Creator Killer: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
A rather unpredictable phenomenon, this is when one or more works flop badly enough to take down or badly damage the publishers, the reputation of creative talents behind it, or both. Though there are usually many factors needed to cause the
Compare with [[Genre Killer]] and [[Franchise Killer]]. [[I Thought It Meant|Not to be confused]] with [[Author Existence Failure]], [[Rage Against the Author]] or [[The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You]], where the creator can be ''literally'' killed by his or her work. See [[Star-Derailing Role]] when it happens to the performers. See [[Old Shame]] for an old work which a creator refuses to let see the light of day, but which by itself probably won't destroy their credibility. Contrast [[Breakthrough Hit]] (when the work makes the creator a big name) and [[Win Back the Crowd]] (when the work makes the creator a big name after a
A good number of these entries have been [[Vindicated by Cable]].
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== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Fractale]]'' was conceived as a way for its director, Yamakan, to make [[Kyoto Animation]] regret firing him, with all the resources put into it you'd expect with a goal like that. He was so sure of its success that he said he'd step down if it did poorly. The end result was said to be good, if not great, by most people who watched it to the end. All five or so of them. Yamakan probably would have had to step down even if he hadn't explicitly staked his career on it doing well.
* Ironically, ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'', the biggest cash cow of [[4Kids! Entertainment]], almost became this to them; TV Tokyo and NAS yanked the license and sued them over a deal they made with [[FUNimation]], driving 4Kids into bankruptcy within days, though [http://www.animenewsnetwork.
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== Film ==
* The failure of ''[[Titan A.E.
** Before that, ''[[Rock-a-Doodle]]'' sank Bluth's ''original'' studio.
* ''[[Cutthroat Island]]'', one of the biggest box office flops of all time, bankrupted the studio Carolco, as well as destroying Geena Davis' career and her then-husband Renny Harlin's respectability as a director. The flop of this film (as well as that of ''[[The Long Kiss Goodnight]]'', also starring Davis and directed by Harlin) is widely credited with destroying their marriage, as Harlin had pushed for Davis, then known for comedic roles, to headline the two blockbusters. It also [[Genre Killer|killed off]] the pirate movie genre [[Back
* ''[[Final Fantasy: The
* ''[[Heaven's Gate (film)|Heavens Gate]]'' contributed to the collapse of its studio, [[United Artists]]. Even more infamously, it ended the "[[New Hollywood]]" [[Fall of the Studio System|post-studio-system]] era in which director/auteurs were [[Protection From Editors|given carte blanche]] to do pretty much whatever they wanted. Thus, not only did it kill a studio built by some of the first Hollywood stars, but ended an era that produced many of the best films in history.
** It particularly wrecked the career of its director, Michael Cimino. In the late '70s, Cimino had won the Academy Award for directing ''[[The Deer Hunter]]'', picking up his [[Auteur License]] in the process, and was then basically given a blank check to direct his [[Magnum Opus]]. ''Heaven's Gate'' was this opus, however, and Cimino is known to this day as "the guy who brought down Hollywood with his ego". He did manage to direct four more films after that, but they all bombed.
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* ''[[Batman and Robin (film)|Batman and Robin]]'' did this to [[Joel Schumacher]], who is completely blamed for killing the franchise until [[The Dark Knight Saga|the reboot]]. Before then, Schumacher was known for his role in directing ''[[The Lost Boys]]'', ''[[St. Elmo's Fire]]'', and ''[[Falling Down]]''. He sort of recovered in the aftermath, with military drama ''[[Tigerland]]'' picking up some surprise indie cred and ''[[Phone Booth (film)|Phone Booth]]'' becoming a sleeper hit, but otherwise his career afterwards has been forgettable.
** ''Batman & Robin'' also arguably derailed the careers of [[Uma Thurman]] (''[[The Avengers (1998 film)|The Avengers 1998]]'' didn't help either), Chris O'Donnell, and Alicia Silverstone. Thurman finally made a comeback when she reteamed with [[Quentin Tarantino]] on the ''[[Kill Bill]]'' saga. Likewise, O'Donnell has recently kept himself afloat with his starring role on the TV series ''[[NCIS: Los Angeles]]''. In fact, one can argue that Schumacher, who went on to turn out hits like ''[[8mm]]'' and ''[[Phantom of the Opera]]'', is the only one who got out unscathed: even [[George Clooney]] had to completely reinvent himself to be taken seriously.
