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.
00:03How much money a movie takes in often has little relation to its actual quality.
00:07Plenty of films are just too niche for a wide audience
00:10and 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 bomb.
00:19And there's an even bigger difference between being a box office bomb
00:22and losing your 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 8. The Golden Compass, New Line Cinema
00:38New Line was on top of the world back in 2007.
00:42Since 1967, the production company had built up a reputation for taking chances
00:47on oddball films that other parts of Hollywood might pass on.
00:50A Nightmare on Elm Street and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films
00:54were their greatest successes until 2003,
00:57when they produced the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
01:00It was easily their most profitable investment yet,
01:03with the films grossing nearly $3 billion worldwide.
01:06Riding high on this success, New Line immediately put $180 million
01:10towards adapting another popular fantasy book series for the big screen,
01:15Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.
01:17Unfortunately, this stillborn film franchise did not perform quite as well as they hoped.
01:23It only took in $70 million in the United States,
01:26and 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,
01:40and New Line was swallowed up by Warner Brothers Pictures
01:43just two months after The Golden Compass's release.
01:467. The Lady Vanishes – Hammer Productions
01:50Hammer Productions and Alfred Hitchcock are two titans of British cinema.
01:54Hammer is still known worldwide for its timeless Hammer horror films,
01:58such as The Quatermass Experiment and Christopher Lee's iconic performance
02:02in their Dracula adaptation.
02:04Hitchcock is, of course, known for equally well-regarded classics,
02:07such as Psycho and Vertigo.
02:09So you'd think that Hammer Productions' remaking a Hitchcock masterpiece
02:13would 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.
02:30But critics were lukewarm at best towards it,
02:32and 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 leading man
03:04and put him front and centre on most of their posters.
03:07So what went wrong?
03:08Well, apparently starring in movies like this one certainly didn't help.
03:12By all accounts, the production was a complete mess behind the scenes.
03:16Warner Bros. initially wanted it to be a sequel to 1996's Space Jam,
03:20but Michael Jordan refused to sign on again.
03:23Then they changed 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
03:32was brought on to direct what would become Back in Action.
03:35He 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.
03:46Warner Bros. went from planning to release more Looney Tunes movies as soon as possible
03:51to shutting down its feature film animation division entirely.
03:54Now, 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.
04:02Number 5. It's a Wonderful Life, Liberty Films.
04:06In the years before World War II, Frank Capra had earned himself the title of Hollywood legend
04:11and 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.
04:21The very first film of the new company was to be It's a Wonderful Life.
04:26Unfortunately, while the Christmas classic actually did reasonably well at the box office,
04:30it was nowhere near successful enough to recoup its production costs of $2.3 million,
04:35and the fledgling studio found itself facing financial ruin barely a year into its existence.
04:41It was quickly swallowed up by Paramount,
04:43who locked Capra and his friends into multi-picture contracts with their studio.
04:47Liberty Films would only go on to release one more film under its label,
04:501948's State of the Union, before finally being dissolved in 1951.
04:56Capra later wrote of this failed venture that its purpose was to
04:591. Influence the course of Hollywood films,
05:022. Make four former army officers independently rich,
05:05and 3. Virtually prove fatal to my professional career.
05:09Ouch. Truly his own worst critic.
05:11Number 4. Battlefield Earth Franchise Pictures
05:15Say the words box office bomb to somebody,
05:17and there's a strong chance that this will be one of the films they think of first.
05:21John 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,
05:34and things just went downhill from there.
05:36Upon its release in 2000, Battlefield Earth was savaged by every critic alive,
05:41amateur and professional.
05:42Everything from the acting to the direction to the special effects was torn to shreds,
05:47and the whole fiasco ended up making only $29.7 million against the $73 million budget.
05:54John Travolta, newly restored to the spotlight thanks to Pulp Fiction six years prior,
05:59found his reputation once again in tatters.
06:01The people running Franchise Pictures were later found guilty of inflating the budgets 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.
06:18Number 3. Mars Needs Mums Image Movers Digital
06:22Robert Zemeckis has had a varied career, to say the least.
06:25You'll find well-regarded successes in his filmography, such as Forrest Gump or Back to the Future,
06:30but you'll also see more than a few misfires like What Lies Beneath or Welcome to Marwen.
06:35While he didn't direct Mars Needs Mums, it was made by his company Image Movers,
06:40as part of a joint venture with Disney, and his fingerprints are all over it.
06:44The odd motion capture animation that Zemeckis had previously used in A Christmas Carol
06:49was on full display again, and it looked just as unsettling here.
06:53In fact, the entire thing just looks downright ugly.
06:56Audiences seem to think so too, as the movie took in only $39 million against its $150 million budget,
07:03which cemented it as Disney's biggest financial disaster ever.
07:07Even before the film's release, Disney and Image Movers announced that Image Movers Digital,
07:12the division that made the movie, would be closed down.
07:14Shutting down your company after your release fails is one thing,
07:18but going bust before the movie is even released? That has got to hurt.
07:22Number 2. 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
07:35were being given unprecedented freedom to make the kinds of films they wanted to make,
07:40free from the studio restrictions of the preceding decades.
07:43This era gave us some of the greatest American films ever made, but it all had to end sometime.
07:49Still riding high from his best-picture-winning classic The Deer Hunter,
07:53director Michael Cimino decided to write a tale about a dispute between land barons and settlers
07:58in 1890s Wyoming.
08:01Upon its release in 1980, Heaven's Gate was derided by every industry publication
08:05as one of the worst movies ever made.
08:08The critical thrashing was so bad that United Artists actually pulled it from the theatres
08:12after just one week. They attempted to release it again a year later in a slightly shortened
08:17director's cut format, but that also performed horribly, only taking in $3.5 million against
08:23its $44 million budget.
08:26Not only did Heaven's Gate put United Artists out of business, with the failing studio eventually
08:31becoming part of MGM, it brought an end to the freedom that maverick directors had enjoyed
08:36in Hollywood for so long.
08:38Number 1. Superman IV The Quest for Peace – The Canon Group
08:42When the first Superman feature film hit cinema screens in 1978, it changed the landscape of
08:48film forever. 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.
09:08Sometimes you still luck out and get a halfway decent end product, and other times you get
09:12Superman IV. The film looks noticeably cheap the whole way through, a result of having its $36
09:18million budget slashed in half. A particularly hilarious example is a scene in which Superman
09:23is supposed to be approaching the United Nations building in New York City. Of course, any viewer
09:28with even a vague idea of what that building looks like can see that Superman is not even
09:33in America. The scene was in fact shot in Milton Keynes, with very little effort made to hide
09:38that fact. The Canon 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
09:48altogether. Not so super, man.
09:51And that concludes our list. If you think we missed any, then do let us know in the comments below,
09:56and while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe, and tap that notification bell.
10:00Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across various social medias
10:05just by searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie with WhatCulture. I hope you have a magical day,
10:10and I'll see you real soon.