praised perform so poorly? It was largely considered to be because of when the film was released. The United States was in the middle of the First World War and the public wasn't interested in a film about peace and intolerance.

The next film that was a box office bomb is one that might surprise you. It's also considered to be one of the greatest films of all time and had a high-profile cast and director. It's the 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life starring Jimmy Stewart. The film was the first by the production company Liberty Films. Liberty Films was created by the directors Frank Capra, William Wyler, and Samuel J. Briskin. They banked a lot on the film, spending $3.3 million on production.

Factoring in marketing and other expenses, the film needed about $6 million to break even. The film only made about $3 million at the box office, forcing Liberty Films to accept a buyout offer from Paramount Pictures. It's a Wonderful Life, in addition to being the studio's first film, also turned out to be the studio's last film. How did this box office flop become one of the most beloved movies of all time? It was due to a clerical error in 1974 when trying to extend the copyright.

The film accidentally wound up in the public domain, which made it an attractive option for television stations to start playing in the 80s and 90s. Both of the films I've mentioned so far failed because of poor ticket sales. For a film to fail financially, it's just a matter of being unprofitable, and profit is a function of both revenues and expenses. The film that proved you could be a disaster even if you did well at the box office is the 1963 film Cleopatra.

Cleopatra was a big budget film. It starred Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison, and Richard Burton. The film was the most expensive ever produced at that time, costing 20th Century Fox $44 million. The problem was that the initial budget for the film was only supposed to be $2 million. Taylor herself commanded a $1 million salary, which was the highest in Hollywood at the time. The production was plagued with problems and cost overruns.

They had to switch directors in the middle of the film, Taylor insisted on filming in international locations, and the cost of the film just kept going up and up. The surprising thing is, in 1963, it was the biggest box office draw. It made more money than any other film. However, the cost overruns made it impossible to break even.

Cleopatra almost ruined 20th Century Fox. It didn't quite put them out of business, but they were forced to sell 300 acres of its studio backlot in Los Angeles to recover its costs. By 1966, the film was still $3 million shy of breaking even, which they finally did after they sold the television rights. Just one year after Cleopatra, Samuel Bronston Productions suffered a disaster with their own historical epic, The Fall of the Roman Empire.

Again, it had a star-studded cast with Sophia Loren, Alec Guinness, James Mason, Stephen Boyd, Christopher Plummer, Omar Sharif, and Mel Ferrer. The total cost of production was only $19 million, less than half that of Cleopatra. However, it did not do well at the box office at all. Total box office receipts only reached $4.75 million, resulting in Samuel Bronson Productions going bankrupt.

I've seen The Fall of the Roman Empire, just because I'm a sucker for 1960s epic films, and it's okay, but it isn't nearly in the same league as other films made during that period. One of the biggest box office bombs of all time became infamous for how much money it lost. It ruined the career of its director and the studio that produced it. The 1980 film Heaven's Gate. Heaven's Gate was directed by Michael Cimino, who won the Academy Award for Best Director in 1978 for The Deer Hunter.

The film was to be an epic loosely based on the Johnson County Wars in Wyoming in the 1890s. The cast include Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Chris Christopherson, Sam Waterston, and Jeff Bridges. The film was already behind schedule just days into production, and costs started escalating. Cimino was a perfectionist who ran the film set like a dictator, and he reshot multiple scenes multiple times.

The original $7 million budget exploded into $44 million for the studio United Artists. When Cimino finally had something, he delivered a 5-hour and 25-minute version of the film, which he said would only be cut by 15 minutes. United Artists refused to release a 5-hour movie, so Cimino cut the film down to just 3 hours and 29 minutes.

That was then edited down to just 2 hours and 29 minutes, which was the version that finally hit theaters. The film reviews were so bad that it has become known as one of the worst movies in history. The reputation of the film became so bad so quickly that people just didn't show up. It earned only $3.5 million at the box office, not even remotely coming close to recouping its production costs.

