Troubled Production/Real Life/Film: Difference between revisions

''It was not fun. Like hell it was fun. It was a lot of hard work. It was not fun at all."''

|'''Jack Haley'''}}

 

== Multiple Offenders ==

** ''The Deep'' would later be remade (and completed) as ''Dead Calm'' (which didn't suffer through a troubled production).

* [[James Cameron]] seems to be a lightning rod for this trope.

** And [[It Got Worse]] for ''[[Titanic]]'', the film that cemented his reputation as Hollywood's biggest [[Jerkass]], so much so that the crew claimed he had a [[Jekyll and Hyde|psychotic alter ego named]] "[[Sdrawkcab Name|Mij]]". Apart from terrorizing the film's two lead actors ([[Kate Winslet]] suffered bruises so impressive that the makeup artists took photos to use for reference later), driving it insanely over budget and schedule and having to deal with cast members who came down sick from a shitload of hours spent in cold water, Cameron and about 50 other guys fell victim to an almost [[Deadly Prank]] when a crew member put PCP in their soup, forcing them to spend a night in hospital. The movie stands as possibly his last completely [[Off the Rails]] Production, as he's mellowed out quite a bit since.

*** One of the benefits of shooting ''[[Avatar (film)|Avatar]]'' digitally and with a lot of motion-capture and CGI was that it effectively reduced the number of things that could go wrong during the shoot to natural disasters and oversleeping.

** Gilliam has attempted unsuccessfully to relaunch production several times since 2005. He restarted preliminary work in 2008 with Robert Duvall as Quixote. Depp was still attached to play Grisoni, but because of his tight schedule he had to leave the project and was replaced by Ewan McGregor. In 2010, Gilliam announced that the funding had collapsed.

 

 

 

=== 1950s ===

 

=== 1960s ===

* A few movies in the [[James Bond (film)|James Bond]] series had minor cases of it: ''[[From Russia with Love]]'' had to undergo a [[Ridiculously-Fast Construction]] because the producers had already set a release date, and they had to face problems such a boat of cameras sinking into the Bosphorus and a helicopter falling into a lake (with the director inside!) while location scouting; and ''[[On Her Majesty's Secret Service]]'' had a few stuntmen accidents, and leading man George Lazenby had conflicts with the director and the producers.

* [[Jacques Tati]] envisioned ''Playtime'' as his [[Magnum Opus]], and for that [[Epic Movie|the film had to be somewhat more than ordinary]]. This grand social satire and ode to classic slapstick could not be done on any ordinary set. Rather, it required a set for which ''two full-size modernistic buildings'' had to be constructed on the outskirts of Paris, along with several smaller models, a full-size road, and its own working electrical system powered by a small plant. The development of the film would then necessitate numerous script rewrites and continuous maintenance of the set. Filming in itself lasted '''three years''', during which Tati had to take out numerous loans in order to continue production. In order to further accommodate his immense vision, the film was shot on 70mm film and edited for a stereophonic sound setup. These decisions would eventually cause difficulties in finding theatres that could properly screen the film. When the project was finally completed and released in 1967, it flopped pitifully. The official budget has gone unreported, but the failure of ''Playtime'' led Tati to file for bankruptcy and pay off the film's debts for the rest of his life. [[Vindicated by History|Fortunately the film's reputation has improved since its release and is now considered Tati's masterpiece.]]

** Production in Italy was just as problematic. The costumes and sets had to be completely re-designed and re-built, leading to a shortage of lumber and other building materials throughout Italy. Millions of dollars' worth of props and other equipment were stolen by studio employees, while a group of female extras went on strike as a result of being constantly groped by lecherous male extras. The constant delays and reshoots in filming the epic-scale scene of Cleopatra's entrance on a barge into Rome (started in October 1961, only ended on March!) required the recasting of Cleopatra's son as the original child actor had grown significantly taller during the delay.

** When Joseph L. Mankiewicz was brought on board to direct at Taylor's insistence, the film was already nearly a year behind schedule, $5 million over budget, and had ''not a single frame of usable footage'' to show for it. The script was only half completed, and Mankiewicz had to write the rest as filming went along, shooting the script as new scenes were written and editing the resulting footage later rather than editing the script first and then shooting the resulting scenes. The demands were so heavy that Mankiewicz required injections to both get through each day and sleep at night.

