They say "You've got to spend money to make money," and plenty of major movies have translated
huge budgets into even greater returns.
But sometimes, pricey, high-profile projects just don't pay off.
Here's a look at some big-budget films that were almost totally rejected by North American
audiences.
Cutthroat Island
Making a pirate movie that looks good is always going to be expensive — the details don't
come cheap, and neither does top talent.
For the sweeping 1995 pirate adventure Cutthroat Island, Carolco pictures tapped Renny Harlin,
a proven action director who'd just helmed two hits: Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger.
Harlin's pick to star: Academy Award winner Geena Davis, who was also his wife at the
time.
"Bad dog!"
But Davis wasn't a proven action star, and pirate movies hadn't been successful in Hollywood
for decades.
This was pre-Pirates of the Caribbean, after all.
The films's $98 million budget was put to good use.
But critics pounced on the movie, and the public stayed away in droves.
Carolco was already pushed so far into the red that the company filed for bankruptcy
in November 1995.
Cutthroat Island's paltry $10 million box office take following its release a month
later didn't help.
Town & Country
It was supposed to be just a standard romantic comedy aimed at an older, upscale audience,
yet it took three years and the budget of a summer sci-fi blockbuster to get Town & Country
to theaters.
Warren Beatty stars as a wealthy, philandering architect, married for 25 years to an interior
designer played by Diane Keaton.
The couple's friends, played by Garry Shandling and Goldie Hawn, are caught up in their own
infidelity mess, and further relationship hijinks ensue when the action switches from
town...to country.
The film's projected budget of $44 million included 10 million for Beatty, who reportedly
was such a perfectionist that his demand for endless retakes stretched out the film's shoot
for years.
Several of the film's stars also weren't happy with the screenplay, and brought in their
own script doctors to punch it up while the movie was in production.
Total final cost of Town & Country: $90 million.
Total domestic box office take of Town & Country, upon its release in spring 2001: just under
7-million-dollars.
"God, I wish I'd known that."
Revolution
On paper, it sounds like an undeniable hit.
Hugh Hudson, coming off the back-to-back critical and commercial hits Chariots of Fire and Greystoke,
directed this epic Revolutionary War movie as told through the eyes of Tom Dobb, a reluctant-to-fight
New York state fur trapper, played by Al Pacino.
Oddly enough, this movie about the American fight for freedom was produced by a British
studio and filmed in the English countryside.
Still, $28 million was poured into Revolution, making it one of most expensive movies of
1985, up there with Rambo: First Blood Part II.
But Revolution was a massive box office flop — it earned just over 350-thousand-dollars
in the U.S.
The Adventures of Pluto Nash
Sometimes mixing two genres works wonders: Lethal Weapon's action-comedy hybrid being
a classic example.
But how about combining "gangster movie," "science fiction," and "comedy"?
Not so much.
Set in the year 2080, The Adventures of Pluto Nash starred Eddie Murphy as an ex-smuggler
who gets out of prison and buys a mob-connected nightclub on the moon, using some "Lunar States
of America" cash ...
"Why don't you take these 'Hillarys'?
We appreciate you helping us out."
The screenplay bounced around Hollywood for more than a decade before finally being produced
in 2000 — and then it sat on the shelf.
Warner Bros. finally released it late in the summer of 2002, only to see it pull in just
$4.4 million at the domestic box office, which didn't even touch the film's staggering $100
million budget.
Lucky You
The mid-2000s poker craze begat a few poker movies, such as this 2007 drama about a second-generation
card shark looking to compete in the World Series of Poker.
Lucky You boasted an impressive lineup and was directed by Academy Award nominee Curtis
Hanson, who co-wrote the script with Academy Award winner Eric Roth.
Perhaps it was the level of top-notch talent that ran the budget of this low-key movie
up to approximately $55 million.
But that roster didn't attract big audiences — Lucky You pulled in just $5.7 million
at the domestic box office.
It was a lukewarm reception that certainly wasn't helped by the negative reviews from
critics like Rex Reed of the New York Observer, who argued that it "doesn't have enough energy
to keep the most catatonic tournament-poker addict awake."
Monkeybone
Well, it's certainly original: Monkeybone is about a cartoonist played by Brendan Fraser
who, while in a coma, travels to a dark fantasy land called Down Town.
There, he must defeat both Death incarnate and Monkeybone, an evil cartoon monkey of
his own creation.
Mixing live action and animation is a technically demanding and expensive task, and director
Henry Selick, best known for The Nightmare Before Christmas, ran up a tab of $75 million.
Executives relieved Selick of his directorial duties after a terrible test screening, calling
for a brand new cut of the movie.
Then executive producer Chris Columbus oversaw another edit to make it more palatable.
All the while, the release date was changed so often that the studio only had two weeks
before its March 2001 opening to mount an advertising campaign.
The end result for Monkeybone: domestic revenues of just over $5 million.
Gigli
It's a punchline in film history, synonymous with "flop."
And for good reason: For starters, 2003's Gigli has a title that isn't immediately pronounceable,
and a plot that falls somewhere between nonsensical and offensive.
Ben Affleck plays a thug tasked by his criminal bosses to intimidate a federal prosecutor
by kidnapping her developmentally disabled brother.
Things don't go as planned, so they send in Jennifer Lopez, another gangster, to help
him.
Affleck winds up falling in love with her, but it turns out that she's gay.
Nothing about Gigli seemed terribly promising on paper, but it earned extra attention when
its stars wound up in a tabloid-ready relationship, ultimately amplifying the negative pre-release
buzz.
When it arrived in theaters in August 2003, critics destroyed it.
Against a reported $54 million budget, the film took in a hair over $6 million and was
pulled from theaters after just three weeks.
This deprived many filmgoers the opportunity to hear Christopher Walken praise Marie Callender's
as only he can ...
"Mmmm good.
Put some on your head!
Your tongue would slap your brains out trying to get to it."
And now you've witnessed the only good to have come out of Gigli.
You're welcome.
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