10 Insanely Expensive Movies You Forgot Even Existed

Remember the gritty Jack and the Beanstalk reboot that cost nearly $200m? No? Anyone?

By Scott Campbell /

Is it worse to be a bad movie, or a forgettable one?

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Obviously, nobody sets out to make cinematic garbage on purpose, but awful movies are a lot more likely to be remembered, discussed, dissected and maybe even reappraised once enough time has passed. Forgettable ones are just that, and we've all had the experience of shelling out our hard-earned cash to go and catch something on the big screen, only to find ourselves struggling to remember anything about it as soon as the credits start rolling.

There are so many big-budget blockbusters making their way to theaters each year, and many of them feel so increasingly similar that the summer months often tend to get mashed together inside your mind in a blend of pyrotechnics, pixels and promises of sequels.

Not every movie gets to be a success, but often they can end up fading from our collective memories and into obscurity so quickly that you can forget you've even seen it before until it randomly pops up at 2am as one of your late-night suggestions on Netflix, Amazon or Disney Plus. And that's the point you should just get up and go to bed.

10. Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is the most expensive independent movie ever made, and will probably retain that title for the foreseeable future because nobody on their right mind would spend $200m on a project without the backing of a major studio.

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Luc Besson has always done whatever the hell he wants to regardless of whether people think it's a bad idea or not, and the mega-budget sci-fi adaptation ended up causing the stock price of his EuropaCorp company to drop dramatically when it landed in theaters around the world with little more than a dull thud.

Some of the visuals and world-building were on point but Valerian was horribly miscast from top to bottom, and nobody seemed to have much interest in seeing beautiful people giving wooden performances and spouting dialogue from a script that was frequently utter nonsense.

It may have just about scraped the production costs back in theaters, but almost as soon as the credits rolled on Valerian most audiences had already completely forgotten about it.

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