10 Great Films That Lost Money On Ambitious Sets

Part of the filmmaking process is, of course, venture capitalism. Producers attempt to have some control over directors and ensure profit. Directors, in turn, often only pay lip service about the initial agreements.

Perhaps a filmmaker has paid his dues: he's worked with limited resources and made the studios good income. Now he can ask for a bigger budget. While a filmmaker doesn't exactly want to damage his career, he may see above all an opportunity to finally achieve his vision, without financial constraint.

It's one thing to pour money into big name stars, but where things get really interesting is when filmmakers spend copious amounts on lavish sets and other production elements. If the movie fails commercially, these monuments can seem like castles made of sand. In other cases, they actually linger as ghost towns after the film died. But for every Waterworld there's a Cleopatra.

Sometimes you have to go big or go home...

At first glance, the set of Heaven's Gate, director Michael Cimino's release two years after The Deer Hunter, may not necessarily stand out--a drab, limited, old west town. The attractive panoramics the film truly has to offer are built by nature: mountains and flattened fields of Montana's Glacier National Park. What's concealed, however, is the obsessive, taxing attention to detail in constructing the town itself piece by piece.

Auters are notorious for their exacting demands and innumerable takes, and Cimino was no exception. His style is almost a fable regarding neglected details, teaching us to pay attention the art of a dirty road perfected even to obscure its design.

As a matter of fact, the story goes Cimino demolished the first town thoroughfare his crew built. Though made to his specifications, he said it didn't look right. The film was originally budgeted at £8.5 million, but that ended up quadrupling. Camino built a massive irrigation ditch in order to beautify a battlefield. He even saw a tree that was perfect, except that nature had put it in the wrong place, so he had it chopped into pieces and reassembled.

Cimino's overindulgence and uncompromising approach was something of a joke, a hubris that justified critics' hatred. Time Magazine even included Heaven's Gate on its 100 Worst Ideas of The Century, somewhere between Prohibiton and thong underwear for men. Others saw, in a different light, dedication, and value that only a doctrinaire artist could yield, and appreciation for the film has since grown.