** An often overlooked fact is that [[
* [[M. Night Shyamalan]] films have been steadily declining in critical acclaim since ''[[The Village]]'' (and, more specifically, the confusing as hell [[
* ''[[Battlefield Earth (film)|Battlefield Earth]]'' was such a terrible film that Franchise Pictures lost huge amounts of money. However, the final nail in the coffin was when Franchise was hit by a lawsuit from investors who accused the company of [[Hollywood Accounting|deliberately inflating the film's budget to pad their coffers]]. Franchise Pictures lost the lawsuit and declared bankruptcy. [[John Travolta]]'s reputation got a bad rap due to this movie, but he later [[Career Resurrection|bounced back]]. ''[[Battlefield Earth]]'' also killed moviegoers' chances of taking any [[L. Ron Hubbard]] or Scientology film seriously.
* Fred Dekker (director of the cult classics ''[[Night of the Creeps]]'' and ''[[The Monster Squad]]'') was brought on by Orion Pictures to write the screenplay for and direct ''[[RoboCop]] 3''. Given the mixed [[Franchise Killer|reaction]] to the film, it's not exactly surprising that he hasn't directed anything since then. Aside from a gig as a consulting producer on ''[[Star Trek:
* Just ''barely'' avoided by ''[[Cleopatra]]'', which nearly bankrupted [[Twentieth Century Fox]] with its bloated production. And again when, after ''[[The Sound of Music]]'', they bankrolled several big-budget musicals (''[[Doctor Dolittle]]'', ''Star!'', ''[[Hello, Dolly!]]'') that failed to recoup their budgets. Yes, 20th Century Fox nearly went bankrupt ''twice'' [[Fall of the Studio System|in the '60s]].
* [[Frank Miller]]'s bizarre ''[[The Spirit (film)|The Spirit]]'' movie probably did more damage to his career than anything else. This movie has at least ensured that Miller will ''never'' be the sole director of a major motion picture ever again.
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* ''[[The Poseidon Adventure|Poseidon]]'' has pretty much ended Wolfgang Petersen's career as a director, despite a high quality track record before it (such as ''[[Das Boot]]'', ''[[In the Line of Fire]]'', ''[[Air Force One (film)|Air Force One]]'' and ''[[The Perfect Storm]]''). Despite having since been connected to other projects since then (mostly lesser quality, outside of an adaptation of ''[[Ender's Game]]''), those projects seem to get squashed during pre-production.
* Actor [[Charles Laughton]] was never given a chance to direct a second film after the failure of ''[[The Night of the Hunter]]''. A damn shame too, because the film [[Vindicated by History|has since been recognized as a classic]].
*
* [[Robert Zemeckis]] was a pioneer who had directed such classics as ''[[Forrest Gump]]'', ''[[Back to The Future]]'', and ''[[Who Framed Roger Rabbit?]]''. His working with motion-capture led to him making ''[[The Polar Express]]''... but as soon as [[Uncanny Valley]] set in with his works, the quality started going downhill. His studio's latest{{when}} film, ''[[Mars Needs Moms]]'', was such a box office failure that now the studio has been dismantled (and some sources hint that Disney ''expected'' the film to fail at the box office), with the planned ''[[Yellow Submarine]]'' remake now
* Music video director Joseph Kahn, once expected to emerge as the next [[Michael Bay]], wouldn't make another feature film for seven years after the flop of the 2004 action movie ''[[Torque]]''.<ref>
* Joe Eszterhas was, in the early '90s, '''the''' most powerful screenwriter in Hollywood - so much so that he received record amounts of money for his screenplays (including ''[[Flashdance]]'' and ''[[Basic Instinct]]'', which was the highest amount of money paid for a single script at the time). The 1995 release of ''[[Showgirls]]'' put studio executives at odds with him, but it went on to become a [[Cult Classic]] (much in line with Eszterhas' view that the film was [[Parody Retcon|intended to be satire]]). What followed were a string of underperforming and failed scripts for films such as the [[CSI: Miami|David Caruso]] vehicle ''Jade'' and the Sharon Stone flick ''Sliver''. Things briefly improved with the [[Write What You Know|semi-autobiographical]] ''Telling Lies in America'', which was well-reviewed and a modest hit on the indie circuit, but failed to get widely distributed. However, the 1998 film ''Burn Hollywood Burn: An Alan Smithee Film'' (which Eszterhas produced, wrote and starred in) was an unmitigated disaster and complete flop that all but ensured he would never sell a script to Hollywood ever again. Eszterhas ended up settling down to a quiet life as an author in Ohio - to date, his only screenwriting work of note has been on a 2006 Hungarian film called ''Children of Glory''. He tried to come back with a [[Mel Gibson]] film based on the life of Judas Maccabeus, but Warner Bros. shut that project down, allegedly because the script that Eszterhas came up with wasn't powerful enough, but Eszterhas is accusing Gibson of sabotaging the film to make sure his career stays dead.
