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- Dolittle
- Universal Pictures
Wealth and fame are just two of the benefits that come with being a Hollywood movie star. Another perk for bankable actors is the leverage to get their vanity project movies produced. Would Battlefield Earth get made if John Travolta wasn’t one of the most popular actors in the world? Would The Postman ever see the light of day if Kevin Costner didn’t have an Oscar-winning past to back up his vision?
The short answer is probably not. The scripts for both of those films were not very good. Producers only banked on those stories because of the star power Travolta and Costner had during the height of their Tinseltown fame. Some of these passion projects ruined careers, while others were just tiny bumps in the road. A couple of these vanity affairs have even gone on to find an audience and become cult classics. Vote up the passion projects that you think should have never been made.
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Following Saturday Night Fever and Grease, John Travolta became one of the biggest movie stars of the 1970s. His career stalled a bit in the '80s, then came roaring back in 1994 when Quentin Tarantino cast him in Pulp Fiction. After a string of '90s hits and misses, Travolta's career took another step back at the tail end of the 20th century.
As one of the faces of Scientology, Travolta was able to get funding for his passion project, an adaptation of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's 1982 science-fiction novel Battlefield Earth. The film adaptation hit the big screen in 2000. The response from critics and audiences was immediately devastating. Roger Ebert gave it a half star, writing, "It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way," while Time called it "the worst movie in living memory." Indeed, it had few redemptive qualities. Everything from the script to the acting to the special effects to the cinematography was roundly mocked.
The movie made just under $30 million worldwide on a $73 million budget. It won the Razzie for "Worst Movie of the Decade." The sci-fi disaster's screenwriter, J.D. Shapiro, accepted the Razzie and went on to make a lengthy apology that started with the following:
Let me start by apologizing to anyone who went to see Battlefield Earth. It wasn't as I intended - promise. No one sets out to make a train wreck. Actually, comparing it to a train wreck isn't really fair to train wrecks, because people actually want to watch those.
Travolta continued to work following his passion project's epic fail. However, his star power definitely dimmed. He never regained his post-Pulp Fiction swagger. In fact, his name will forever be linked with one of the biggest cinematic disasters ever. Still, in an interview with Daily Beast, when asked if he regretted the film, Travolta responded:
No way, are you kidding? Why would I ever regret that? I had the power to do whatever I wanted, and I chose to do a book that I thought was worthy of making into a movie. It’s a beautiful film. It’s a good movie.
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Madonna is one of the most successful pop stars in music history. Director Guy Ritchie is a contemporary auteur who made his reputation with feverish British crime comedies Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Madonna, who showed she could act in Evita and A League of Their Own, had the desire to remake Lina Wertmüller's classic romantic comedy Swept Away with her own husband behind the camera.
There are two immediate problems with 2002's Swept Away. The first is that Ritchie isn't a rom-com director. The second is that Madonna is not a versatile actor. Swept Away calls for an actor who can handle comedy, romance, and drama. Madonna was pretty good in a Evita because she could overact in the role of Eva Perón. Amber Leighton is not Eva Perón, and Madonna couldn't hide behind the musical theater of Argentina's celebrated first lady.
Swept Away scored just 5% with Rotten Tomatoes critics. Madonna's acting talent became the focal point of nearly every critic's scorn. Ritchie, who also wrote the screenplay, received his fair share of outrage as well. Critic Gil Jawetz wrote, "Apparently willing to scuttle his own career, Ritchie writes and directs a film in which he does everything possible to make his own wife look ugly, rotten, and despicable."
Even Madonna's rabid fan base didn't show up in theaters. The romantic comedy made less than $600,000 at the domestic box office against a $10 million budget. Swept Away nearly swept the Golden Raspberry Awards. It won for worst film of the year, worst remake of the year, worst actress of the year (Madonna), worst director of the year (Ritchie), and worst screen couple of the year (Adriano Giannini and Madonna). The failed romantic adventure is the last time Madonna headlined a film.
