(Lopez’s character, when she decides she wants toget busywith Affleck: ‘‘It’s turkey time.
She has, until this point, described herself as a lesbian.)
Gobble gobble, indeed.
Phillip Caruso
Cost: $12 million.
But Federline’s 2006 debut wasn’t just vanity-project lameit was truly, transcendently terrible.
After a strong string of comedy successes in the late ’90s with 1996’sThe Nutty Professorand 1998’sDr.
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That logline, however, is only a sliver of the flop pie that isPluto Nash.
Even then, the filmsat on the shelf for two yearsbefore hitting theaters.
Terra Nova (2011)
Want to watch a weeklyJurassic Park-like drama on TV?
Of course you do!
So Fox madeTerra Nova?but forgot to actually make the show interesting.
Shortly before the book came out, Trump’s romance with Marla Maples went public in a big way.
Bruce McBroom
Then Trump ran into major cash-flow problems, and his golden image began to tarnish badly.
But The Donald has never been one to let a little failure ding his self-estimation.
Many were curious to see whether the chemistry between Beatty and Hoffman would work.
FOX
When audiences and critics finally saw the results, they could not help marvelingat the magnitude of its banality.
‘‘A truly dreadful film,’’ shuddered Roger Ebert of theChicago Sun-Times.
By year’s end,Ishtarhad grossed only about $15 million.
Ron Galella/WireImage
Though Hoffman and Beatty bounced back, May has never directed another movie.
Utopia (2014)
Fox spent $50 million on a reality concept imported from the Netherlands.
It was a bold gamble sinceUtopiadidn’t have any of the usual reality-genre competition elements.
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Intended to last an entire year,Utopiawas yanked after two labored months.
Perhaps they should have taken a cue from YA megahits and called itDystopia?
Cleopatra (1963)
Elizabeth Taylor’s $44 million 1963 extravaganza had unprecedented advance publicity.
Adam Rose/FOX
Twentieth Century Fox made Taylor the first star ever to be paid a million bucks for a movie.
Dick and Liz quickly began a tempestuous relationship for the ages.
Writer-director Joseph Mankiewicz lost his battle with the studio to release the movie in two 2.5-hour parts.
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AndCleopatraopened as a four-hour-and-three-minute feature (the longest ever) on June 12, 1963.
Most critics gave the epic mixed-to-negative reviews.
Taylor’s star was hardly dimmed, but she was clearly glad her Queen-of-the-Nile days were over.
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Enough people thought it was a good idea to put it on TV.
), andwhy not?Little Richard.
Also for lasting an entire season.
It’s probably best that Brooks never got around to making the Gaines movie he had pitched.
The intention was to take the titular Marvel hero and imbue his story with Greek mythology and wild stunts.
The show was finally'‘frozen'‘after 177 previews and opened after 182.
Jacob Cohl
But the drama didn’t end there: Taymorsued.
Sahara (2005)
Take a seat, kids.
This one’s is truly epic.
Keith Hamshere
It should have been the first film of many for the Dirk Pitt action-adventure character.
That lawsuit was also dismissed.
Did you catch all that?
ABC
The web link sank $44 million into the production, partly to build a rustic living-room set.
ABC execs boasted that the show would single-handedly revive the musical variety genre.
Part of theDollybuildup was Dolly’s slim-down.
She took off so much weight that the Parton waist contracted to an itty-bitty 17 inches.
ABC promised it would stay with the show for two years.
But after one season of cellar ratings,Dollywas put out to pasture.
Frank Connor
It’s not that the countrycuriosodidn’t try.
John Romero hasn’t had a hit game since.
Who was supposed to be the bitch?
ROBERT VOETS/CBS
John Carter (2012)
The director ofWall-E. Tim Riggins.
What could go wrong withJohn Carter?
Hmm, sounds intriguing.
Paul Natkin/WireImage
Wait, it’s also a musical?
The Jacksons hadn’t performed together in concert since 1981, so fans were eager.
In fact, the summer 1984 Victory tour may have been the ultimate collision of over-expectations and backlash.
Problems began as soon as tickets went on sale.
Concertgoers had to pay $30 apiecea new high for stadium rock shows.
Michael donated his take to charity, but his benign public image had been sullied.
He eventually had to sell his team.
TheVictoryalbum sold two million copies (as compared toThriller’s 40 million) and had no hit tunes.
As such, there was good reason to believe the franchise would be handled well.
Tim Clary/AP
Viewers were turned off by what they thought was bad taste and the show’s sexual double entendres.
A blue-chip roster of American and Japanese companiesHoliday Inn, American Airlines, Hitachipromised (threatened?)
The extravaganza featured a five-story Sphinx, a 15-foot python and a cast including 1,200 extras.
Some things just don’t translate to America.
Poor ticket sales forced producers to cancel the tour before it ever made it stateside.
Two shows planned for 92,516-seat L.A. Memorial Coliseum sold a total of only 2,000 tickets in advance.
NBC
By their own reckoning,Aidaproducers lost $2.5 million.
The record sold nearly three million copies, buteightmillion were shipped to stores.
With whom, he thought, and where, and God help me not to be bad.
‘‘Across the River and into the Treesbecame the modern benchmark for critically despised works by famous writers.
E.B.White parodied the novel inThe New Yorkeras ‘‘Across the Street and into the Grill.’’
But Hemingway demonstrated the grace under pressure he had so often saluted.
