10 biggest flops in cinematic history...

[Adrian Douglas]

The Blues Brothers flopped when it was first released. When it was re-released three years later it was a big hit.

[Zac Stein]

what about that remake of "swept away"

that stank !!!

[Nathan Gifford]

The The Wizard of OZ was released when my mother was still a child in Crowel, TX: then a thriving metropolis of 10,000 (today about 2,000).

Anyway, she says the movie was absolutely stunning and remembers it like yesterday. I think the part that she through most dramatic was as Dorthy exits the house onto the Land of OZ and the film switches from B/W to color. Even today I am still impressed cinematography and stage craft. Amazing that a such a classic can be considered a loss.

[Mark Moore]

IMDB states that the budget or WIZARD OF OZ was $2.77 million and earned $3 million on it's initial release. On re-release in 1948-49, it earned $4.5 million.

An interesting piece of trivia: It has been said that the munchkins were paid $50/week for six weeks, while Toto was paid $125/week! More (a lot more) trivia is found here:

http://www.imdb.com/Trivia?0032138

[Dylan Couper]

Didn't Charlies Angels Full Throttle cost $180million and take in something like $95 million?

[Don Berube]

The only reason I was able to sit through that movie in its' entirety was because of Lucy Liu >faints<

Are we talking about artisitic flops -or- financial flops?

- don

[Dylan Couper]

SHould be just financial flops.

I nearly went to see Charlies Angels just to see the Ferrari Enzo they have in it. >droool<

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

As already mentioned, The Wizard of Oz was a hit when it was released and has periodically redoubled its revenue for the studio with the many TV airings, video and DVD releases, merchandising, etc.

Cleopatra as a flop is some sort of bizarre urban legend that just won't die, like blackout baby booms*. The Titanic of the 1960s, it was the most expensive movie of its decade and also one of the most profitable--though it didn't make its money all at once, because it predated the era of the simultaneous nationwide bow: staggered releases were the distribution modality of the day, unlike the now ubiquitous "In theaters everwhere," which helps studios recoup production costs in the very first weekend of release. Fox entered an era of fiscal shortfall in the mid 60s not because Cleopatra's extravagance sunk it, but because of a slew of other bombs they produced around the same time and because their accountant executives had originally conceived Cleopatra as a quickie they could produce cheaply, dusting off a script that had been in development for some years. Though the creative forces who took on the project--notably the bona fide genius Mankiewicz--had more noble aspirations for the film, they were well founded and showed considerable foresight, as Fox made fortunes from the film and continues reap dividends in the same fashion--if not the same magnitude--as MGM does with The Wizard of Oz year after year. The film didn't receive nearly as many negative reviews as it is said to have, but moreover, Cleopatra's feminist theme had an impact on the culture of the Sixties. By any metric, the retelling of the story of the Alexandrian queen who held the world in her hands was and is a hit.

If they ever recover the 10-hour director's cut and master it for DVD, it would make a fun rental if nothing else.

*My jaw went slack each time I witnessed giggly local news anchors slothfully airing this bunk as if it were actual news after the lights came back on last week. Don't they have any sort of budget for fact-checking anymore?

[Heath McKnight]

I'm facinated by films with runaway budgets, like T2, LAST ACTION HERO, TRUE LIES, WATERWORLD (aka, Kevin's gate, hee hee), TITANIC (jeez, see a trend here, Mr. Cameron?), but we haven't really had a biggie in a while. I don't think FULL THROTTLE cost more than $125 million plus marketing, but I enjoyed the first one in the theatre. Then I got a headache thinking about it. And now McG is back on SUPERMAN? WB aren't thinking right.

Worst movie ever for? Probably HOWLING 3, TANK GIRL (walked out and it was free--I worked at a movie theatre as a projectionist), PAY IT FORWARD, most of Seagal's movies, or HOBGOBLINS, which I saw on MST3K...It was so bad, even Mike and the 'bots didn't save it. (It was a bad 80s take-off on Gremlins.) The MST3K guys did have a great line, sung as a song: "It's the 80s, do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan!"

heath