10 Insanely Expensive Movies You Forgot Even Existed
6. The Great Wall
It hasn't exactly been a well-kept secret that Hollywood has been making some pretty blatant attempts to capitalize on the ever-expanding appetite that Chinese audiences have for effects-driven blockbusters, and a fantasy-based historical epic from the director of Hero and House of Flying Daggers with Matt Damon in the lead role had no right to be as forgettable as it turned out to be.
The brilliantly absurd high-concept pitch of 'what if they built the Great Wall of China to keep monsters out?' seemed ripe for an insane CGI masterpiece, but instead we got a standard and formulaic studio movie that was just the latest to roll off the production line of uninspired big-budget wannabe epics.
The $150m flick may have scooped almost $335m at the box office, but unsurprisingly over half of those takings came from China as most people seemed to pay little attention to The Great Wall, which marked an unforgivable waste of the esteemed talent involved both in front of and behind the camera.