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to its derivative plot, from its schlocky production values to John Travolta’s jaw-droppingly ridiculous performance.
(Former EW film critic Owen Gleibermanwrotethat Travolta ‘‘sounds like a fifth grader impersonating Dr. Not only were the singers virtually unknown to Americans, they didn’t speak much English.
To solve the language-barrier problem, comedian Jeff Altman was called in to play their tuxedo-clad interpreter.
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Trouble was, only the laugh-track operator could understand it.
They chose this musical biography of the acerbic English-born stage star Gertrude Lawrence.
The love affair of the centurybetween a woman and the world!’’
Still,Star!lost an estimated $10 million.
A dumbfounded Andrews suggested that ‘‘the public wasn’t very happy with seeing me in drunken scenes.’’
Those numbers are not typos.
It looked like a matchup made in heaven.Heaven’s Gateproved to be more like a movie made in hell.
Few films actually bring down a studio.
An unsupervised Cimino had obsessively filmed away, burstingHeaven’s Gate’s original $7.8 million budget.
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Yet he somehow forgot to lavish similar attention on character and plot.
Cimino never fully recovered from the fiasco and rarely discussed the movie publicly.
That’s even more frustrating than dealing with azombie attack.
Electronic Arts
The movie had a rocky ride to the screen, with Disney stepping on the brakes due to budgetconcerns.
The Chevy Chase Show (1993)
It was September 1993.
David Letterman started theLate Show.
Peter Mountain
Conan O’Brien took up residence onLate Night.
Until that time, Jagger had never recorded a full album alone.
He finally went into a Bahamian studio in 1985 and came out withShe’s the Boss.
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Two years later, Jagger released his second solo effort:Primitive Cool.
Carrie (1988)
Broadway’sCarriehad the proverbial pig’s blood dumped on it quickly.
The musical adaptation of Stephen King by way of Brian De Palma ran for just five performances.
So just how bad was this production (which originated in the Royal Shakespeare Company)?
It provided that title for Ken Mandelbaum’sbook,Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops.
Still,Carriedid have asecond shotin 2012, when MCC Theater gave it an Off Broadway revival.
Frank Connor
Upon occasion of the revival theNew Yorkeraskedwhether it was the “the worst of the worst.”
Cavemen (2007)
Everyone loved the Cavemen in the GEICO commercials.
Hey, it gave Nick Kroll a paycheck for awhile!
Joan Marcus
Howard the Duck (1986)
The concept for this 1986 movie sounded like a can’t-miss proposition.
Universal’sHoward the Duckwas sure to be an odd bird, butSupermanhad already shown that comic-book movies could fly.
TV shows starting with the words The New?
GALE ADLER/ABC
Examples:The New Dick Van Dyke ShoworThe New Andy Griffith Show.
It lasted less than three months.
Mariah Carey, Me.
The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure (2012)
Maybe it was the writing.
Maybe it was the directing.
Maybe it was the acting.
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Maybe it was the weirdly proportioned, kind-of-terrifying, dead-eyed, felt-covered, toddler-shaped costumes the characters wore.
Even by the extremely weird standards we have for preschool-appropriate entertainment,Oogieloveswas a bridge too far.
The borscht-belt comic had just come off a long-running one-man-show on Broadway that drew critical raves.
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This would be his first TV series.
Cast as his foil and love interest: Lynn Redgrave.
Each week,Chicken Soupfloundered in the ratings, losing millions of viewers from its top-rated lead-in,Roseanne.
Maybe Mason should have kept quiet off the set, too.
Norman Mailer, Ancient Evenings (1983)
Mailer did few things in small ways.
Said Mailer, ‘‘If it’s no good, I’m no good.’’
He went on to call the book his ‘‘most audacious’’ and ‘‘most ambitious’’ work.
In size, the 709-pageAncient Eveningswas colossal.
Even Mailer’s most ardent fans gave the heavyweight champion of American letters mixed reviews.
George Rose/Getty Images
The book spent 15 weeks on the best-seller listMailer’s name meant salesbut it was a financial fiasco.
Little, Brown declined to publish Mailer’s next novel,Tough Guys Don’t Dance.
(As we’ve seen, that title change didn’t help.)
Actually, this show wasn’t much different from its late-night descendant, except that nobody watched.
There were even crowd-pleasing Stupid Pet Tricks.
The critics loved Dave, but the show proved to be one big stupid programming trick.
Disney
About a year and a half laterLate Nightpremiered, and the turkey host became golden.
Boy George even took on a supporting role as real-life artist/club impresario Leigh Bowery.
In the end,Tabooplayed 100 performances before throwing in the makeup-stained towel.
Well, apparently NBC did.
No wonder NBC pulled the plug after three episodes had aired, making it the first cancelation of 2011.
Poor Laura Benanti deserved better.
Joan Marcus
But the movie has earned its place in the history books nonetheless.
Gannett Co., the publisher ofUSA Today, cheerfully bankrolled this syndicated venture.
The loud, frenetic, superglitzyUSA Today on TVquickly repulsed many viewers and potential advertisersthose who could find it.
OUYA
In New York City, it originally aired at 2 a.m.
The show lived through three overhauls and the departure of three of its four original anchors.
‘‘People sayUSA Today on TVwas one of the biggest failures in syndication history,’’ Friedman told EW.
Matt Dinerstein/NBC
‘‘But it lasted 15 months.
You know what big failures are?
Shows that don’t get on the airthoseare failures.
John Penny
We just didn’t succeed.’’
