Failed movies that singlehandedly put their studios out of business

Some of the selections did not actually close the studio, but were near misses, like Cleopatra, which hurt 20th Century Fox, but didn’t close it down. Others on their list just managed to bankrupt tiny boutique studios whose success hinged on that one film.

All of that notwithstanding, there are some good examples.

4 thoughts on “Failed movies that singlehandedly put their studios out of business

  1. Life of Pi and Rhythm and Hues studios is a little misleading. Rhythm and Hues wasn’t the studio that produced the film, rather they were a FX studio that did a lot of the digital work on the film. It is true that they went belly-up, but the basically underbid the contract as well.

    And I’m a little skeptical about the disaster that they consider The Right Stuff (after the list mentions the Ladd Company two times, kind of hard to make a list twice for two different films that singlehandedly put a studio out of business).

    1. True that the title of the article is “Failed movies that singlehandedly put their studios out of business”, but it was a one two punch for the Ladd Company in 1983. The article states that The Right Stuff “contributed to the downfall of the Ladd Company, but it was the animated movie, Twice Upon A Time, released the same year that ended studio.

  2. Heaven’s Gate was directed by Michael Cimino who also directed The Deer Hunter. The Deer Hunter is the perfect example of a film that got caught up in ‘Oscar Buzz’ and then won for best picture.

    It arguably is actually a pretty bad movie. On a good day, I’d give it a 5/10 for being experimental, on a bad day I’d give it a 1/10 for being a bad movie. My theory is that the movie came out shortly after a lot of rock music featured self indulgent solos, mostly guitar solos, and that Cimino wanted to try that in film. So, some marks for experimentation.

    Every scene is basically stretched out to be as long as they can be. For instance, the characters aren’t just shown walking down hallways, they’re shown walking down long hallways all the way. The most famous example of the length of scenes is the opening wedding scene goes on for something like 30-50 minutes.

    The end of that scene shows how bad the film really is with the lame unsubtle symbolism of the glass breaking and the statue tearing up.

    Anyway, Cimino got away with it for The Deer Hunter and even got the big Oscar for it, but when he tried it again with Heaven’s Gate, people were no longer under the hype.

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