A movie that loses money is normal. A movie that loses enough to end a company is rare, and the stories behind those cases are worth knowing. Some of these studios were small and had one big bet. Others were famous names that ran out of room to absorb a miss.
The five films below each landed at a moment when their studios had little cushion left. Budgets, grosses and outcomes are widely reported figures, and they are rounded here.
Heaven’s Gate (1980) and United Artists
Michael Cimino’s western was supposed to follow the success of The Deer Hunter. The budget ballooned to roughly forty four million dollars, far above the original plan, and the shoot was famously slow and expensive. After a harsh premiere and a quick recut, the film earned only a few million dollars in North America.
United Artists was owned by Transamerica at the time, and the loss badly damaged the studio’s standing. In 1981 the studio was sold to MGM, which led to the combined MGM/UA. Heaven’s Gate is still the textbook case of a single film unwinding a legendary studio.
Cutthroat Island (1995) and Carolco Pictures
Carolco had made its name with big action hits like Terminator 2 and Rambo. By the mid 1990s it was financially strained, and it staked a lot on a pirate adventure starring Geena Davis and directed by Renny Harlin. The film’s budget was reported at close to one hundred million dollars.
It opened in December 1995 and took in only about ten million dollars worldwide. Carolco was already in bankruptcy trouble, and the failure ended any hope of a recovery. The company was liquidated in 1996, and the film is often cited in lists of the biggest money losers ever.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) and Square Pictures
Square built a Hawaii studio to make the first photorealistic computer animated feature, based on its hit video game series. The budget was reported at around one hundred thirty seven million dollars. Worldwide box office was roughly eighty five million dollars, well short of what it needed.
The loss hit Square hard, and Square Pictures was closed after the film. The parent company later merged with Enix in 2003 to form Square Enix. So the film did not exactly bankrupt the business, but it ended the film studio and pushed the parent toward a merger.
Titan A.E. (2000) and Fox Animation Studios
Fox Animation Studios was created to rival Disney, and it had a modest hit with Anastasia in 1997. Its second film was Titan A.E., a space adventure with a reported budget of seventy five million dollars or more. The film earned only about thirty six million dollars worldwide.
Fox shut the studio down shortly after the release, and the Phoenix, Arizona operation closed. It was a shutdown rather than a sale or a bankruptcy. Yet the film’s failure was the direct reason the studio ceased to exist.
Mars Needs Moms (2011) and ImageMovers Digital
ImageMovers Digital was a Disney partnered animation studio led by director Robert Zemeckis. Its motion capture film Mars Needs Moms cost an estimated one hundred fifty million dollars. It opened in March 2011 and grossed about thirty nine million dollars worldwide, one of the worst performances for an animated film of its size.
Disney had already announced it was closing the studio before the film opened, and the poor results confirmed the decision. The company shuttered ImageMovers Digital in 2011. The film remains a warning about how expensive motion capture animation can be.
