10 Great Films That Lost Money On Ambitious Sets

Though in many ways Brazil is an achievement of mesmerizing production and set design that stretches beyond its budget, the film was not inexpensive. It actually cost about the same as Back to the Future, released the same year. For a film made by the director of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, cowritten by the author of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and featuring an actor from a few adequate films like The Godfather Part II and Taxi Driver, Brazil lost a lot of cash. It hardly recovered half of its cost.

Like Playtime and Metropolis, Brazil relied on its set design to depict a theme of cold, isolating modernity. Some of the allure of the set is simply due to great location scouting, but many of the memorable scenes required fairly monumental set design. Some were used for extendedly, like the massive, grey-domed and steel-latticed interrogation room. Others appeared only for a moment, such as transportation terminals and doorways, though even these persist in the memory after viewing for their splendor.

Of course, plenty of set materials were quite cheap as well, such as the chintzy and low-tech, but futuristic plastic tubing littering the protagonist's apartment.

Universal was not exactly pleased with Brazil, but a few years later, Columbia gave Gilliam another chance, and nearly four times as much money, for The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which also flopped.