Top 10 Most Expensive Movie Mistakes
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Top 10 Most Expensive Movie Mistakes
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Mistakes happen, but rarely at this high of a cost. Welcome to WatchMojo and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 10 Most Expensive Movie Mistakes. For this list, we’re looking at mishaps and errors that happened during production of major motion pictures that wound up costing the studio a pretty penny. In terms of ranking, we’ll be taking into consideration not only the monetary cost, but the nature of the errors as well.
#10: Expensive Reshoots
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“Suicide Squad” (2016) There are some who would call the entire production of this ill-fated DC Comics movie a mistake, given that the film received scathing reviews from critics upon its release. Despite the star power of Will Smith and the appeal of bringing characters like Harley Quinn to the big screen for the first time, the movie did NOT go down well. The production of the film was almost as tumultuous as the release itself, with reshoots purportedly costing millions of dollars. The exact nature of these reshoots is not entirely clear, but they may have had something to do with the lukewarm reception of “Batman v Superman”. Regardless, Warner Bros. must’ve been pleased with the box office earnings.
#9: Motorcycle Crash
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“The Horror of Party Beach” (1964) If you’ve never heard of this low-budget ‘60s horror flick, don’t worry, you’re not missing out on much. Following some pesky atomic waste being dumped into the ocean, the drowned crew of a sunken ship come back to life as fish monsters and set about terrorizing some local beachgoers. The production hired the members of a local motorcycle club to play bikers in the movie. Apparently, one biker tried to get a bigger part by jumping to the head of the pack. This caused a disastrous accident that put several cast members in the hospital, delaying production. All said and done, the film went over by $20,000. Small change, right? But on a $50,000 budget, that’s a whole lot of dough.
#8: Sports Car Mishaps
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“Proud Mary” (2018) We’ve all dreamed of driving a fancy sports car, but you might be dreaming of something cheaper after hearing this story. On the set of the revenge thriller “Proud Mary”, actress Taraji P. Henson got to get behind the wheel of a slick Maserati for some stunt driving. But after nailing a few takes, Henderson made a minor miscalculation, which caused the car to slam into a nearby fire hydrant. Thankfully, the actress survived unscathed. The car, however, sustained damage that cost around twelve thousand dollars to repair. They say revenge comes at a high cost, but we’re not sure this is what they meant.
#7: Daniel Craig’s Black Eye
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“Quantum of Solace” (2008) Working in the Bond franchise requires a lot of dangerous stunt work, and this can leave actors with some nasty bruises. Daniel Craig and the crew of the twenty-second Bond film learned this the hard way when the actor was accidentally hit in the face while filming a fight scene. The Engliish actor was left with a black eye and required some stitches, all of which had to be digitally removed for continuity reasons. For the next installment, even more digital touching up had to be done to remove a pair of black gloves Bond was wearing after it was noticed that this made no sense given Bond’s handprint-activated gun *Xref.
#6: Flubbed Lines
“Some Like It Hot” (1959) Silver Screen icon, sex symbol - the legendary Marilyn Monroe was a great many things to a great many people. But not everyone appreciated the blonde bombshell as much as her adoring public - her costars on this 1959 movie, for example. According to many who worked on the film, Monroe would show up to work late and couldn’t memorize her lines, meaning that scenes that should have been easy to film took way longer than expected. This ended up pushing the flick over budget. A biography of director and producer Billy Wilder claims that “Some Like It Hot” wound up being a half a million dollars more expensive than originally intended.
#5: Fire
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“The Avengers” (1998) Nope, nope, not the Marvel movie. Long before Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans and company were lighting up the box office, Uma Thurman, Ralph Fiennes and Sean Connery starred in this adaptation of a ‘60s British spy series. The film was a notorious flop upon release and has gone down as one of the most bafflingly bad movies ever made. This disastrous return on investment was only made worse by a fire that occurred on set when the movie was being filmed at the legendary Pinewood studios in England. Thankfully, nobody was seriously hurt. Sadly, the damage done to the careers of all involved is another story entirely.
#4: Guitar Destruction
“The Hateful Eight” (2015) When Quentin Tarantino is in the director’s chair, you can bet your butt that there’s going to be some violence when the cameras start rolling. But usually, that violence is focused on humans and entirely simulated. This was sadly not the case when actor Kurt Russell destroyed an antique guitar valued at around 40 thousand dollars. A genuine, one hundred and forty-five year old museum piece, the guitar was supposed to be swapped out for a dummy before Russell broke it. But apparently he didn’t get the memo, and reduced the precious antique to splinters. The Martin Guitar Museum were not happy about the mishap - to put it mildly.
#3: Marty’s Casting
“Back to the Future” (1985) These days it’s hard to imagine anyone behind the wheel of the iconic time-travelling DeLorean but Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd. But when Fox was initially unavailable, the role of Marty McFly went to someone else: “Pulp Fiction” and “Mask” star Eric Stoltz. After filming several scenes with the actor, it became clear that he wasn’t working in the part nearly as well as the director hoped he would. Thankfully, by this point in time, Fox was available to film the classic time travel movie, working around his obligations to “Family Ties”. To make up for the setback, three million bucks was added to the budget. A small price to pay for an important piece of cinematic history.
#2: Lion Attacks
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“Roar” (1981) Oh, good gravy was this movie a bad idea. In an effort to raise awareness of the dangers faced by big cats, director Noel Marshall conceived of this disastrous flickwith then-wife Tippi Hedren. The film was intended to prove that big cats and humans could live in peace, but ended up doing the exact opposite. A large number of animals were brought in to star in “Roar,” and numerous cast and crew members sustained injuries, turning the production into a bloodbath. The “most dangerous film ever made” ended up years behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget, and didn’t even get a North American release until decades later.
#1: Reshoots Galore
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“Justice League” (2017) We probably don’t need to tell you what happened on this one, but here goes anyway. After the not so warm reception of both “Batman v Superman” and “Suicide Squad”, Warner Bros. raced to salvage their latest superhero epic, even bringing in Joss Whedon to oversee a round of very expensive reshoots. This created numerous problems, the most notorious being actor Henry Cavill’s mustache, which he grew for “Mission: Impossible - Fallout” and for which he was still filming at the time. Since he was not allowed to shave it, the studio had no choice but to digitally remove his ‘stache and the results were, well….see for yourself. Yeesh. All this came to the tune of 25 million dollars. Worth it? You tell us.
