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Some of these studios managed to bounce back, and some are gone for good.
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00:00It should go without saying that the film industry is built on hard cash.
00:04Pretty much every film that hits cinemas is a product and an investment,
00:08designed to produce returns for financiers.
00:11But sometimes the studios making these films put too many of their eggs in one basket and come a cropper.
00:16There is no surefire way of predicting what audiences, critics or distributors will go for, after all.
00:22And every movie is to some extent a gamble.
00:24Even with an ironclad script, big name stars and an auteur director,
00:28major movies can fail spectacularly.
00:31And doubly so when they don't have any of these.
00:33Over the years, studios have ploughed cash into films on a bad bet and suffered the dire consequences.
00:40So with that in mind, I'm Ellie for WhatCulture and these are all movies that ruined their studios.
00:45Starting with Final Fantasy The Spirits Within.
00:48Boasting the honours of being the first photorealistic CG feature film
00:53and also the most expensive video game adaptation at the time,
00:56Final Fantasy The Spirits Within follows Aki Ross and Dr. Cid in their attempt to free a post-apocalyptic Earth
01:04from deadly alien creatures, the Phantoms, while battling warmonger General Hine.
01:09And though this ought to have been big news,
01:12not nearly enough people went to see it to justify the $137 million price tag.
01:17The Spirits Within took only $85 million at the box office,
01:21making it a catastrophe for its financiers and studios.
01:24But of the two studios that backed the project, Columbia and Square,
01:28one of them was a major player in the market, not easily sunk by a single movie,
01:33and the other wasn't.
01:34No prizes for guessing which.
01:36Unfortunately, Square Pictures was not merely a film studio,
01:39but the filmmaking arm of the video game developer for the Final Fantasy series.
01:44It reported unsustainable losses and closed its doors the year of The Spirits Within's release.
01:49Square went on to be partially revived in 2003 when a merger created Square Enix,
01:55but the original studio was gone.
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02:12I'd make that deal.
02:13Damn good deal.
02:14Raise the Titanic.
02:15Based on Clive Kustler's 1976 book of the same name,
02:19Raise the Titanic is the film James Cameron arguably spent a good decade of his career
02:24trying to make happen for real.
02:26But long before Cameron set his sights on the submerged ship,
02:29director Jerry Jameson made this ambitious adventure movie about it,
02:33in which the US government sends operative Dirk Pitt to bring the Titanic back to the surface
02:39and recover the byzanium ore, a fantasy fuel invented by Kustler, on board.
02:44With a $40 million budget, it was a major gamble for producer Baron Lou Grade's production company,
02:50ITC Entertainment, given that this was 1980,
02:53and it forced the studio into a bit of a jam.
02:55Either this film made bank, or it all went under.
02:58Now, I'd love to say that audiences came out in their droves,
03:02the movie was the highest earner of all time,
03:04and it became a household name almost instantly,
03:06but we all know that's Cameron's Titanic, not Jameson's.
03:10No, Raise the Titanic secured just $7 million in ticket sales,
03:13ruining ITC's film division in the process.
03:16And after the release of the other pictures ITC already had in the can,
03:20Baron Grade quit the movie business for good,
03:22famously claiming that, quote,
03:24it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic.
03:26Sinbad, Legend of the Seven Seas.
03:28Anyone born in the 90s will have fond memories of the 2D animations
03:32produced by Disney and DreamWorks through that decade and into the early noughties.
03:37This medium got us invested in the unlikeliest of topics,
03:40including Greek mythology, early 1900s adventure novels,
03:44the Bible, and of course, Middle Eastern folk pirates,
03:48with Sinbad, Legend of the Seven Seas.
03:50Now, there is no doubt that most of us have powerful memories
03:53of watching Sinbad on VHS at home,
03:56but how many went to see it at the cinema?
03:58Not nearly enough, is the answer.
04:00DreamWorks was not exactly a small studio in 2003,
04:03riding on the success of Chicken Run and Shrek,
04:06but it also hadn't been in the business long enough
04:08to have the ironclad finances of its main competitor, Disney.
04:12Thus, when it spent $60 million on Sinbad,
04:15roping in a massive celebrity voice cast, including Brad Pitt,
04:18that was bad enough.
04:19But when it spent a further $150 million on marketing and tie-ins,
04:24it was beyond the pale.
04:25The film scored $80 million at the box office.
04:28Not bad for a slightly niche animation,
04:30but not nearly enough to cover the costs.
04:32Co-founder David Geffen admitted that DreamWorks
04:34had come close to bankruptcy twice, thanks to Sinbad.
04:38And it was only by some clever financial and business manoeuvres
04:41and dumb luck that the studio wasn't forced to close for good.
04:44Side Out
04:45Comedy-sports drama Side Out came along in 1990,
04:48when the excesses of the 80s were slowing down,
04:51and sports movies were broadly dividing into two categories.
04:55Family fun-scapades
04:56and hard-hitting dramas.
