10 Times Film-Makers Ruined Their Own Damn Movies

10. Jan De Bont Based Speed 2: Cruise Control On A Dream

After the commercial success of action flick Speed, 20th Century Fox were only too happy to give the go ahead for a sequel and though original Speed screenwriter Graham Yost came up with some pretty entertaining ideas – including one about a plane that can’t ascend above 10,000 feet but happens to be in the Andes, one of the world’s highest mountain ranges – director Jan de Bont had a better idea.

De Bont had been plagued by a recurring dream about a cruise ship crashing into a Caribbean island but rather than putting it down to eating too much cheese before bedtime, he insisted his dream vision form the basis of Speed 2 and had its writing team work backwards from his idea.

The thing is, a slow-moving cruise ship travelling at a few knots per hour doesn’t really have the same appeal or thrill as a speeding bus rigged with a bomb and the movie puttered along with all the excitement of a canal boat excursion on the Norfolk Broads.

And that fateful final scene de Bont dreamed up himself? It took roughly a quarter of the movie’s $110 million budget to film – then one of the most expensive stunts ever filmed – but failed to help Speed 2 scrape back much at the box office.