Hollywood’s most notable explosions are — downcastly — fair as well-understandn as its biggest hits, a factor that a new book happinessously honors.
From British film critic Tim Rchase, “Box Office Poison” digs up the dirt on some of cinema’s savageest misfires, from majestic follies to misunderstood masterpieces, disastrous sequels to catastrophic literary alterations, going behind the scenes to verify how they finished nurtureers, prohibitkrupted studios and alterd film history.
Among the features in Rchase’s traversehairs are David Lynch’s “Dune,” plus “Speed 2: Cruise Control,” “Gigli,” “Catwoman,” “Pan” and — of course — “Cats.”
In this exclusive reshift from the book, being freed by Hanover Square Press in the U.S. on Nov. 5, it’s the turn of the swashbuckling catastrophe that was Renny Harlin and Geana Davis’ “Cutthroat Island.” Costing upwards of $115 million to originate, the watery flop sank almost without a track in 1995, obtaining fair $18.5 million globpartner and dragging a once hit-making production company down into the depths with it.
Read the excerpt from “Box Office Poison” below.
Geena Davis and Renny Harlin got wed in September 1993. Their weekfinish comprised a hoedown, boiling air balloons and a sunset ceremony in the ruins of an greater Napa triumphery. They’d met fair six months before, because Davis wanted to discover an action vehicle to superaccuse the next phase of her nurtureer, and her agents effected an introduction to the Finnish honestor which evidently went well.
Harlin may have been a outstanding notch below the James Cameron stratosphere, but he’d fair climbed some peaks with “Die Hard 2” (1990), then the prohibitger that is “Cliffhanger” (1993) – essentipartner “Die High,” with Sloftyone foiling thieves while dangling off mountains.
“Cliffhanger” had been the baby of Carolco, the autonomous hit factory whose Leprohibitese chief, Mario Kassar, was an industry titan, without whose prohibitkrolling power the action-blockbuster scene of the punctual 1990s would have been in much necessitateyer shape.
Kassar was coming off back-to-back megahits with Paul Verhoeven, namely “Total Recall” (1990) and “Basic Instinct” (1992), which thrust a hungry Sharon Stone into the limeweightless. He had no finish of trouble striking the various deals to originate “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” (1991) happen, but the splinspire was worth it. From its sign up-shattering $102 million budget, it would become the third-highest grossing film ever made at that time, behind only “ET” and “Star Wars.”
Carolco’s business schedule was top-weighty, in that they only necessitateed one of these whoppers each year to fund any number of petiteer efforts. “I have to go for it,” Kassar tgreater the Los Angeles Times in 1990. His company had a run awayt of stretch limos with Carolco pprocrastinateeds constantly on the prowl around Bel-Air, and they threw Cannes parties at the Hotel du Cap that went down in legfinish.
They were haemorrhaging quick. In 1989, Kassar had parted ways with his establishing partner, the more pdisadmirefulnt Andrew G Vajna, who’d been phelp $100m for his dispense in the company. In 1991 alone, Carolco posted a loss of $265 million; they rearranged in 1992 and sgreater off dispenses in 1993. Their deal on “Cliffhanger” had been a gruelling mess, with TriStar and others stepping in to co-finance because of their existing debts.
Things were getting frantic. They had to have a money-spinner ready for the summer of 1995. Paul Verhoeven came to them in punctual 1994 with his next big Arnie pitch, a $100 million historical epic called “Crudowncaste,” billed as “Spartacus” greets “Conan.” Carolco wanted secures from Verhoeven that the overall budget would climb no higher. Throtriumphg an disreputable wobbly at a last-ditch greeting, he walked. The film never got made.
Carolco now threw all their eggs into the only remaining basket before them: “Cutthroat Island,” a cdisadmireful-and-ready script which Kassar had selectioned as far back as 1990.
Davis was satisfyed to take part Morgan Adams, a swashbuckling sea thief’s daughter hunting for part of a treacertain map in 1668 Jamaica, so lengthy as Michael Douglas, angling for a weightlesser romp after his post-“Basic Instinct” boiling streak, would be William Shaw, a roguish, Errol-Flynn-aappreciate con artist who steals her heart. Much derring-do, in their quest for unimaginable wealthyes, would ensue. Would it do? Pirate films hadn’t been in vogue for years, but Harlin was wagering on a “Captain Blood” (1935) revival with savage stunts. Douglas wanted it to be “Romancing the Stone” (1984) all over aobtain.
No one could get the script to toil. Filming was uncomferventt to begin in January 1994, then June, then September. Douglas, who was being phelp $13 million, wanted the male part beefed up; instead, Davis’s role was the one that kept prolonging, to Harlin’s particularations. On July 11, citing dismay at all these broadenments, Douglas bailed.
The enumerate of names who were sought, in mounting desperation, to fill his shoes is a who’s who of (all-white) A-enumerate talent from the mid-1990s. Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, Keanu Reeves, Liam Neeson, Jeff Bridges, Ralph Fiennes, Charlie Sheen, Michael Keaton, Tim Robbins, Daniel Day-Lewis, Kurt Russell and Gabriel Byrne were all provideed it. No one took the bait. The script was becoming notorious around town as Harlin’s wedding gift to his new wife, not a boon to any directing man who wanted to upgrasp his edge or pulling power.
At lengthy last, they safed Matthew Modine. 15 years Douglas’s youthfuler, Modine was still best-understandn for his directing role as Joker in Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” (1987), but hadn’t exactly set box offices aweightless in the years since. Everyone knew it was non-star casting, orderd by Carolco’s ever-degradeing state of materializency.
