8 Movies That Bombed So Hard They BANKRUPTED Their Studios

8. The Golden Compass (New Line Cinema)

New Line was on top of the world back in 2007. Since 1967, the production company had built up a reputation for taking chances on oddball films that other parts of Hollywood might pass on.

A Nightmare on Elm Street and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films were their greatest successes until 2003, when they produced the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was easily their most profitable investment yet, with the films grossing nearly three billion dollars worldwide.

Riding high on this success, New Line immediately put $180 million towards adapting another popular fantasy book series for the big screen, Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.

Unfortunately, this stillborn film franchise did not perform quite as well as they hoped. It only took in $70 million in the United States and while it performed much better abroad, New Line had sold the overseas distribution rights to fund the film’s production. This meant that they never saw a dime of that foreign revenue.

This was regarded as one mistake too much by parent company TimeWarner and New Line was swallowed up by Warner Brothers Pictures just two months after The Golden Compass’s release.