10 Critical Darling Movies That Were Shot Dead At The Box Office

Often ranked as the greatest film of all time, and indeed an outstanding achievement and leap forward in filmmaking, Citizen Kane nonetheless failed to make back its budget of $840k (which itself had run over from an initial limit of $500k).

There was, of course, a whole world of controversy surrounding Citizen Kane, on the back of Orson Welles' decision to base his story on the life of William Randolph Hearst. A media baron, Hearst used his influence over not only his own papers but other businesses and movie theatres, in order to prevent the film from being marketed and, in many places, shown at all.

The fallout from this was obvious in the financial figures and the controversy surrounding it. Hearst went out of his way to try and all but destroy Welles, which somewhat dwarfed the picture itself. But then Welles never had it easy, with the public, the studios or the production of his films.

The film then largely disappeared for over a decade, until it returned to the public eye in the mid-'50s, thanks to positive attention from critics and academics. Since then, it has been immortalised in the Hollywood canon and made back its budget many, many times over.