10 Great Films That Lost Money On Ambitious Sets

Yes, Metropolis is the first of Fritz Lang's groundbreaking films, and its legendary commercial failure did nothing to halt his career. It did, however, bankrupt Ufa, its studio. It took nearly two years to film, and is estimated to have cost £1 million in 1927, an amount only rivaled by D.W. Griffin's grand-scale Intolerance.

The studio sought to reach an American audience, and they succeeded, but could never recoup the costs. Lang employed cinematographer Eugene Schüfftan, who had created a mirror technique for superimposing actors into miniatures. It might seem deflating to realize that the imposing architecture of the film is only small scale, but the process was painstakingly elaborate and still massively expensive.

Some of these shots included small planes and other vehicles, shot in stop motion, meaning achieving the right footage was a challenge. Due to some of film's proneness to damage at the time, a successful scene might be lost, and would have to be done again and again. The film also featured expensive costumes, such as the iconic robot suit, as well 40,000 extras.

Behind the film was a great drive and ambition to, yes, profit, but also to create something the likes of which had never been created before. Ufa fell briefly into difficult times, but kept afloat and soon thrived making propaganda films under the Nazi regime.