** ''Burn, Hollywood, Burn'' also killed the career of respected director Arthur Hiller, who was known for making ''[[Love Story]]'' and being one of the hardest-working directors in the industry (to the point that he had at least one project being released every single year until 1997). Just before ''Burn'' was released, Hiller had his name removed from the credits - which resulted in the unintended [[Irony]] of "Alan Smithee" (the alias used for an anonymous director) directing a film that starred a character named Alan Smithee. The Writers Guild of America discontinued the use of the alias after the movie came out, and Hiller's career was in shambles. The only thing he's directed since then was the film ''Pucked'' (starring Jon Bon Jovi), which ended up being rebranded under the "[[National Lampoon]]" banner and released [[Direct to Video]].
* The British film company Goldcrest never really recovered from the one-two punch of 1985's ''Revolution'' (a massively expensive movie about the American Revolution with the [[Sarcasm Mode|ideal]] casting of [[Al Pacino]] and Nastassja Kinski)<ref>
* The man behind the ''[[Sgt. Pepper's
* Jared Hess was expected to be one of the next great comedic directors after having box office hits in ''[[Napoleon Dynamite]]'' and ''[[Nacho Libre]]''. Then he released ''Gentlemen Broncos'', a movie that was such a disaster with critics (it was one of the ten worst reviewed films of 2009) and audiences (the film grossed just $110,000, a four-hundredth of ''[[Napoleon Dynamite]]'''s gross) that it irreparably destroyed Hess's career. He has not made a film since. He would later helm a loose [[Animated Adaptation]] of ''[[Napoleon Dynamite]]'', but it got cancelled after only one season.
* Executives at Orion Pictures blamed their destruction on ''[[UHF (film)|UHF]]'', the wacky comedy starring [["Weird Al" Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovic]] which they considered the fork in the road for the studio. They had ridiculously high hopes for it ... hopes so ridiculously high that they figured why not pit it against ''[[Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade]]''? The loss of money (as well as the loss of critical favor which they had been building throughout the 80s) seemed to mentally break the studio's already-
** The problem was really one of scheduling: ''UHF'' had tested amazingly well and it has an enormous following. If it had come out any time other than summer 1989, which not only saw Indy, but also [[Licence to Kill|a Bond movie]], [[Star Trek V: The Final Frontier|a Star Trek movie]], the ''[[Ghostbusters]]'' sequel, ''[[Lethal Weapon]] 2'' and, oh, yeah, the first [[Tim Burton]] ''[[Batman (film)|Batman]]'', it might have done a lot better.
* The failure of ''[[Ishtar]]'' killed Elaine May's directing career, though she's still done well as a writer for such films as ''[[The Birdcage]]'' and ''[[Primary Colors]]''.
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* Media Home Entertainment, one of the four "mini-majors" in the home video industry covering a large library of VHS releases in many diverse genres (alongside sublabel Hi-Tops Video releasing childrens' titles), collapsed in 1990 when Gerald Ronson, the leader of Media Home Entertainment parent company Heron Communications, was convicted of securities fraud due to his role in the Guinness share trading fraud in the UK, eventually closing shop in 1993.
