11 MORE Movies That Led To Other Movies Being Cancelled (And Why)

Warner Bros. had already spent $30m on Tim Burton's Superman Lives by the time they canceled the movie, which is a lot of money to shell out for what amounted to little more than some concept art and costume tests, but the studio were worried that if they'd gone all-in on a project that could have spiraled towards $200m then it would have left them in a perilous financial position after they were hit by a string of flops in 1997.

It certainly wasn't a good year for WB from a box office perspective, with Shaquille O'Neal's comic book flick Steel, Kevin Costner's post-apocalyptic The Postman, crime drama One Eight Seven and Steven Seagal actioner Fire Down Below all bombing hard. Even Batman & Robin massively under-performed after taking a critical pounding, and that was supposed to be one of the studio's guaranteed successes.

The final straw was sci-fi thriller Sphere, which marked the latest in a long line of commercial disasters, and it wasn't a coincidence that it was released just two months before Superman Lives was officially shelved. Having endured one of the worst years in their history at the box office, you can understand why Warner Bros. were reluctant to continue throwing piles of money at a Superman movie that was by no means even going to be any good, never mind a smash hit.