12 Truly Heartbreaking Facts About Film In 2016
4. $100 Million Was Actually Spent On A Ben-Hur Remake Nobody Asked For
Making matters worse is the fact that while Hollywood is incredibly averse to pumping money into anything unique without someone like Christopher Nolan attached, Paramount honestly felt like they just had to flush $100 million down the toilet on a Ben-Hur remake nobody ever asked for.
It ended up making an embarrassing $94.1 million worldwide, which just about everyone except those who financed the movie apparently saw coming, given the lack of an A-list star in the lead role, a non-auteur director helming the film, and the general consensus that the previous 1959 holds up pretty damn well on its own.
There are all these things movie execs won't roll the dice on, but they then cynically tried to sell this cinematic gruel to us. Thankfully, audiences largely didn't bite, even if the exec mindset is still deeply troubling and hardly going away anytime soon.