04:58Side Out, a film about a beach volleyball competition,
05:01which feels like the writer saw the volleyball scene in Top Gun
05:04and thought there's a movie there,
05:06had all but missed its niche.
05:07Producing The Thing was former Walt Disney executives
05:10James L. Stewart and Rich Irvine's Aurora Productions,
05:14which had enjoyed one initial success with 1982's The Secret of NIMH,
05:18before struggling to make ends meet on subsequent productions.
05:22It seems obvious now,
05:23but a $6 million budget for a beach volleyball film
05:26was probably not the way to go,
05:27especially as the production shelled out for professional players
05:31without the foresight to see that very few moviegoers
05:34would know who these people were.
05:36Side Out took only $450,000
05:38and was the last film Aurora Productions ever made.
05:42Although a monumental loss,
05:43this wasn't the be-all and end-all flop,
05:45but it was the flop that broke the camel's back,
05:48or the Aurora's back.
05:49I don't know, do production companies have backs?
05:51Either way,
05:53Megalopolis.
05:54One of the all-time greats and a pioneer of New Hollywood,
05:57Francis Ford Coppola made his name in the 1970s,
06:01churning out masterpiece after masterpiece,
06:03before moving into a slower lane for the 80s and 90s
06:07that saw him put out several good movies,
06:09albeit not quite the calibre of his previous work.
06:12Unfortunately, Coppola's early successes gave him a self-certainty as a director
06:16that has not served his career well.
06:19Several times over the years,
06:20his production companies have gone bust
06:22due to his anticipation of what a film might be worth
06:25to audiences not meeting expectations.
06:27And many times,
06:28it has been his own money on the line.
06:30Such is the case with last year's Megalopolis,
06:33a ropey epic sci-fi about architect Cesar Catalina,
06:36who clashes with corrupt mayor Franklin Cicero
06:39as Catalina seeks to revitalise an alternate New York City
06:43by turning it into the titular Megalopolis.
06:46Coppola funded the $135 million film
06:49through his company, American Zoetrope,
06:51using his own cash,
06:53and it returned just $14 million at theatres.
06:56Theatres who were reluctant to show it at all.
06:58Coppola and American Zoetrope are now facing financial ruin,
07:02and the director is selling his watches
07:03to try and remain solvent.
07:05But don't think for a second
07:07that this will stop him from trying again.
07:08Bangkok Dangerous
07:10Having already written and directed
07:11the successful Thai actioner Bangkok Dangerous,
07:14the Pang brothers joined Nicolas Cage
07:16for a second run at it in 2008,
07:19when Cage's production company Satom Films
07:21procured the rights to shoot an English remake
07:24for the US market.
07:25The film stars Cage in the central role
07:27of freelance contract killer Joe,
07:29whose history of crime and sentimentality
07:32both conspire to get the better of him
07:34on a job in Thailand.
07:35Critics hated it,
07:36and while the movie almost broke even on paper,
07:39accruing $42 million against a $45 million budget,
07:42the actual financial reality of making
07:44and marketing a film beyond its production budget
07:47was a tougher pill to swallow.
07:49In the wake of Bangkok Dangerous,
07:51Satom Films president Norman Golightly bailed,
07:54and Cage faced bankruptcy,
07:55in which not just his misguided film projects,
07:58but his many mansion investments
07:59and purchases of dinosaur bones and the like
08:02came back to bite him on the rear.
08:04Despite being brought to ruin,
08:06Cage's financial recovery,
08:07by taking anything and everything offered to him
08:09for the better part of a decade,
08:11meant Saturn was revived,
08:13and the production company is once again
08:15slapping its name on Nicolas Cage's films,
08:18including last year's Long Legs.
08:20Cutthroat Island
08:21Founded by Mario Casar and Andrew G. Viner,
08:24Carolco Pictures was once something of a powerhouse
08:27in the movie industry,
08:28whacking out hits like Terminator 2 and Basic Instinct.
08:32And yet, it is proof that even major players
08:34can succumb to the ruin of just one bad picture.
08:37After those aforementioned successes,
08:39Carolco believed it could do no wrong,
08:41and so in 1994,
08:43it put the sizable revenue it had amassed
08:45into Rennie Harland's Cutthroat Island,
08:48a pirate movie.
08:49Though they have seen the occasional resurgence,
08:52pirate movies haven't been truly in vogue
08:54since the 1960s,
08:56and so a $60 million genre picture
08:58was a big gamble.
09:00This was silly money for the time,
09:02given, for example,
09:03Spielberg's epic technological wonder
09:05Jurassic Park
09:06had been made for around $60 million
09:08the year before.
09:09The production was a nightmare from the get-go,
09:11with Harland taking a dictatorial role
09:13in production
09:14and various minor disasters occurring on set,
09:17taking the budget up to around $100 million.
09:20But even if things had gone right,
09:22there was no way this one was recovering its budget.
