10 Terrible Movies That Cost Way More Than They Needed To
Throwing money at something is not the easiest way to make a good movie.
Not to sound like a grumpy old man, but movies these days cost too much. That's not even an opinion, it's a fact.
The rising costs of studio blockbusters have all but signaled the end of the mid-budget movie as the studios increasingly hedge their bets on mega-budget productions designed to generate the maximum amount of cash. Before 2004, only one movie had cost at least $200m and that was Titanic, which went on to become the most lucrative of all time, earning back 10x that figure. Now, a total of 52 productions have cost at least that amount and then some.
Spending vast sums of cash is by no means a guarantee of success, either. Some expensive movies have turned out great but others... not so much. Whether it be through costly reshoots, a director unprepared and ill-equipped to handle such a vast budget, or the sheer misguided optimism that spending hundreds of millions of dollars will turn a bad idea into a profitable one, history is littered with bad movies that cost an absolute fortune when they really didn't have to.
10. Justice League $300-$350m
Depending on who you believe, Justice League may very well be the most expensive comic book movie ever made, with the extensive Joss Whedon-helmed reshoots rumored to push the budget as high as $350m.
Based solely on the eye-watering amount of money spent on making the thing, as well as the disappointing box office performance that actually saw the movie make a loss for the studio, it would be fair to say that DC's superhero epic wasn't really worth the massive investment.
If the production wasn't so chaotic (the reshoots were finally completed just two months before release), then there's every chance that the creative team could have made the movie twice as good for $100m cheaper. Instead, we got one of the worst blockbuster villains in recent memory, incredibly ropey CGI, wild tonal shifts and Henry Cavill's now-legendary digitally-removed mustache.
A crushing disappointment to many fans, Justice League showed that simply throwing money at a movie in danger of going off the rails isn't always the smartest solution, with the end result turning out to be the lowest-grossing entry in the DCEU to date.