It was such a disaster that United Artists was sold by its parent company, Transamerica. Cimino directed just four more movies over the next 25 years, and he was never again given such control or a budget like he had for Heaven's Gate. The film is credited for shifting Hollywood's entire approach to moviemaking, moving away from director-driven films and towards high-concept movies like Star Wars and Jaws, both of which were huge box office successes.

In 2004 and 2016, director's cuts of Heaven Gate were released that were closer to the original three-and-a-half-hour version. More film critics came to appreciate the film, with a few of them even calling it a lost classic. However, the damage had already been done. In 1987, Columbia Pictures released what was to become one of their highest-profile bombs in history, Ishtar. Pitched as a buddy road trip movie, it starred Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty.

The writer and director of the film was Elaine May, who had previously helped both actors, and both of whom felt indebted to her. The original budget was $27.5 million, but it ballooned to $51 million. Filming in Morocco was difficult, and the problems they had shooting became legendary. When the film was released, it received scathing reviews, and Like Heaven's Gate was put into the category as one of the worst movies of all time.

It earned only $14.4 million at the box office. The performance was so bad that Coca-Cola, the owners of Columbia Pictures, ended up selling the company to Sony. Hollywood began to move more and more towards the creation of blockbuster movies, which sold a lot of tickets but also required higher budgets, which meant that if a movie bombed, the losses could be staggering.

This happened in 1995 with the production of Cutthroat Island by the independent film studio Carolco Pictures. The film starred Geena Davis and Matthew Modine, and its hope was to bring back swashbuckling pirate movies. As with so many of the movies I've mentioned, there were problems with production. There were multiple script and casting changes. Almost every major male movie star in Hollywood turned down the role before it was given to Matthew Modine. Geena Davis tried to get out of the film, but contractually couldn't.

The film ended up costing $98 million, but only made $14 million at the box office. Adjusted for inflation, the Guinness Book of World Records lists it as being the biggest box office bomb of all time. The 21st century has seen an explosion in the production costs of major Hollywood pictures. As a result, there has been a proliferation of movies that have lost more than $100 million.

The exact accounting for each movie makes it difficult to know just how much money was lost, especially because promotional and marketing expenses can vary so much, but some of the numbers are staggering. The 2012 film John Carter may have lost over $200 million, as did the 2013 flop The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp. 2018's Mortal Engines by Peter Jackson and the 2023 MCU movie The Marvels both also lost over $200 million.

I want to end the episode not by examining total losses for a film, but by examining which movie had the worst overall box office receipts regardless of production budget. That distinction is held by a relatively unknown 2006 film starring Katherine Heigl and Tom Sizemore called Zizek's Road. I don't blame you if you haven't heard of it before. The production cost of the film was only $1.2 million.

The producers of the film didn't want to release the film domestically in the United States until it had a foreign release. However, Screen Actor Guild requirements mandated a domestic release. So, to honor the union requirements, the film paid a theater in Dallas, Texas $1,000 to show the film at noon once a day for one week. Zero money was spent on marketing or advertising. And each ticket costs $5.00.

After its one-week run, it had achieved total box office receipts of $30. Six people had paid money to see the film. Two of those were the makeup artist on the film who saw it with her friend, and they had their $10 refunded by the producer. So the net box office proceeds was only $20. An international release never happened, and the film went directly to DVD. In an odd twist, just days before I recorded this episode,

a two-disc collector's edition 4K Ultra Blu-ray version of Zizek's Road was announced. And the price for the film? $39.95. So the cost of a single Blu-ray is more than the entire film's box office receipts. Given the increasing production costs of blockbuster films, we have probably not seen the end of big box office bombs.

Because of increased costs due to inflation, some movies now approach half a billion dollars in total costs for production and marketing. If such a movie were to flop at theaters, we might soon witness the very first film to lose over $300 million at the box office. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiefer.

I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.