10 Movies That Did Crazy Things When They Ran Out Of Money
When all else fails? Apparently get the French mob to finance the rest of your movie.
Making any movie, even a truly terrible one, is incredibly difficult, and of the many, many things that can go wrong, there's always the possibility you'll just... run out of money.
If an investor pulls out or a producer mis-manages funds, it can be totally disastrous for a film shoot, potentially causing it to be shut down indefinitely or even permanently scrapped.
But sometimes filmmakers and producers have proven dedicated enough to come up with some creative - and at times, quite concerning - solutions to their monetary woes.
These 10 films, whether stonking box office hits or abject failures, all made it to our screens thanks to the drastic, extreme measures undertaken by those in charge.
From putting their own money on the table to borrowing from criminals, sneakily recycling footage, re-working scenes, and even literally crowd-funding the rest of the budget, these movies all got finished through means either shady or inventive (if not both).
The lesson here? Have a damn good plan before you start shooting, hire a producer who knows what the hell they're doing, and always, always have a financial safety net for when - not if - the unexpected happens on set...
10. Director Renny Harlin Spent $1 Million Of His Own Money To Fix The Script - Cutthroat Island
Films don't get much more calamitous than Cutthroat Island, the 1995 action-adventure film that bombed so catastrophically at the box office that it put studios off swashbuckling movies for almost an entire decade, until Pirates of the Caribbean reaffirmed their commercial viability.
The production was beset by numerous delays and on-set accidents which caused the budget to balloon to a ludicrous $98 million by the time it was all said and done - though some estimates peg it as high as $115 million.
Furthermore, the script just wasn't working during pre-production, and though Renny Harlin asked the producers to bankroll rewrites, production company Carolco Pictures was on the verge of bankruptcy and had no further funds to give.
As a result, a desperate Harlin ended up spending $1 million of his own cash to pay the writers to complete a new draft.
Even though Harlin was a rising superstar director after the success of Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger, that was still a majorly drastic move for any filmmaker.
And it was ultimately all for nought - the film was critically panned, with particular attention paid to its shoddy screenplay, while Harlin received a Worst Director Razzie nomination, and it grossed a brutal $10 million worldwide.