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Will Smith came up with the idea for After Earth while watching television. His vision eventually evolved into a science-fiction story that takes place in the year 1000 AE - or 1,000 years after the human race left planet Earth because of pollution and global warming. The plot features a father and his teenage son who crash-land on Earth. The teenager must save his injured father on what has become a hostile planet.
Smith developed the movie as a star vehicle for his 14-year-old son, Jaden. The actor sold his post-apocalyptic vision to M. Night Shyamalan to direct. The high-budget vanity project also brought in Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith's brother-in-law, Caleeb Pinkett, to serve as producers.
The $130 million Smith-family affair hit the big screen in 2013 and was instantly met with harsh criticism, scoring 11% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics lambasted pretty much every detail, including a plot that was generally regarded as boring and lifeless.
"The problem is that the film is chockfull of clichés and stymied by production design and CG effects that look as if the worst of the Star Wars series was being devoutly copied," wrote a critic from GO London.
Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian was even harsher:
He's done it again. M. Night Shyamalan has done it again. Again. Done it. Again. He has given us another film for which the only appropriate expression is stammering, gibbering wonder that anyone can keep making such uncompromisingly terrible movies with such stamina and dedication. This one is a sci-fi drama of such incredible boredom that your synapses will be turned to Bostik, featuring a triple-whammy of abysmal acting, directing, and story.
Two years later, Smith called his experience with After Earth "the most painful failure" of his career, adding, "That was a valuable lesson for me."
In 2013, Smith's career was already a step down from his 1990s glory days. The epic awfulness of his vanity project certainly didn't help reestablish his star power. Jaden focused more on his music career after 2013. He hasn't starred in any other high-budget feature films since.
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Prior to 2016, Warren Beatty had not acted in a movie since 2001's Town & Country. The Oscar-winning director also hadn't been behind the camera since 1998's Bulworth. Despite his long layoff, the name "Warren Beatty" still had a lot of clout around Tinseltown.
In fact, the '70s icon still had so much pull that he managed to secure a $25 million budget to make the movie about Howard Hughes he had wanted to make for decades. Beatty wrote, directed, and starred as Hughes circa 1950s Hollywood.
Hughes was in his 50s in the film; Beatty was in his 80s. But, the age difference was not the film's biggest problem. The script tried to be equal parts comedy, romance, parody, and Hollywood nostalgia. Unfortunately, it didn't work when all meshed together.
Initial test audiences, especially those under 40 who weren't even aware there was an eccentric billionaire named Howard Hughes, found Beatty's passion project boring. However, Beatty didn't buy the initial criticism. He told the studio to disregard the general test audience's opinion, dump more money into marketing, and open up against tough competition on Thanksgiving weekend.
Critical reception for the movie was mixed at best. Critic Wenlei Ma wrote:
Beatty has made a beautiful-to-look-at film making full cinematic use of its glamorous period setting. But despite having all the ingredients for a charming movie, like Howard Hughes, Rules Don't Apply's soul remains elusive.
Beatty's vanity project tanked at the box office, failing to even break the $4 million mark worldwide.
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Don't remember Bobby Darin? He's the singer-songwriter behind the 1950s hits "Splish Splash," "Mack the Knife," and "Beyond the Sea." How a biopic of the somewhat-forgotten crooner came to the big screen starts with an early-2000 lunch meeting between Darin's longtime friend and manager Steve Blauner and Oscar-winning movie star Kevin Spacey.
Spacey told Blauner that his Hollywood passion project was to write, direct, and star in a film about Bobby Darin. Spacey also wanted to sing on the soundtrack. According to an article published in The Los Angeles Times, Blauner reportedly told Spacey something like, "You're too old, you shouldn't sing, and you're out of your mind to direct."
By the end of their lunch meeting, Spacey convinced Blauner that despite being in his 50s, he could play Darin in his 20s and 30s. Fast-forward to 2004. Beyond the Sea is released to mixed reviews. Some critics enjoy the biopic of Darin's life, while others don't buy Spacey's performance.