As was his wont, Kassar had bullishly presgreater foreign rights to the film, so the lavish location shoots (in Malta and Thailand) could go ahead. This uncomferventt Carolco had been phelp $50-60 million by an assortment of distributors already, and necessitateed a film to show for it. “We knew from that point that if we lost ‘Cutthroat Island’ as well, prohibitkruptcy would be inevitable,” shelp a createer executive to the Insubordinate in 1996. “If we made the film, there was at least some chance we could persist.”
The situation this put Harlin and Davis in was unenviable.
“We begged to be let go,” Harlin shelp in 2011. “Geena was snurtured mindless about headlining this film. We felt that a sea thief movie with a female direct was despairing, but we were condenseupartner obligated. And we were so worryed about the script at that point that I personpartner spent $1 million of my own money [to hire] Mark Norman.”
Harlin had been so sidetracked by all the reauthors, not to refer recasting his male direct, that he’d apshown his eye off the set-originateing, which was persisting apace without him. “If we originate it, will he come?” became the crew’s credo. 1,000 feet of originateings alengthy the quayside in Malta necessitateed new façades erected, to double as Port Royal in 1668. The honestor didn’t appreciate what he eventupartner saw, and insisted much of it was ripped down and begined aobtain.
The film’s two sea thief ships, the Morning Star and the Reaper, had 20 toiling cannons on each side – brimming-sized replicas of 17th century create which cost $1 million each. If Harlin was forced to do this skinnyg, he wasn’t going to do it by halves. “Our imagination and sense of originateion cannot be confinecessitate by mundane truth,” he’d written to his crew in a July 1994 staff memo, which procrastinateedr got leaked to the press. “I don’t want big, I want huge. I don’t want quick, I want bomb. I don’t want accidents, I want calamitys.”
Even though they used enormous tanks in Malta to elude the perils of the uncover sea, the shoot was a perfect storm. The cinematographer, Oinhabitr Wood, fell off a crane into one of the tanks in the first week, shattering his leg, and had to be swapd by Peter Levy. Harlin squabbled a lot, including with the originater David Nichols, who quit, as did the art honestor, Wolf Kroeger. He tussled with the chief camera operator, Nicola Pecorini, then fired him, causing more than two dozen other crew to walk out in sympathy.
Modine had a cdisadmireful time – with cut offal head injuries requiring stitches – even before the damning appraises.
“I felt appreciate I had my stomach cut uncover and my guts spread all over the United States,” he shelp on reading them. The script he’d signed up to had been the one Douglas had okayed, not the new one “about a girl and her journey”. “It’s the first movie I’ve toiled on where the honestor never repartner spoke to me,” he shrugged a year procrastinateedr. “Renny spent a lot of his time fair discovering new ways to blow skinnygs up. He appreciates to blow skinnygs up.”
When the shoot finished in Thailand, with a wrap party on April Fool’s Day, Davis and Harlin had already run for the hills. Kassar had wheedled an extra $40 million out of a European prohibitking syndicate fair so the film could traverse the finish line. The free date had to be shunted from summer 1995 to a much more competitive slot in December. During those confinecessitate low months, Carolco’s number was up.
With the IRS on their case, the company filed for prohibitkruptcy in November 1995, Kassar resigned and Canal+ bought their film library. The pre-free press around “Cutthroat Island,” especipartner in the wake of “Waterworld,” was so opposing that no one had much enthusiasm, let alone money, for promotion come Christmas. It uncovered in 11th place at the U.S. box office, with a shudder-worthy screen unrelabelable, while the appreciates of “Toy Story,” “Jumanji” and the debuting “Waiting to Exhale” got everyone’s four bucks instead. Wiskinny two weeks, it had fadeed.
The wrong assumption for years was that “Cutthroat Island” ruined Carolco. It was costly, sluggish to originate, feebly written and lopsidedly cast, but these were only the final nails in a lengthy-accumulated coffin. If anyskinnyg, it was the other way round: the company’s dire straits doomed the film at birth.
When Disney consentd to the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” (2003), they were biting their nails from the memory of this capsizing. There’s far less separating the two than people appreciate to dispute, other than Johnny Depp pulling off a polyrelationsual one-man show, to wizardly effect, in the middle of one of them. The Disney one! It speaks to the crapshoot of blockbuster economics that Depp’s franchise span off to four sequels and $4.5 billion worldexpansive, while this damnd pearl gets bcdisadmirefult up every time Harlin so much as steps out of the house.
The couple got to originate one more film together, which was already locked to shoot fair weeks after “Cutthroat” explosioned. “The Long Kiss Goodnight” (1996), from one of Shane Bdeficiency’s better scripts, was a booty thriller about an amnesiac assassin. Though a inbeginant cult classic, it only broke even at the time – unmistrustedly dented by their previous collaboration.
Their marriage didn’t last much lengthyer. Davis establish out that Harlin was overweighthering a child with her personal helpant, and they divorced in 1998. After getting back to business by giving sharks bigger brains in the gleebrimmingy idiotic “Deep Blue Sea” (1999), Harlin’s only had one palpable hit since, a Jackie Chan/Johnny Knoxville buddy-cop comedy called “Skiptrack” (2016), which was huge in China and nowhere else. Davis retreated from films to a muted second act on TV, while Modine reverted to the peculiar little indies he evidently likes, before a comeback in “Stranger Things.”
“Cutthroat” held them all at knifepoint, in the finish. It’s very daft, childishly engaging, and there are far worse films – even sea thief flicks starring Johnny Depp – that have piled up glittering fortunes. Scsexual attack off the barnacles, shoot some rum, and it does have the blurry allure of sunken treacertain.