09:24As it was,
09:25only around $18 million of tickets
09:27were sold worldwide,
09:29creating one of the most epic failures
09:31in moviemaking.
09:32The loss doomed Carolco
09:33and forced Kassar and Viner
09:35to file for bankruptcy.
09:36Gods and Generals
09:37Adapted from the 1996 novel,
09:40epic war drama Gods and Generals
09:42was a passion project
09:43for writer-director Ronald F. Maxwell
09:45and his producer,
09:46media mogul Ted Turner,
09:48who financed it to the tune of $56 million
09:51via his Ted Turner Pictures company.
09:53The film takes us back
09:54to the American Civil War
09:55and follows Stonewall Jackson
09:57right up to his death
09:58at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
10:00Now, the USA's cult of patriotism
10:03usually knows no bounds,
10:04and so anything with a Civil War vibe
10:06can usually fill screens
10:07on vague ideas alone.
10:09But US audiences are also the reason
10:1090 Minutes is considered
10:12the ideal movie runtime.
10:13As Hollywood tells it,
10:15they don't like to sit and pay attention
10:16to one thing for too long.
10:18Unfortunate, then,
10:19that Gods and Generals
10:20is three hours and 40 minutes long.
10:22Four hours 40
10:23if you catch the director's cut.
10:24The film made around $13 million
10:26at the box office,
10:27which was bad enough
10:28considering the initial $56 million budget.
10:30But that was made all the worse
10:32by the reported $30 million
10:34Ted Turner Pictures
10:35sunk into marketing.
10:36Needless to say,
10:37this was the final movie
10:38Ted Turner or Ted Turner Pictures produced.
10:40Try saying that 10 times faster.
10:42Titan AE
10:4320th Century Fox
10:44founded Fox Animation Studios
10:46in 1994,
10:48seeking to ape Disney's success,
10:50embrace evolving technology,
10:52and cement its place
10:53in the animation sphere.
10:54Like many things that Fox does,
10:56however,
10:56its efforts were a bit disjointed
10:58and lacked Disney's drive,
11:00ethos, or vision.
11:01Nonetheless,
11:01with Don Bluth and Gary Goldman
11:03helming its projects,
11:04it scored an early success
11:05with Anastasia,
11:07the almost offensively fictional story
11:08of Anastasia Romanov
11:10escaping the violence
11:11of the Russian Revolution.
11:12Its second film, though,
11:14the Joss Whedon-penned Titan AE,
11:16was not so lucky.
11:17Yes,
11:18Whedon knows his genre pictures
11:19and can pen a great script
11:21with his eyes closed,
11:22but he was used to delivering
11:23for the adult and older teen markets,
11:25not children's animations.
11:27The resulting movie
11:28took us to a universe without Earth,
11:30where it is one man's mission
11:31to save humanity from extinction
11:33on a budget somewhere
11:35in the $85 million region.
11:37A lot of money
11:38for such a green studio.
11:40Titan AE didn't really work
11:41for any age bracket
11:43and wound up taking around $37 million
11:45at the box office,
11:46plunging the studio into the red.
11:48Fox could absorb the losses,
11:50but it opted to do so
11:51without its animation division,
11:53closing down Fox Animation Studios
11:55just weeks after the film's release.
11:58And finally,
11:59Cleopatra.
12:00In 1963,
12:01$44 million was a lot of money.
12:04A hell of a lot of money.
12:05So when 20th Century Fox
12:07put this kind of cash
12:08behind historical epic Cleopatra,
12:11it had to be good,
12:12didn't it?
12:12The cast and crew list
12:13seemed to suggest so,
12:15with Citizen Kane's
12:16Joseph L. Mankiewicz
12:17behind the camera,
12:18taking over from Ruben Mamoulian,
12:21Elizabeth Taylor in the lead role,
12:22and Richard Burton as Mark Antony.
12:24And yet...
12:26Now don't get me wrong,
12:27Cleopatra is no stinker,
12:28with lavish sets,
12:29brilliant performances,
12:31and a clear sense of story.
12:32But it's baggy as all hell,
12:34running at a wholly unearned 243 minutes.
12:38US critics loved it,
12:39because it imbued Cleopatra and her time
12:41with the kind of brash hedonism
12:43the States was thriving on.
12:45European critics hated it
12:46for much the same reasons.
12:48The movie took around $57 million
12:50at the box office,
12:51which was a sizable sum.
12:53And yet because of the marketing costs
12:55and the endless disruptions
12:56during filming
12:57that had caused the budget to balloon,
12:59including replacing the director,
13:01switching locations,
13:02and fighting between Taylor and Burton,
13:04it nearly bankrupt the studio.
13:06Fox shut down production
13:07on its other movies,
13:09sold off space to other studios,
13:11and the careers of producer
13:12Walter Wagner
13:13and head exec Spiros Skoros
13:15went down the pan,
13:16with the studio only surviving
13:18by the skin of its teeth.
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