* Vestron Pictures had had a huge success in 1987 courtesy of ''[[Dirty Dancing]]'', a film they had originally planned to release in theaters for only a weekend, and then send it straight to home video, since they had originally been in the video distribution business long before entering film production. Unfortunately, they followed it up with a series of flops, all of them B-Movies at a time when the public actually wanted more A Movies, and these flops, coupled with the fact that many of their former clients were now forming their own home video divisions and thus no longer needed their services, caused Vestron's parent company, Vestron, Inc., to go bankrupt in 1990.
* The near franchise killing performance of ''[[Star Trek: Nemesis]]'' pretty much ended the directing career of Stuart Baird, who infamously wasn't at all familiar with ''[[Star Trek: The
* Surprisingly averted with [[Uwe Boll]], despite the negative reception of any film he makes. He skirts this troupe only because [[Tyson Zone|no one expects anything from him]], and so [[Refuge in Audacity|no one will tie enough money to him to call it a big enough failure to get him to stop.]]
** In fact, for a while, some investors were tying money to him in anticipation of his films
* Unlike many other action stars, [[Steven Seagal]] had an anomalous career of appearing in hits right from the start (compared to Arnold, for example, who had several bad films under his belt before he starred as ''The Terminator''). Following the success of ''[[Under Siege]]'', his ego got the better of him and he demanded that [[Warner Bros]] finance his pet project ''[[On Deadly Ground]]'', an environmental action pic in which he was the star and director. Its critical and financial failure ended his directorial career, and his acting career took a tremendous hit with it. Since then, his films steadily became worse until he had a brief resurrection with ''Exit Wounds''. An attempt to followup on that success with ''[[Half Past Dead]]'' effectively killed his career and left him on direct-to-DVD films for the next decade.
* Ever wonder why
* While none of [[Jonathan Frakes]]'s cinematic directorial efforts quite matched the success he experienced with his debut on ''[[Star Trek:
* While ''[[John Carter (film)|John Carter]]'' hasn't been proven a [[Stillborn Franchise]] ''yet'', at least one head has already rolled as a direct result of the film's disappointing box office performance: Disney Studios leader Rich Ross was fired just weeks after Disney predicted they'd lose $200 million dollars on the project (considering the budget, though, the actual losses amount to just less than $''100'' million at this point).
** The film's box office also led to head of marketing MT Carney (who had never worked in film before Disney hired her in 2010) to resign, since she was partially responsible for the film's infamously bad ad campaign.
* [[Diablo Cody]] broke into Hollywood with the highly-acclaimed film ''[[Juno]]''. Her follow-up, ''[[Jennifer's Body]]'', did ''not'' garner as much praise - critics picked apart the poor performance by [[Megan Fox]] and, more damningly for the creator, began to question Cody's overreliance on [[Totally Radical]] dialogue (a problem numerous critics had with ''Juno''). With the
== Live-Action TV ==
* Allan Carr, the producer and party-giver whose biggest hit was the movie adaptation of ''[[Grease]]'', was tapped to produce the 1989 [[Academy Award
* At the end of its fifth season, ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' aired what was clearly intended as its final episode. NBC, however, refused to let their [[Cash Cow Franchise]] die, replacing the cast and writers entirely, and hiring the show's talent coordinator Jean Doumanian to replace Lorne Michaels as executive producer (snubbing [[Al Franken]], passed up after network head Fred Silverman took personal offense to Franken's "Limo for the Lame-O" piece). While Jean Doumanian did have a knack for getting good musical guests and treating the talent right, she was out of her depth for running a comedy show. She passed up a lot of potentially talented would-be cast members ([[Jim Carrey]] being one of them), misunderstood a lot of obvious punchlines, thought that [[Refuge in Vulgarity]] was what made the sketches funny (as opposed to [[Refuge in Audacity]]) -- which became the show's downfall when Charles Rocket said, "I wanna know who the fuck did it" at the end of the Charlene Tilton episode, and focused more on humorless character pieces (some of which were intentionally not funny, like the one from the Karen Black/Cheap Trick episode in which [[Gilbert Gottfried]] played a stroke victim laid up in the hospital while everyone around
** Doumanian did resurface in the 1990's as the producer of a number of critically acclaimed and moderately successful [[Woody Allen]] films. Two of them (''[[Bullets Over Broadway]]'' and ''[[Mighty Aphrodite]]'') even won Best Supporting Actress Oscars. Then she screwed that up too, when, in 2000, she suddenly backed out of a movie, leaving Woody stranded, eventually resulting in both of them filing lawsuits against each other.