Critic Mick LaSalle was especially harsh in his review:
Beyond the Sea is jaw-droppingly awful, a misbegotten and ill-conceived vanity project, in which Spacey - as writer, director, and star - takes an amazing showbiz story and kills it dead. The casting of Spacey, the movie's reason for being, is also its central flaw. He's wrong for the role in every possible way. In a black toupee, he looks nothing like Darin and more like a middle-aged woman. It's a project that didn't call for a green light but rather an intervention.
Beyond the Sea flopped at the box office. It earned around $8.5 million worldwide against a $25 million budget. Spacey would not direct another feature-length film.
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'Live by Night' - Ben Affleck Leveraged His Batman Role To Get A Big-Budget Gangster Epic Made
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Ben Affleck is not just a handsome star actor; he's a filmmaker in every sense of the word. He proved his ability to tell a good story behind the camera with his directorial efforts, such as Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and the best-picture winner Argo.
Affleck is also a box office draw with decades of work to prove it. In case anyone doubted his movie-star bona fides, the actor was cast as Batman in the burgeoning DC Extended Universe, beginning with Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. The movie made $873 million worldwide despite poor reviews and Dark Knight loyalists scoffing at the idea of Affleck in the batsuit.
Why not hand Affleck $90 million to make his vanity project Live by Night? Affleck signed on to star, write, direct, and produce the period-piece gangster noir, which was based on Dennis Lehane's 2012 novel of the same name. The studio believed Live by Night had all the makings of an Oscar film and gave it a prime December 25 release date. The only problem was that Affleck's prohibition crime saga was not very good. Critics panned the picture mostly for being dull.
Critic Damond Fudge wrote, "Affleck continues to showcase his talents as a director. The film is slick and stylish, with some great individual shots and scenes... Unfortunately, his skill behind the camera can't fix the averageness of the plot."
After the film failed to find an audience, Warner Bros. reportedly lost about $75 million.
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Johnny Depp is one of the highest-grossing movie actors of all time. However, a lot of that loot was made with five Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Many of Depp's other feature films do not have the power of the Disney name behind them. Even still, Depp is a bankable movie star, so when he wants to make a passion project, he makes a passion project.
Depp first became interested in adapting Mortdecai for the big screen while he was filming Pirates of the Caribbean. His co-star Jack Davenport introduced him to the Mortdecai comic thriller-novel series written by Kyril Bonfiglioli, and Depp envisioned it as a feature-length movie. "I thought this would be amazing to bring to the screen, but would be impossible," said Depp. "And it almost was. It took 10 years."
It was Depp's sheer passion for Bonfiglioli's work and his desire to take on the aristocratic, shady art dealer that ultimately brought investors to the table. Lionsgate put up the $60 million to make the 2015 caper.
The movie was panned by critics and scored just 12% on Rotten Tomatoes. It grossed only $47 million at the box office. The caper comedy was nearly uniformly criticized for its flat humor and bizarre tone. Stephen Holden from The New York Times wrote:
Mortdecai might as well be called "The Johnny Depp Movie," because its preening star, wearing an ascot and a walrus mustache that becomes a tiresome running joke, is the whole show. And what a frantically dull spectacle this vanity project is. Mortdecai, directed by David Koepp from a screenplay by Eric Aronson, would never have been made without Mr. Depp’s enthusiasm for the source material, the first of the 1970s trilogy of farcical novels by the British author Kyril Bonfiglioli, in the P.G. Wodehouse tradition of sophisticated silliness.
Mr. Depp’s wizardly expertise at disappearing into a character is intact. But what if that character isn’t funny and hasn’t an ounce of charm? Charlie Mortdecai, a bumbling aristocratic bon vivant and sociopath who lives beyond his means and deals in stolen art, is a vehicle for Mr. Depp to turn into a kind of Austin Powers manqué. There is no wink behind the wink because Mr. Depp is so busy showing off.
