10 Movies That Ruined Their Studios

Founded by Mario Kassar and Andrew G. Vajna, Carolco Pictures was once something of a powerhouse in the movie industry, whacking out hits like Terminator 2 and Basic Instinct, and yet it is proof that even major players can succumb to the ruin of just one bad picture.

After those aforementioned successes, Carolco believed it could do no wrong, and so in 1994 it put the sizeable revenue it had amassed into Renny Harlin’s Cutthroat Island, a pirate movie. Though they have seen the occasional resurgence, pirate movies haven’t been truly in vogue since the 1960s, and so a $60 million genre picture was a big gamble.

 This was silly money for the time, given, for example, Spielberg’s epic, technological wonder Jurassic Park had been made for around $60 million the year before. The production was a nightmare from the get-go, with Harlin taking a dictatorial role in production, and various minor disasters occurring on set, taking the budget up to around $100 million. But even if things had gone right, there was no way this one was recovering its budget.

As it was, only around $18 million of tickets were sold worldwide, creating one of the most epic failures in moviemaking. The loss doomed Carolco and forced Kassar and Vajna to file for bankruptcy.