10 Movies Made For Terrible Reasons

Making a movie purely because the copyright lapsed isn't great, but putting together a sci-fi blockbuster to promote a cult - er, religious movement - regularly accused of fraud, harassment, and human trafficking? Yeah, that's way worse.

To the untrained observer, Battlefield Earth is simply an awful waste of $73 million - a dreadfully inept yet bafflingly star-studded tentpole which was panned by critics, flopped at the box office, and not only won Worst Picture at the Razzies but also won their Worst Picture of the Decade award in 2009.

Battlefield Earth is based on a 1982 novel by Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard, and was the pet project of star and Scientologist John Travolta, who had been attempting to get the film made for years.

Nobody associated with the project, least of all Travolta, will admit that the film was made to heighten Scientology's visibility in the world, though that was very obviously the intent - to present Hubbard's ideas to the world wrapped in a glossy blockbuster package.

Hell, rather than embark on a traditional press tour, Travolta instead toured book stores throughout the U.S. and signed copies of Hubbard's novel.

Some even accused the movie of containing subliminal messages intended to favorably sway public perception of Scientology, though no tangible evidence of this has ever been uncovered.

All the same, it's painfully clear what Battlefield Earth's true agenda was - one which spectacularly failed when it was rendered an instant laughing stock.