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Remember Tom Green? He was a pretty big deal for a while there in the late 1990s. The shock comic had his own MTV show, The Tom Green Show, and even crossed over into movies with supporting parts in Road Trip and Charlie's Angels. He managed to extend his 15 minutes of fame when he married Drew Barrymore in 2001.
The Canadian comic then wrote and helmed the bizarre black comedy Freddy Got Fingered. The story was loosely based on Green's own life of making it in the entertainment business.
Not only did Green get to see his script get turned into a movie, but he battled the studio and won every step of the way. Freddy Got Fingered was a weird movie; it's supposed to feel surreal and different. Green fought for that vision. He also leveraged his MTV fame to get the chance to make his directorial debut.
The film did not make money. It cost $14 million to produce and that's what it pulled in at the box office. It got lambasted by critics and won five Razzies, including worst picture. Green also "won" the Razzie for worst actor.
In 2002, Green became the first actor to ever show up to accept his Razzie Awards. The comedian pulled up to the award show in a white Cadillac and acted like it was the Oscars. Green even had to be pulled off stage during his acceptance speech because he would not stop playing his harmonica.
Freddy Got Fingered may have ended Green's hot streak and Hollywood career; however, like some offbeat and strange comedies, Green's vision has managed to find an audience and become a cult favorite.
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Robert Downey Jr. has done it all. He exploded onto the Hollywood scene as one of the most talented young actors in the 1980s. His monumental fall from the top due to legal trouble left his career for dead in the 1990s. Eventually, he got clean and sober, became an indie darling, and then landed the superhero role of a lifetime with Iron Man in 2008.
Downey helped to launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it, and in the process became one of the richest actors in Hollywood. With that kind of wealth and prestige, Downey set out to make his passion project, the family adventure-comedy Dolittle.
It is a remake of the 1967 movie Doctor Dolittle - a film that nearly bankrupted an entire studio. The fun premise is about a veterinarian who can communicate with animals. The actor served as an executive producer, with his wife Susan as a producer. Their intentions for the movie were pure gold. They wanted to make something that their kids could see.
Unfortunately, they made an expensive movie with a budget around $175 million. The film was bad enough that the studio took one look at the film's first cut and knew it had a potential disaster on its hands. The executives asked for several reshoots in an attempt to make the script funnier. The endless reshoots were not effective, muddling the script and leveling the humor. Other writers like Seth Rogen were even brought in to try and rescue the picture.
Nothing worked. Dolittle hit the big screen in 2020 and not even Iron Man could save it. The movie ended up costing Universal $100 million. The reviews were equally devastating. Critics went after the lack of laughs; the stale, incoherent story; and the poor special effects.
Germain Lussier from Gizmodo wrote, “Just when I thought Dolittle couldn’t get any less funny or idiotic, Robert Downey Jr. sticks his arms up a dragon’s a**hole. And I do mean that literally."
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Bill Murray is considered one of the funniest comedy movie actors ever, while still standing out in roles that show off his dramatic chops. He is just as believable as the somber, lonely, middle-aged Bob Harris in Lost in Translation as he is as the over-the-top, wacky bowler Ernie McCracken in Kingpin.
In the early 1980s, Murray was still widely known for his work on Saturday Night Live and the big-screen comedies Caddyshack and Stripes. Director John Byrum gave Murray a copy of W. Somerset Maugham's 1944 novel The Razor's Edge, about a WWI American pilot suffering from PTSD.
Murray loved the novel and wanted to play the pilot searching for his own meaning in life. Byrum and Murray wrote the script together, but could not secure funding for their passion project.
During that time, Dan Aykroyd wrote a script called Ghost Smashers intended to feature his SNL co-star and friend John Belushi. Unfortunately, Belushi passed in March of 1982. Aykroyd's comedy needed a new star to save the picture. Aykroyd got Murray to agree to play Dr. Peter Venkman in the now-called Ghostbusters in exchange for Columbia Pictures financing The Razor's Edge.
