8 Movies That Bombed So Hard They BANKRUPTED Their Studios

From the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, Hollywood was a hotbed of experimentation. Legendary pioneers like Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman and Francis Ford Coppola were being given unprecedented freedom to make the kinds of films they wanted to make, free from the studio restrictions of the preceding decades.

This era gave us some of the greatest American films ever made. But it all had to end sometime.

Still riding high from his Best Picture winning classic The Deer Hunter, director Michael Cimino decided to write a tale about a dispute between land barons and settlers in 1890s Wyoming.

Upon its release in 1980, Heaven's Gate was derided by every industry publication as one of the worst movies ever made. The critical thrashing was so bad that United Artists actually pulled it from the theatres after just one week. They attempted to release it again a year later in a slightly shortened ‘director’s cut’ format but that also performed horribly, only taking in $3.5 million against its $44 million budget.

Not only did Heaven’s Gate put United Artists out of business, with the failing studio eventually becoming part of MGM, it brought an end to the freedom that maverick directors had enjoyed in Hollywood for so long.