10 Terrible Movies That Cost Way More Than They Needed To

Heaven's Gate will forever live on in Hollywood infamy as perhaps the single most destructive production of all time.

Not only did it ruin the once-promising career of Academy Award-winning director Michael Cimino and directly cause the collapse of studio United Artists, but it also served as the death-knell for the entire American New Wave movement of filmmaking, with studios now much less inclined to give young auteurs creative control over their projects in the wake of the movie's disastrous performance.

Originally budgeted at $11.4m, Heaven's Gate would end up costing four times as much due to Cimino's complete and utter failure to maintain control of his set. By the end of the first week's shooting, the project was already five days behind schedule and principal photography would carry on for eleven months, with rumors alleging the production was costing the studio $200,000 a day.

The lavishly expensive project would fall off a cliff at the box office where it failed to even recoup one-tenth of the budget, and was roundly savaged by critics for being both overlong and over-indulgent. People's opinions on Heaven's Gate have softened in the decades since, but it was a huge mistake on everyone's part to let the uncompromising Cimino run amok with someone else's money.