The studio ended up losing millions on The Razor's Edge. The reviews for the drama were mixed. It wasn't necessarily a bad movie - it just wasn't a great one. Even still, the gamble worked out for Columbia. Ghostbusters absolutely thrived at the box office in 1984, hauling in $229 million to finish as the second-highest grossing film of the year, just behind Beverly Hills Cop and nearly $50 million ahead of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The success and failure of 1984 was probably more bitter than sweet for Murray, who did not take on another lead role until 1988's Scrooged. The Razor's Edge would also be the only screenplay Murray ever wrote that got made into a feature film.
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In the early 1990s, Kevin Costner was one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood. In 1990, he made his directorial debut with Dances with Wolves. The three-hour epic turned Costner from a major movie star to a true power player. The film was nominated for 12 Oscars and won seven. Costner took home the gold for best director and best picture.
Costner went epic again a few years later with 1995's post-apocalyptic Waterworld. It was the most expensive movie ever made (at the time), but was a massive flop. That didn't stop Costner, nor investors, from taking another epic gamble. He stepped back behind the camera to helm The Postman in 1997. He wanted to make the post-apocalyptic action-adventure movie after reading David Brin's 1985 novel of the same name. "When I find a great story, I want to make it into a movie," said Costner. "This is definitely a great story. What I like about certain films are their situations - how they play out. [Good movies] also have vivid characters and lively dialogue. And I think the types of scripts I seek out have those elements in them."
Unfortunately for Costner, audiences did not agree. The dystopian tale tanked at the box office. Critics lambasted the nearly three-hour epic, which scored 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. Yael Shuv from Total Film wrote:
The Postman may look like Waterworld on sand, but in its heart it really wants to be a Sound of Music for the millennium. Probably the most glutinously sentimental, mega-budget post-apocalyptic Western that ever there was, it's about a man who brings hope to little children growing up in a ravaged society threatened by a fascist army.
Costner was never handed epic blockbuster money again. His career continued on but never rebounded to his 1990s salad days. Costner did not direct another film until 2003's Open Range.
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'Paradise Alley' - After 'Rocky' Made Him A Star, Sylvester Stallone Went Behind The Camera For A Period-Piece Vanity Project
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Sylvester Stallone was a struggling actor in the mid-1970s when he decided to take matters into his own hands and write a movie. He wrote the Rocky script so that he could star as the underdog boxing hero. That film went on to win the Oscar for best picture, make boatloads of money, and turn Stallone into a movie star.
Stallone saw his meteoric rise to the top as an opportunity to get another script he wrote, Paradise Alley, onto the big screen. It would also be an opportunity for the actor to direct his first motion picture. Stallone starred as Cosmo Carboni in the period drama set in 1940s Hell's Kitchen. It was the story of three brothers from the slums. Two of them train their youngest sibling to become an underground wrestler in order to win prize money.
Critics mostly took down Stallone's wrestling drama. Many, perhaps unfairly, compared the work to Rocky. Vincent Canby from The New York Times headlined his review, "Rocky Goes Limbo in Paradise Alley." He added, "If there had been just a tiny bit of wit involved, or a consistent point of view, or genuine feeling, Paradise Alley might have been an engaging throwback to the true B pictures of yesteryear. As it is, it's Rocky warmed over and then thrown out."
The film managed to make around $7 million at the box office. Stallone's career was just getting started. The future action hero went on to direct four Rocky movies, Rambo, and The Expendables. The mixed reviews of Paradise Alley had no negative effect whatsoever on Sly's career.
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For a while there in the 2000s, it looked like Joseph Gordon-Levitt was going to emerge as the 21st century's new leading man. The actor flourished in independent films like (500) Days of Summer and transitioned nicely to big-budget affairs like Inception and The Dark Knight Rises.
Gordon-Levitt had enough clout in 2013 to secure financing for his passion project Don Jon. In a film about a man so addicted to smut that he's incapable of having a real relationship with a woman, the rising star would not just take the title role but go behind the camera for his directorial debut, based on his own script.
