10 Movies That Cost Twice As Much As They Needed To
5. Heaven's Gate
On paper, a dramatic Western seems like a relatively cost-effective enterprise, but in director Michael Cimino's hands Heaven's Gate ended up going almost four times over-budget and going down in infamy as one of the most troublesome productions ever mounted.
Fresh off the success of The Deer Hunter, Cimino apparently went mad with power during shooting, and ended up five days behind schedule after less than a week. He also had entire sets torn down and rebuilt, an entire irrigation system installed, and filmed almost 220 hours of footage.
Things might have been forgiven had Cimino delivered his second consecutive classic, but he didn't. Heaven's Gate tanked at the box office and received tepid reviews, and while the movie has undergone a reappraisal in the decades since, the studio must have been wishing that the originally-agreed $11.6m had been stuck to.