** Things didn't improve during post production. Mankiewicz initially planned to assemble two three-hour films, ''Caesar and Cleopatra'' and ''Antony and Cleopatra'', but Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck believed that the public interest in seeing Taylor and Burton on screen together might fade if the second film were released later, while interest in the first film (in which Burton would only appear in a few scenes) would be minimal, so he [[Executive Meddling|ordered the films edited into a single four-hour film]] - requiring more reshoots! Mankiewicz was eventually fired during editing, but had to be re-hired when it became obvious that he was the only person who could make sense of the raw footage.<ref>Some of the cut footage has been recovered in recent years; the film's fans continue to harbour hope that ''all'' of the cut footage may someday be restored and the film released as Mankiewicz originally intended.</ref>

** The film finally staggered into cinemas in June 1963, with a final production cost of $44 million (in 2011 dollars, this would be over $300 million) - something Fox knew it would hardly be recovered. Despite critics and audiences reacting badly, the film still had the highest box office take of 1963 and was nominated for ten Oscars (including Best Picture), winning four, but it would not break even until ABC paid $5 million for two television screenings in 1966 (at the time, a record fee for film broadcasting rights). The already financially troubled 20th Century Fox almost went bankrupt, selling parts of its studio lot and needing the successes of films such as ''[[The Longest Day]]''<ref>in which Roddy McDowall (who played Octavian in ''Cleopatra'') requested, and received, a small role to alleviate boredom during the endless delays to ''Cleopatra''</ref> in 1962 and ''[[The Sound of Music]]'' in 1965 to alleviate. ''Cleopatra'' also [[Genre Killer|killed interest in the sword and sandal epic genre]] for nearly a generation, and was a key factor in [[Fall of the Studio System|the disintegration of the old "studio system"]], as studios passed responsibility for production costs to independent production companies instead of handling said costs themselves.

** George Cukor told the Soviet studio head how honored he was to be filming in the same studio where Sergei Eisenstein had filmed ''[[The Battleship Potemkin]]'' in 1925. "Yes," said the studio head, "and with the very same equipment."

* ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]''. [[No Budget]], the directors clashing with each other, Graham Chapman either getting drunk or suffering from withdrawal on set, getting a location veto shortly before filming began, actors [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071853/trivia?tr0767057 rushing back to the hotel after wrapping for the day in order to bathe]...

* ''[[Dersu Uzala]]'', due to [[Akira Kurosawa]] having to work in the USSR as no Japanese studio wanted to fund him at the time. The resulting studio, Mosfilm, clashed with Kurosawa as his perfectionism did not fit the "deliver a certain amount of shot film per day" the company wanted. Union fights were recurrent, and cameramen were changed every week. There was only one interpreter - to a crew of mostly Russians! To make the tiger attack more realistic, a wild one was used instead of a domesticated animal - and needless to say, it wasn't collaborative. No wonder the film took 3 years to get ready.

* ''[[The Exorcist]]'' went over budget and schedule ($4,5 million and 105 days to $12 million and over 200 days plus 6 months of post-production!), and William Friedkin proved to be a [[Prima Donna Director]] who [[Bad Boss|didn't care much for the cast and crew]] (for instance, Ellen Burstyn complained that for the scene Chris is telekinetically thrown against a wall, the stuntmen were pulling her too hard... and Friedkin's response was a take so strong Burstyn injured herself!).To make it worse, there were strange events (such as the interior sets of the MacNeil residence getting burned) that lead people to consider the film cursed.

* ''[[Eraserhead]]'' suffered from this - no studio would fund it due to its unusual plot and [[David Lynch]]'s lack of experience, so he had to rely on funds from the AFI, as well as friends and family. Because of these financial troubles, filming was intermittent - it took five years, and sets had to be repeatedly assembled and disassembled. While its critical reception was initially mixed, the film was praised by several other filmmakers (including, but not limited to [[Mel Brooks]], [[Stanley Kubrick]] and [[John Waters]]), which [[Colbert Bump|kickstarted Lynch's career]].

 

=== 1980s ===

* ''[[The Empire Strikes Back]]'', while having a less brutal production than the first installment, did run into troubles too. New director Irvin Kershner spent a lot more time for takes, which had the film lag behind and producer Gary Kurtz allowed production to go way over budget (triple that of the original in fact). Lucas wanted to keep the film out of any studios hands and financed it himself, but he was forced to take out a loan with 20th Century Fox as his security. The crew arrived in Norway to film the Hoth scenes to be greeted by the worst winter storm in years. And the various locations used, knowing it was a ''Star Wars'' film, overcharged the production for their services. This was the reason Kurtz was changed for ''[[Return of the Jedi]]'' which had the least angsty production of all the original movies, in fact.

