10 Movies That Should Never Have Bombed At The Box Office (But Totally Did)

Heaven's Gate has two stories. There's the one contained within the movie, which follows a county sheriff who stands up for immigrant farmers against an incoming war from wealthy cattle owners looking to further their own interests. Then, there's the one outside the movie, which saw one of the most sudden and catastrophic falls from fame for the director Michael Cimino.

Despite scoring huge success with both Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and The Deer Hunter, Cimino's next directorial project went down in flames at the box office. On a budget of $44 million (decent by 1980s standards), Heaven's Gate only managed to achieve a gross of $3.5 million. The movie was butchered by critics, and a 325 minute cut of the movie was heavily edited down to a 149 minute version, which audiences never bothered to watch anyway.

The failure of Heaven's Gate had ramifications that exceeded further than the dire financials that resulted from ticket sales. The studio that made it, United Artists, was sold off and eventually merged into MGM. Also, studios began to tighten purse strings on movie budgets industry-wide, signaling an end to the freewheeling spending that resulted in many classics.

Despite the movie's reappraisal in later years, Cimino's career never really recovered. He only directed four more movies, all box office duds, before retiring from the industry altogether in 1996.