10 Movies That Cost Twice As Much As They Needed To
7. 47 Ronin
Another one of those movies that literally nobody outside of the studio expected to do anything other than bomb spectacularly, poor Carl Rinsch's career as a feature film director was all-but-over long before 47 Ronin had even hit theaters.
A fantasy-based action epic set in medieval Japan with Keanu Reeves in the lead role sounds like a decent enough proposition, and one that could have leaned into the ridiculous concept and even been positioned as the off-the-wall cousin to Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai.
However, funneling more and more money into a production that quickly became in real danger of falling apart at the seams turned out to be a disastrous decision, with the budget ending up as high as $225m, which is frankly ludicrous for something that was both an unknown quantity and a massive gamble.
47 Ronin ultimately suffered the ignominy of being the 51st highest-grossing movie of 2013, despite being the third most expensive behind only Man of Steel and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.