* Infamous flop ''[[Hudson Hawk]]'' gathered bad reaction before its release due to a disastrous production - egos running rampant, constant rewrites, clashes between director and star, you name it.

** Richard E. Grant dedicated a chapter about the nighmare that was making ''[[Hudson Hawk]]'' in his book ''With Nails''.

=== 1990s ===

* The production of the fifth ''Superman'' movie definitely qualifies, especially if one considers all the different versions it went through on the road to becoming ''[[Superman Returns]]'' (which actually had a calm production). [[The Other Wiki]] has a [[wikipedia:Superman (film series)#Proposals for fifth film|very exhaustive listing]], but the best-known facet is that later stages were essentially a battle between two sides. On one hand we had writers like [[Kevin Smith]] (who wittily recounts his experiences on the project [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgYhLIThTvk here]) who wanted to produce a faithful, respectful treatment of Superman's mythos. On the other we had producer Jon Peters, who said Supes' red-and-blues looked "too faggy", wanted to give Brainiac a robot sidekick described as "a gay [[Star Wars|R2-D2]] with attitude", and demanded that Superman battle a [[Spider Tank|giant robot spider]].

* ''[[Waterworld]]''. Budget overrun (from $100 million to the then-record $175 million), director Kevin Reynolds leaving and leading [[Kevin Costner]] [[Wag the Director|to further take over the film]], a hurricane destroying the sets, stuntmen getting lost or drowned... and [[Executive Meddling]] kicked in to order cuts and reshoots.

** ''[[Turbo a Power Rangers Movie]]'' was just as bad. Initially envisioned as a reunion of the original MMPR cast teaming up with the new Turbo team, it fell apart when Walter Jones and Thuy Trang refused to give up their Guild membership cards to film. The explanation of the Turbo powers was dropped when David Yost left near the end of ''[[Power Rangers Zeo]]''. The original cut was actually over ''three hours long'' and they were forced to trim it down to under two. Beyond all of that, it was no wonder the movie flopped!

* The movie version of ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' was rife with problems. The original plan was for them to reveal how Joel got tossed onto the Satellite of Love and built his robot friends - Crow, Tom, Gypsy and Cambot. The executive liked it, but he didn't want the series' main catch - the riffing - to be prominent. This, along with a few other problems, lead to Joel Hodgson to leave the series halfway through Season 5. When the movie idea was picked back up, more problems came about - Universal would only let them use movies that they chose and they were stuck with ''[[This Island Earth]]''. They were forced to not only cut out movie scenes - which meant the entirety of the movie was shorter than your normal ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' episode - but lop one host segment and modify the last one, killing a [[Brick Joke]] set up from the very beginning. And the killing blow? The company producing this had the option of fully backing either this or ''[[Barb Wire]]''. [[It Will Never Catch On|Guess what they chose?]] (and considering [http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?view=main&yr=1996&wknd=16&sort=avg&order=DESC&p=.htm how high the theater averages were], who knows how much it would have grossed without [[Invisible Advertising]]?)

=== 2000s ===

* The ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'' [[Two-Part Trilogy|sequels]] - more specifically, the second. Writing wasn't finished by the time it started, ships had to be built, the small island where it was filmed wasn't ready to receive the huge crew, and Hurricane Wilma devastated the Bahamas set.

 

=== 2010s ===

* ''[[John Carter]]'': There were reservations at Disney about letting Andrew Stanton direct the film, despite his strong sentimental attachment to the material, because he'd never directed a live-action feature before. But, since he'd made ''[[WALL-E]]'' and ''[[Finding Nemo]]'' into hits, they let him do it even though he warned them, "I'm not gonna get it right the first time, I'll tell you that right now." Indeed, the film required extensive double reshoots. Throughout production, he ignored the advice of the crewmembers who were live-action veterans in favor of his Pixar friends, back in their offices. Rich Ross (fired over this) and the other studio executives at Disney likewise had little experience with feature films, since most had come from television.

** Then, it came time to market the film, which was already handicapped in that department by having no big stars in the cast. A trailer shown at a Disney con did not go over well, and Stanton refused to take any advice from the studio's marketing department. He insisted on using [[Led Zeppelin]]'s "Kashmir" in the trailer even after it was pointed out to him that a 30-year-old classic-rock song was not likely to resonate with the younger male audience the film was intended for. The movie also went through last-minute retitling, dropping "Princess" and "Mars" from the title because those were thought to turn off the male and female segments of the youth audience respectively.