{"id":303507,"date":"2026-02-18T02:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T02:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/303507\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T02:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T02:20:07","slug":"30-years-on-director-of-one-of-hollywoods-biggest-flops-is-still-defending-it-im-proud-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/303507\/","title":{"rendered":"30 Years on, Director of One of Hollywood’s Biggest Flops is Still Defending it: “I’m Proud of it”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Throughout the history of Hollywood, there have been some truly monumental hits at the box office, but the opposite is true as well, with any number of films becoming major box office bombs. The all-time list of box office bombs holds some famous names, and some films on that list are actually fantastic in terms of quality<\/a>, but still couldn\u2019t find an audience on the big screen<\/a>. The director of one major flop stands behind the film even 30 years later, and recently took up for the film, saying, \u201cI\u2019m proud of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1995, Director Renny Harlin was at the helm<\/a> of the pirate adventure Cutthroat Island, which ended up experiencing an escalated budget of around $100 million and only brought in $18.3 million. Harlin recently spoke with Empire Magazine<\/a> about the film, and it\u2019s one he\u2019s quite proud of, saying, \u201cI\u2019ll go to my grave saying I loved making Cutthroat Island. I think it\u2019s a good movie. I\u2019m proud of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harlin went on to explain why he\u2019s so proud of it, and part of that pride comes from how much work they put into all the details. \u201cWe built two full-scale ships. The cannons, obviously, couldn\u2019t be real cannons. I wanted to build a system into them where every time we fire, they kick back, so it really looks like the real thing. And they built a thing inside where it shoots out smoke and fire, but with no real cannonballs flying. We did all kinds of explosions on the ships. Some were propane fireballs, some had air motors with debris and balsa and cork to make those explosions look real. And we had huge water-slides smashing waves on the ships and water flying everywhere. And we had people, in some cases actors, swinging on ropes from one ship to another,\u201d Harlin said.<\/p>\n

Why Did Cutthroat Island Not Land At The Box Office<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Cutthroat Island had some issues even before filming, and those might have contributed to not only the expanding budget but also how the film was ultimately received. The first major hurdle was casting, as while the film had Geena Davis locked in to star, it had a difficult time casting the male lead.<\/p>\n

Michael Douglas was initially going to play the role of Shaw, but if that was going to happen, not only would the film have to start filming immediately, but Douglas wanted his character to have equal screen time. Ultimately, Douglas left the project, and so Harlin had to spend most of his time early on trying to cast the role. Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, Michael Keaton, Tim Robbins, Russell Crowe, and more all turned down the role, but ultimately the movie found its Shaw in Matthew Modine.<\/p>\n

After that was done, Harlin was catching up on production design, but he wasn\u2019t a fan of what was being done, so the sets had to be revamped on the fly. Thanks to this sudden series of changes and a number of other behind-the-scenes issues, the film suffered delays, which raised the budget even further, and money would be a consistent problem in the film\u2019s journey from concept to screen.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because Carolco Pictures was already in major financial distress and was on the verge of bankruptcy. It wasn\u2019t great for the film\u2019s ditrubor MGM, either, as they were in the midst of being sold. Harlin also reportedly spent his own money on script rewrites, and thanks to MGM\u2019s sale, the film didn\u2019t receive much of a marketing push either.<\/p>\n

Disappointing reviews were the final nail, and thanks to the inflated budget, the film ended up losing $202 million. On Rotten Tomatoes<\/a>, Cutthroat Island holds a 40% Critics score and a 40% audience score, so it\u2019s not much better there either. That doesn\u2019t mean you shouldn\u2019t watch Cutthroat Island for yourself, because you may end up living just like Harlin does.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Leave a comment below\u00a0and join the conversation now in the\u00a0ComicBook Forum<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Throughout the history of Hollywood, there have been some truly monumental hits at the box office, but the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,143293,93,143294,61,60,57251],"class_list":{"0":"post-303507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-cutthroat-island","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-geena-davis","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-regular-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}