10 Movies That Ruined Their Studios

In 1963, $44 million was a lot of money. A hell of a lot of money. So, when 20th Century Fox put this kind of cash behind historical epic Cleopatra, it had to be good, didn’t it? The cast and crew list seemed to suggest so, with Citizen Kane’s Joseph L. Mankiewicz behind the camera (taking over from Rouben Mamoulian), Elizabeth Taylor in the lead role, and Richard Burton as Marc Antony. And yet...

Don’t get it wrong, Cleopatra is no stinker, with lavish sets, brilliant performances, and a clear sense of story from Mankiewicz. But it’s baggy as all hell, running at a wholly unearned 243 minutes. US critics loved it because it imbued Cleopatra and her time with the kind of brash hedonism the States was thriving on; European critics hated it for much the same reasons.

The movie took around $57 million at the box office, which was a sizeable sum, and yet because of the marketing costs and the endless disruptions during filming that had caused the budget to balloon (including replacing the director, switching locations, and fighting between Taylor and Burton), it nearly bankrupt the studio. Fox shut down production of its other movies, sold off space to other studios, and the careers of producer Walter Wagner and head exec Spyros Skouras went down the pan, with the studio only surviving by the skin of its teeth.