$100 million loss: This sci-fi movie’s failure sinks the studio

Some works are sometimes made available by studios that do not hesitate to invest astronomical sums in the always risky enterprise throughout the creative chain, from the birth of an idea or concept to the projection of a film in front of an audience. .

The hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the studios on marketing costs will not say otherwise. Because success, despite these sometimes pharaonic sums, is not always there. Especially if we consider, for example, that for a work that cost 100 million dollars to produce, the break-even margin should be at least 2 to 2.5 times the equivalent of the production budget.

With that in mind, here are three examples of movies that did so well at the box office that they took the studio by storm.

Titan AE

“The scientific and futuristic dimension of the project completely fascinated me. Creating new worlds took us on an amazing adventure and allowed the imagination to run wild.

But Titan AE’s rich imagery should not make us forget the characters, the essential vectors of emotion. Because the story is also an allegory about the search for identity and the resilience of the human spirit.

Such was Don Bluth’s wonderful profession of faith, co-directed with Gary Goldman, that Titan AE man isn’t exactly a novice. An animation genius, an outstanding artist, unfortunately somewhat forgotten by a younger generation exhausted by the Pixar stable, Dreamworks and other Minions adventures, he began his career as an intervalist for Sleeping Beauty and then an animator at Disney.

He notably worked on Robin Hood, The Adventures of Bernard and Bianca, and the Roxy and Rookie films. If we go alone, it is to him that we owe the wonderful Brisby and the Mystery of Nimhi, which has become an animation classic.

A very ambitious project that attempted to combine 2D images and 3D images created in CGI, a technology still relatively new in 2000, Titan AE The action takes place in 3028. After the complete extinction of the Earth, the hope of humanity lies in a young boy, Cale.

He holds a map in the palm of his hand that can lead him to Titan, the giant spaceship his father has built. Only Titan can rebuild a new world that can hold the last survivors of the human species. But the cruel Dre, the huge aliens responsible for the disappearance of the Earth, are ready to do anything to stop it.

While the film’s visual approach was praised, the very lukewarm reviews upon its release certainly did not help the film’s career. Fox Animation, which created the film, logically counted a lot of it and was quite confident. He had already produced two previous works by Don Bluth: Anastasia, released here in 1998, and Bartók the Magnificent, an Anastasia spin-off.

Shot on a budget of $75 million, a huge amount at the time (which would be the equivalent of $134 million today, adjusted for inflation), the film flopped at the box office. American, failed to earn more than $22 million. If we add international revenues, Titan AE earned only $36.75 million. The damage was estimated at 100 million dollars.

The failure was so devastating that Don Bluth never recovered as he was unable to achieve anything after that. And the bleeding was such that 20th Century Fox’s liquidated Fox animation division improved.

At the time, the studio was working on another Ice Age animated film. The project was then offered to another studio, Blue Sky, which produced Ice Age and would revive the new franchise.

Bangkok is dangerous

Acquiring a complete dinosaur skeleton, millions of dollars spent on ultra-rare comics (including a first issue of Superman), several houses including a prison in Germany and England, many cars of course…

Between 1996 and 2011, Nicolas Cage spent no less than 150 million dollars. An extravagant lifestyle that forced him to star in an industrial amount of films just to pay off his debts and fill his coffers.

His film credits include Bangkok Dangerous, released in 2008. In fact, a self-remake: brothers Danny and Oxide Pang have already signed on for a film of the same name that was released in 1999. The actor, for his part, was full of praise for the original brothers film:

“I especially appreciated his visual style and very original rhythm. When I was reading the new script, I was fascinated for the first time by the relationship between my character and his assistant. The relationship between master and student, which turns into friendship. It’s always interesting to see. People from different cultures collaborate, coexist and finally meet each other.”

The story of the arrival of an assassin in Bangkok (which he plays) was relatively expensive: $45 million; Or, adjusted for inflation, more than $64 million today. Even for an action movie, this is not an insignificant amount. But when it was released in theaters, it can’t be said that it was received with polite and utter indifference and failed to collect 8 million dollars in its first weekend.

Bangkok is dangerous grossed only $42 million at the international box office and was panned in almost every aspect (“Bangkok Dangerous is reminiscent of Steven Seagal’s straight-to-video action flicks, unintentional comedy and counter-zen” Charitably wrote inrocks at home).

Including its action scenes, arguably the film’s strong point. Its failure even cost the existence of one of the studios working on it, Virtual Studio Ltd. Who didn’t exactly have an upstart profile, as he especially worked on visual effects for films like V for Vendetta or Zack Snyder’s 300. A sad last stand.

The fall of the Roman Empire

The 1950s was an authentic golden age for the peplum genre, in particular the biblical peplum: Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments or Quo Wadi to name just a few. In the 1960s, the peplum wave continued with some success, but much less than in the previous decade.

and marked by two resounding failures at the box office: Pharaonic Cleopatra with its chaotic production and Elizabeth Taylor’s Whimsical. and The Fall of the Roman Empire, which came out a year later in 1964.

The film was directed by the great director, Anthony Mann, who two years earlier directed Le Cid, the legendary Spanish hero Charlton Heston. Worn by Sophia Loren, Alec Guinness, James Mason, Stephen Boyd, Christopher Plummer, Omar Sharif and Mel Ferrer, The fall of the Roman Empire Describes the internal struggles between the unstable tyrant Commodus and the general Livius, a worthy disciple of Marcus Aurelius, who wanted to transform the Roman Empire into an empire resistant to poverty and barbarian invasions.

The story should logically remind you of any of Ridley Scott’s gladiators. It is normal; Mann’s film is a major source of inspiration, right down to his scenes. Like most productions of this scale, Mann’s film was expensive at the time: $19 million. This is equivalent to 189 million dollars today.

To say it took a hit at the box office is to gross less than $5 million. It was produced by Samuel Bronston Productions, named after the famous American producer who founded his company in 1943.

In the 1960s, he invested heavily in these films with disproportionate budgets. Peplum King of Kings in 1961. Sidmentioned above, in the same year. 55 days of Beijing in 1963. The works were filmed elsewhere in the heart of Franco’s Spain, in studios not far from Madrid.

A financial disaster The fall of the Roman Empire It was such that he killed his production company, which went into liquidation in June 1964. During subsequent bankruptcy proceedings, Bronston was charged with perjury in a prosecution for lying under oath when he claimed he did not have a bank account in Switzerland. Found guilty, he still appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court, which he won, but many years later, in January 1973.

This case and the liquidation of Samuel Bronston Productions destroyed his career, even if he continued to work, notably in the early 1980s, producing Allen Corneux’s Fort Sagan.

“I love talking about the films my father made, I think it’s good that we still remember them” The producer’s daughter, Andrea Bronston, told the newspaper about it the worldIn a fascinating article published in 2021. “But I spend my life trying to explain that I’m not rich. My brothers and I didn’t inherit anything because despite his spectacular career, he eventually lost everything.”