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* Already hurting from the constant delays and disappointing sales of his ''Brass Knuckles'' album, Nelly's controversial "Tip Drill" video pretty much destroyed his bankability as a mainstream crossover rap artist. His followup would be his last huge album, but his career eventually became [[Never Live It Down|defined by the moment in the vid where he swipes a credit card through some girl's butt.]].
* Peter Frampton's follow-up to his highly popular live album ''Frampton Comes Alive!'' was ''I'm In You'', a low-key experimental funk album. Despite the title track managing to become his biggest hit (#2 on the US pop charts), the album confounded his teenybopper fans, and the combination of the album's failure and [[Star-Derailing Role|his role in the film]] ''[[Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band]]'' the next year completely obliterated his career. To add insult to injury, [[Frank Zappa]] spoofed the album with the song, ''I Have Been In You''.
* [[Dexys Midnight Runners]] followed up their international hit album ''Too-Rye-Ay'' with ''Don't Stand Me Down'', an expansive experimental soul album, which was acclaimed by critics...but didn't sit too well with their fans, who wanted another "Come On Eileen". An actual ''single'' from the album wasn't released until several months after the album was, and the single chosen -- "This Is What She's Like"
* Some victims of the [[Sophomore Slump]] manage to recover with a third album, others fall apart after the failure of album number two:
** ''Second Coming'' by [[The Stone Roses]], which had been delayed by [[Executive Meddling]], a productivity-halting lawsuit trying to stop them from moving to Geffen, and [[Development Hell|general band procrastination]] (moving to Wales to record did ''not'' help). The album was finally released in 1994, over five years after their debut album. The album completely failed to live up to its hype and despite lead single "Love Spreads" becoming a genuine hit, the album received middling reviews and disappeared from the charts quickly. So were the band: they split up two years later, after a series of badly-reviewed live appearances and hiring [[Replacement Scrappy|Replacement Scrappies]] after their guitarist and drummer left.
** The Knack followed up their hit album ''Get the Knack'' and #1 hit single "My Sharona" with ''...But the Little Girls Understand''. The album was a complete dud commercially and critically, and despite releasing a couple more albums before they broke up, those releases never troubled the pop charts and were released with almost no fanfare.
* The pioneering [[New Wave]] label Factory Records was taken down by ''Yes Please!'', the disastrous 1992 album by Happy Mondays which went several times overbudget and has its artists spending more time doing crack (which they decided was more addicting than heroin, an addiction which they had relocated to Barbados to
* Despite only finishing as runner-up in ''[[The X Factor]]'' UK 2005, Andy Abraham initially had a very promising career, and his first two albums enjoyed strong sales. Unfortunately, his future was destroyed virtually overnight by his disastrous failure and last-place finish in the 2008 [[Eurovision Song Contest]]. Aside from the single release of his Eurovision song (which flopped so badly it didn't even get into the charts), Abraham hasn't released a single album since.
== Tabletop Games ==
* While not a creator, distributor Upper Deck Entertainment got hit hard during the latter part of the ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! GX|GX]]'' era of the ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh Card Game]]'' TCG due to their own [[Executive Meddling]]; a series of unpopular reshuffling of set cards (including the dismantling of two highly anticipated structure decks to release their new cards as difficult-to-get Secret Rares in the main sets), creation of poorly-received TCG-only cards, and ultimately the publishing of fake cards for third-party distribution ultimately forced [[Konami]] to pull their contract with UDE and wrangle the game away from them through a legal shitstorm. Even more damning, this incident has apparently caused [[Blizzard Entertainment]] to pull ''their'' contract with UDE for the distribution of the ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' TCG, going so far as to make an entirely new branch specifically for distributing it themselves. No word yet on how this will impact UDE's baseball and hockey card sales, but it's likely that that's going to be the only thing that'll save them from bankruptcy. To make things even more troubling, [https://web.archive.org/web/20110811103527/http://www.nctimes.com/business/article_526a005b-9676-57f8-b5d9-4eb14f2c43d0.html there's a corporate family civil war brewing as a direct result of the aforementioned Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG scandal.]
