Box Office Bombs That Drove Studios Out of Business
Cleopatra, 1963
Featuring Elizabeth Taylor in the ‘60s was a sure-fire way to guarantee a box office win. Yet, ‘Cleopatra’ took a wrong turn when they splurged $44 million on the production.
If inflated to the current times, that’s approximately an eye-watering $330 million. It sounds ridiculously exorbitant, but that’s how far ‘20th Century Fox’ was willing to go to make the movie of the century. Yet, all it did was bring the company to its knees. They did manage to stay afloat for some time, but it was only because they were the top guns in the industry, and had a security blanket to fall back on.
Had the budget been more economical, the motion picture could’ve gained an edge over competitors, or at least, they could have lived to fight another day. Thankfully, the producers cut back on the original run time, which was six long hours!
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