This day in history: The film Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, was released in US theaters on this day in 1963. Cleopatra is a 1963 American epic historical drama film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, with a screenplay adapted by Mankiewicz, Ranald MacDougall and Sidney Buchman from the 1957 book The Life and Times of Cleopatra by Carlo Maria Franzero, and from histories by Plutarch, Suetonius, and Appian. The film stars Elizabeth Taylor in the eponymous role. Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy McDowall, and Martin Landau are featured in supporting roles. It chronicles the struggles of Cleopatra, the young queen of Egypt, to resist the imperial ambitions of Rome.
Elizabeth Taylor signed on to portray the title role for a record-setting salary of $1 million. It was the most expensive film made at the time. "Cleopatra was the biggest box office success of 1963. It earned nearly $58 million—or, adjusted for inflation, about $484 million. It also lost money, at least until Fox sold the TV rights years later." Source
"...it was a financial disaster for 20th Century Fox. It also more or less killed off the big-budget period epic for ever, just as The Greatest Story Ever Told killed off the biblical epic in 1965, and Heaven's Gate would finally kill off the long-moribund classic studio western in 1980. Flops on this scale are like suicides, they take everyone else down with them." Source
So what was the biggest loser at the box office? It’s a toss-up between Disney’s 2012 sci-fi opus John Carter and 1995's Cutthroat Island by Renny Harlin. "John Carter cost $263.7 million (plus at least $100 million for marketing) and earned only $284 million worldwide — just half what it would have needed to break even...Cutthroat Island reportedly cost $98 million" and "earned $15.7 million worldwide, according to Comscore. It pushed Carolco Pictures into bankruptcy and lost $118 million (adjusted for inflation) according to the Guinness Book of World Records." Source
No comments:
Post a Comment