10 Movies That Ruined Their Studios

Having already written and directed the successful Thai actioner Bangkok Dangerous (1999), the Pang brothers joined Nicolas Cage for a second run at it in 2008, when Cage’s production company Saturn Films procured the rights to shoot an English remake for the US market.

The film stars Cage in the central role of freelance contract killer Joe, whose history of crime and sentimentality both conspire to get the better of him on a job in Thailand. Critics hated it, and while the movie almost broke even on paper, accruing $42 million against a $45 million budget, the actual financial reality of making and marketing a film beyond its production budget was a tougher pill to swallow.

In the wake of Bangkok Dangerous, Saturn Films president Norman Golightly bailed, and Cage faced bankruptcy, in which not just his misguided film projects, but his many mansion investments and purchases of dinosaur bones and the like came back to bite him on the rear. Despite being brought to ruin, Cage’s financial recovery – by taking anything and anything offered to him for the better part of a decade – meant Saturn was revived, and the production company is once again slapping its name on Nicolas Cage’s films, including last year’s Longlegs.