Movies That Tanked At The Box Office, Ruined Careers, And Drove Studios To Bankruptcy

Heaven’s Gate (1980)

This is a Western film that chronicles the Johnson County War. Heaven’s Gate changed the movie industry by ruining the career of director Michael Cimino. It lost approximately $123 million after his “vision” for the movie quadrupled the budget of the production. United Artists, the studio, ended up going into bankruptcy. As if that was not enough, the movie was alleged to have animal abuse on the set. Critics went as far as to call it “one of the greatest injustices of cinematic history.”

Heaven’s Gate (1980)