Gordon-Levitt talked about why he chose to tell the story of Don Jon:
At its core, [Don Jon is] a movie about how people treat each other like things more than people sometimes, and how the media can play into that. And I imagine that for me, it comes from having grown up working as an actor my whole life. Actors in our culture do sometimes get treated more like objects on a shelf than people.
Don Jon actually did fairly well with critics overall. Many reviews pointed out that Gordon-Levitt had a natural ability to tell a story and possessed a good ear for dialogue. The movie disappointed at the box office. It grossed about $24 million domestically and ultimately did not live up to studio expectations. Relativity Media purchased the film for $4 million at Sundance and put in around $25 million in marketing.
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In the 1980s, Eddie Murphy could do no wrong. He became a breakout star on Saturday Night Live when he was just a teenager. Murphy then became one of the biggest box office draws of the decade with the mega-comedy hits 48 Hrs., Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, and Coming to America. His stand-up specials Delirious and Raw are still largely considered among the funniest in comedy history.
At the end of the decade, Murphy had the clout to make his passion project Harlem Nights. It would be the actor's first time behind the camera, and he would have the opportunity to work with his stand-up childhood idols Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx.
Harlem Nights is a Prohibition-era comedy. It also tries to be a crime drama dedicated to Harlem's good old days. It's a tough tone to tackle for a first-time writer-director, and it showed on the big screen. Many critics berated Murphy's freshman effort, often pointing out the issues in the movie's plot. It failed to work as a "comedy-drama." Candice Russell wrote, "Scoring high marks alternatively for repellent dialogue, staging, and characterizations as well as deadly boredom, Harlem Nights may well be the worst major movie of 1989."
Despite the lukewarm reviews, Harlem Nights did well at the box office. Favor for the movie has grown over time, and it has gained a cult audience. For Murphy, his work behind the camera was a tough experience that he never revisited again. Looking back on Harlem Nights in 2016, Murphy said:
That movie was a blur. It was Richard [Pryor], Robin Harris - all comedians. I remember Richard and Redd Foxx laughing offstage during the whole movie. The funniest sh*t was off camera, we’re all just crying. Redd was a really funny dude, he would have the set screaming all the time. But afterwards it was like, "Whoa, that’s a lot of work." I was really young when I did it. I had one foot in the club, and one foot on the set, a lot of sh*t going on. It’s amazing it came together.
Harlem Nights would not stop the Eddie Murphy train, however. Another 48 Hrs., Boomerang, and The Nutty Professor carried the funnyman well into the 1990s.
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In the early 1990s, Bruce Willis was at the height of his Hollywood fame. He had just completed five winning seasons of Moonlighting. He also made the rare successful transition from small to big screen thanks to 1988's Die Hard.
To begin the '90s, Willis put his reputation on the line with the wacky action-comedy Hudson Hawk. Willis came up with the idea for the satire with his old pal Robert Kraft years before he became famous.
Willis took on the title role of the world-famous cat burglar who is released after an extended stint in prison. The high-budget affair went into production and word got around that there was trouble on the set. Some of the rumors centered on Willis trying to take over the reins from director Michael Lehman.
The film was released in 1991 and immediately panned by critics. Turns out it's very difficult to blend slapstick comedy with action. Hudson Hawk tried to be funny - the problem was that audiences weren't laughing. The flat humor missed the mark and the dialogue often hedged on embarrassingly cringey. American audiences stayed away in droves despite Willis's star power.
Peter Travers from Rolling Stone wrote, "This unspeakably awful can make an audience a little crazy. You want to throw things, yell at the actors, beg them to stop."
The failed satire didn't ruin Willis's career. He still had the Die Hard franchise in his pocket, and the rest of the '90s were very good to him. In fact, his best cinematic work was yet to come in Pulp Fiction and 12 Monkeys. However, Hudson Hawk was his last writing credit and probably the last time he got to make a "vanity project."
Time has actually been good to Hudson Hawk. Sometimes zany, over-the-top comedies need a few years to age to when the audience's expectations have changed.
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