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* ''[[Duke Nukem Forever]]'' killed 3D Realms and destroyed George Broussard's reputation without even being made... or more accurately, ''by'' [[Vaporware|not being made]]. And just to twist the knife, after 3D Realms imploded, the game was handed to Gearbox Software by [[Take Two Interactive|2K Games]], who [[Saved From Development Hell|proceeded to do more towards actually completing the game]] in one year than Broussard and 3D Realms did in twelve. According to [[Word of God]], the game was already pretty much finished. Perfectionism and the Take-Two lawsuit kept it from coming out. Gearbox just basically put the finishing touches.
** And to further twist the knife, since Gearbox simply needed to get it out and not put any work into it, Gearbox basically spent a marginal amount of money for a game (meaning very quickly hitting a break even point) and IP with which they can now do whatever they want.
* ''[[Haze]]'' and ''[[Lair]]'' were two high-profile [[
* The failure of ''Fury'', an MMORPG designed by Australian company Auran, nearly brought down the entire company, and it forced them out of game development. They are now an extremely limited train simulator developer.
* Famously in the UK (thanks to coverage from [[The BBC]]), in 1983 the development of the "[[Vaporware|mega-games]]" ''Psyclapse'' and ''Bandersnatch'' brought down Imagine Software, one of the biggest and most successful software companies of the day. It was compounded by how the company was spending silly money on advertising, bad investments and badly-thought-out attempts to outwit their rivals by buying up all available duplicating capacity.
** Former employee Bruce Everiss, upon becoming an [[Orwellian Editor]], [http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/bruceworld/ would rather make you think] [[Digital Piracy Is Evil|piracy]] killed Imagine instead of incompetence (in spite of having acknowledged the true causes of its downfall himself in 1984). Trying to hide from your shames?
* The hugely expensive but [[Unexpected Genre Change|poorly received]] ''[[Shadowrun]]'' [[Xbox 360]] game took out FASA Interactive in a matter of months, dashing hopes for a much-anticipated ''Mechwarrior'' sequel.<ref>
** Said rumour turned out to be true and ''[[Mechwarrior]] Online'' was born. However, unexpectedly, it's coming out in a year where no less than four other mech games are to be launched, at least one of which is a free to play MMO as well...
* The [[Virtual Boy]] did this to [[Gunpei Yokoi]], whose failure resulted into him being [[Kicked Upstairs]] and resigning from [[Nintendo]] before his death.
* Poor sales of both the ''[[Terminator]] Salvation'' [[The Problem with Licensed Games|tie-in game]] and ''[[Bionic Commando]] 2009'' led to [[Square Enix]]
* After the abysmal flop of ''[[Tomb Raider]]: The Angel of Darkness'', [[You Have Failed Me...|Core Design couldn't do any more]] ''[[Tomb Raider]]'' games and struggled with a few mediocre handheld games before being sold off to Rebellion and rebranded as "Rebellion Derby". They were promptly taken down after the release of the critically-savaged ''[[Rogue Warrior]]''.
* The piss-poor ''[[Empire Earth]] 3'' led to not only [[Franchise Killer|the death of the franchise]], but also Mad Doc Studios.
* Losses from critically-panned ''[[APB: All Points Bulletin|All Points Bulletin]]'' seem to have killed ''[[Crackdown]]'' developer Realtime Worlds. They sank a lot of money in the [[Development Hell|long development phase]] but in the end, they had to release the game in hope to recoup the losses. Unfortunately, [[Obvious Beta|it was still in a messy state]] and rather accelerated their
* ''[[Tomba]]'' and its sequel ''Tomba 2: The Evil Swine Return'' performed well enough to develop a cult following, but they sold so poorly that their developer, Whoopee Camp, never made another game.
