film - fashioning is a high - stake , all - in , kind of passel . You have to bet big to gain big , most of the clip . And when a flick tank car , it ’s easy to channelise fingers — but a mass of flops probably did seem like a in force idea . But not all of them . Here are 10 openhanded - budget movies that it ’s surd to see how anybody thought were a good idea .
1) Wild Wild West (1999)
frankly , this lean could have been populated solely with campy - unearthly pic based on classical TV shows that had senescence or non - actual fanbases . For every Charlie ’s Angels , you have a good deal of tragedy . The Bewitched motion picture had too low a budget to win a position on this list , but there are ton of others that could have belong to here . Dark Shadows , Lone Ranger , Green Hornet , Land of the Lost … there are so , so many . This film make a much - loved but little - remembered steampunky TV Western and turns it into a Men in Black knockoff , featuring Kenneth Branagh as a mechanical spider . Who thought “ steampunk comedy Western ” was a license to print money ?
2) Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)
There are a few movies here that come out on everybody ’s list of the “ full-grown boxwood billet dud of all clock time ” — but while you may make a strong case that Waterworld could have turn , it ’s harder to make that event for Pluto Nash . This was a fairly lavish space comedy , with a whiz who was doing well carry mid - budget romps like Nutty Professor and Dr. Doolittle . But also , this celluloid had been in developing since the end of the Carter Administration . As Peter Bart wrote in Variety , “ Pluto Nash has been in development since 1980 , prompt us that any picture show that gets rewritten class after twelvemonth should be banished forever into development hell . ”
3) Chronicles of Riddick (2004)
I have a vast , massive soft spot for this movie — Thandi Newton , Karl Urban and Judi Dench swanning around a glittery alien citadel in glam outfits , the “ kill you with my teacup ” scene , the quad jailbreak , etc . etc . It ’s full of ridiculous fun . But they impart David Twohy a reported $ 120 million ( still a mickle of money back then ) to make a massive Star Wars - y distance opera house adventure on the heels of a small - budget exotic horror film that did unexpectedly well . It would be like if the sequel to Alien was a bigger - budget version of Ice Pirates , instead of Aliens .
4) The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010)
We ’re skip over Catwoman , which I can just about imagine was a good theme at first . ( Except for the part where they did Catwoman instead of Wonder Woman . ) And we ’re hop-skip over Stepford Wives , because it was more or less too cheap . Also skipping over Land of the Lost and a few other TV adaption , because we ’re lumping those in with Wild Wild West . That stand for we ’re jump a few years forward , to the current “ tentpole ” glut . Sorcerer ’s Apprentice is another motion picture I have a immense piano bit for , because Nic Cage is wizardly in it and Alfred Molina is always a playfulness villain . And yet , even with Jerry Bruckheimer spearheading it , I ca n’t quite see how anyone thought “ that Mickey Mouse cartoon , except with Mickey Mouse replace with a nerdy twentysomething Canadian comic ” was a slam dunk . Or the idea of “ Nic Cage in a crazy wig is a wizard from the day of Merlin who hangs around New York until he finds an apprentice who mess everything up . ”
5) Gulliver’s Travels (2010)
This inclination could also have been inhabit totally by “ gravid - budget fomite for comedians , ” because that ’s mostly what jumped out at me when I was looking at movies with budgets over about $ 100 million . This film merit a special place , however , because the idea of taking Jonathan Swift ’s famous satire on human nature , which depends on a certain mordancy , and turn it into a vehicle for Jack Black to make zany School of Rock - esque prank just clearly seems like a bad idea . Everyone who actually read the book — which still does get read in shoal — will be disgust ( or avoid the movie because they recollect it ’s like that book they were force to read in school . ) And everyone else will just want slapstick involving teeny people .
6) Green Hornet (2011)
And talk of Jack Black , it ’s still kind of astonish to contemplate how close we come to getting a cockamamie version of Green Lantern , starring Black as a piteous schmoe who nonplus the most powerful piece of jewellery in the cosmos . To Hollywood ’s cite , the horribly poorly - suggest movies that almost happen are spoiled than the ones that did happen . We did , however , get a pretty costly Green Hornet film , star Seth Rogen . Let ’s be clear here — when fabled Hong Kong action - comedy Einstein Stephen Chow was on board as director and co - star topology , then you’re able to see how this look like a estimable approximation . But the green light credibly should have turn white-livered when Chow left the project , because the Hornet ’s pal Kato call for to be the whiz of the film for it to run . The leave film is n’t terrible , but it was never going to be a hit , even with young music director Michel Gondry doing a twat spin on bullet - time .
7) Cowboys And Aliens (2011)
Like a lot of movies on this list , C&A is n’t a terrible film — we kind of like it at the time . It is , however , a bad concept to betray , especially in the post - Western era . And this moving picture has a Brobdingnagian , blazing problem , before you watch a unmarried soma : it has a campy title , but it ’s not a camp movie . You anticipate “ Cowboys and Aliens ” to be Blazing Saddles track with Mars Attacks . That might seem like an easy job to fix — just change the title ! — except that it ’s intemperate to find a non - campy statute title that tells the great unwashed “ This is a Western with aliens , ” because the construct is so oddball to lead off with . It ’s like get a Busby Berkley melodic about flesh - eating bacterium . But there ’s another thing about this motion-picture show — it was pitched as a graphic novel , that literally nobody scan until the film had already amount and gone . The notion that any motion picture found on a in writing novel will be a sure thing , even if the graphic novel has no fanbase whatsoever , is kind of an odd one . It ’s also how we got R.I.P.D. and a few other late films .
8) Mars Needs Moms (2011)
This movie obtain kind of a bad rap — like several others on this lean , it ’s actually not as uncollectible as it was painted . It ’s free-base on a somewhat nifty Christian Bible by Bloom County Godhead Berkeley Breathed . The job is , instead of just doing this film with regular computer animation ( which probably would have been a lot cheesy thanthe estimated $ 200 millionthey poured into this film ) , Disney used Robert Zemeckis ’ pioneering motion - seizure proficiency , as in Polar Express and Beowulf , and as a solution the plastic film was stuck in the Uncanny Valley . They had Seth Green “ play ” the main character ( alternatively of have an real little kid ) but then did n’t utilise Green ’s voice . The whole thing was kind of a weird idea .
9) Battleship (2012)
think back the table game movie boom of a few years ago ? Ridley Scott was going to organize ascience fiction translation of Monopoly ! in reality , “ Ridley Scott ’s dystopian Monopoly ” sounds like a style better idea than “ that add-in plot with the pegs and the screens , only with alien and a mistily Transformers vibration . ” This movie go to insane duration to include cry - out to a board secret plan that nobody under 30 remember , and everybody over 30 just wanted to hear someone shout “ You sank my battlewagon ! ” . Also , this is a celluloid that you could reasonably have expected to be campier than it was .
10) 47 Ronin (2013)
And eventually … sigh . The Chushingura , a life-sustaining story in Japanese internal mythology , in all likelihood should n’t have been a Hollywood film to begin with , because the concepts that propel this history of dishonour and revenge interpret badly to a Western cultural context . Even if , say , Spielberg had made this into a lavish historic drama . But adding illusion elements , and throw mad piles of CG at the screenland , should have looked like a bad idea right off the bat . By the time the pitch shot included , “ And we ’ll have Keanu Reeves as a half - European pariah who was lift by favorable daemon and is ram to John Cage - fight in a house of ill repute , ” the encounter believably should have been over .
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