* [[Atari]] struggled for years in the wake of [[The Great Video Game Crash of 1983]], having released no less than three disastrous game systems in a row with the 5200, the 7800, and the handheld Lynx, but it was the [[Atari Jaguar]] that finally did them in. The combination of an incredibly difficult-to-develop-for architecture, shoddy build quality, an archaic controller design, and the inertia enjoyed by [[Nintendo]] and [[Sega]] doomed the Jaguar to ultimate failure, and it turned out to be the straw that finally broke Atari's back. You may still see the Atari name today, but that's [[In Name Only|just for marketing purposes]]
* The failure of ''[[Tabula Rasa]]'' pretty much ended the video game career of Richard Garriott, or, at the very least, robbed him of the "Lord British" mystique. On the other hand, the $28 million dollars he received in his lawsuit from NC Soft, the profits he's still making from ''[[City of Heroes]]'', and the fact that ''Tabula Rasa'' allowed him to take a flight to the Space Station probably takes the sting out of it.
* After a steady string of hits with its ''Project Gotham Racing'' series, the disappointing sales figures of ''[[Blur (video game)|Blur]]'' killed Bizarre Creations outright.
* [[Executive Meddling]] from Disney forced the closure of Black Rock Studios despite the positive reception of ''[[Video Game/Split Second|Split Second]]''.
* The Amiga CD32 was planned for American release by Commodore, but a patent dispute got in the way, and the company eventually filed for bankruptcy several months later, in part due to the lost (by law) sales.
* Troika Games was already showing signs of trouble even before the release of ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines]]''. The game used the new-and-powerful-at-the-time Source Engine, but were contractually obligated to withhold the game's release until ''[[Half-Life]] 2'' was released. Once the game was finally released, it quickly became apparent that the game was positively ''riddled'' with [[Game Breaking Bug
* ''[[Hellgate
* Despite winning critical acclaim and millions of sales, ''[[
* The [[Interactive Fiction]] producer [[Infocom]] attempted to branch out into new fields with its relational database program Cornerstone. (Indeed, the whole original plan was to just use the games as a stepping-stone to more profitable business software.) Although Cornerstone received good reviews, it was an expensive flop, and helped lead to Infocom being sold to [[Activision]], whose mismanagement quickly finished running the company into the ground.
* Despite ''[[Home Front]]'' selling over a million units in one week, Kaos Studios was shuttered in 2011 due to the high cost of running a studio in New York. The tepid reviews of the game and subsequent drop in THQ stock may also have been contributing factors.
* ''Ultima IX'' basically destroyed Origin Systems. [[Electronic Arts]] dropped all support for it during production and still demanded they release the extremely buggy version on time, then they cancelled all of Origin's future projects when the game bombed, eventually causing Richard Garriott to leave the company. EA shut down Origin in 2004.
* ''[[Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning]]'' was a modest hit for 38 Studios and Big Huge Games, selling just over 1 million copies since its release in February 2012, but financial troubles meant they had to reach 3M in sales<ref>according to Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee</ref> in order to cover development and loan costs. As a result, 38 and BHG [http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/5/24/3041662/38-studios-lays-off-entire-staff laid off their entire staff], effectively dissolving both companies and leaving a planned ''Amalur''-based MMORPG (tentatively titled ''Copernicus'') in limbo.
* ''[[Dead Rising|Dead Rising 4]]'' was so bad and so negatively received it was not only a [[Franchise Killer]], it led to [[Capcom]] closing its Vancouver chapter.
== Western Animation ==
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== Other ==
* RCA's [[Capacitance Electronic Disc|SelectaVision]] video system was intended to be a major competitor to VHS and Betamax. Unfortunately for them, it failed to take off, resulting in RCA writing off the entire investment in the project, and its subsequent breakup and acquisition by [[General Electric]].
** Though the players sold poorly, the discs sold very well (they were priced lower than VHS, Betamax and [[
* The car industry has been littered with these:
** The Rootes Group, a major British car maker, came unstuck with the [[The Alleged Car|Hillman Imp]]. It single-handedly led to the company's takeover by Chrysler and subsequent long-term decline.
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