Arnold was paid $25 million & Clooney $10 million.
Thats a lot of clams for 1997.

No one sets out to make a flop. The colossal money, people, effort, studio wrangling and logistical juggling that a major movie requires inevitably develops such immense momentum that it's sometimes impossible to pull the plug. This is how you wind up with unbelievably expensive messes like "Cutthoat Island", "The Adventures of Pluto Nash", "John Carter" or "The Postman". Studios may realize they have a piece of shit on their hands, but still try to salvage something in release rather than taking the entire loss. It's got to be a tough decision: releasing what you may suspect to be a bomb can destroy careers and company brands. However, it may not be a bomb, and some revenue is probably better than none.

The other thing you have to remember that many of the most successful films of all time looked like complete disasters while they were being made. "Apocalypse Now" was a drug-hazed quagmire of suicidal actors, people not knowing their lines, huge logistical problems, heart attacks etc. And yet it was great. Every single executive who saw it wanted to shitcan "The Deer Hunter" prior to its release, it was considered a travesty and offensive. During the production of "Star Wars", the majority of the actors and crew thought it was a laughably awful B-movie. John Cameron is the king of this: both "Titanic" and "Avatar" had hugely negative press prior to release and yet they are the two of the most financially successful films of all time.

^I remember like 2 or 3 months before Avatar came out, Cameron made essentially a 20 minute imax/3D "highlight reel" to send to select theaters & almost a majority of the response was "wait, thats it? why is this the most expensive movie ever made?"

I've wondered if sometimes stars do movies as favors. If the son of a dear friend got his first directing job, a low budget crapper, would "Uncle Moviestar" help in out by appearing in it.

The Man Who Would Be King is indeed phenomenal and incredibly underrated IMHO. Just a great, great movie and one of John Huston's best films.

You bring up a good question in your first paragraph: What films deemed certain flops turned out successful? Which you then answered in your second paragraph.

Let's take that a step further, though. The films you cite were definitely crowd-pleasers and critically acclaimed. So the next question is: what certain flop, that really was a bad movie, turned out to be a hit anyway against all odds?

I always find it funny when people like us always say a film does badly because the company didn't sell it better (or corerectly).
In regards to Pacific Rim I've heard people say:
1) Is it a Transformers film (in the positive)? Well if it was, wouldn't have done more money if people couldn't tell the difference and went to see it?
2) Is it a Transformers film (in the negative)? Did you pay attention to the tv and print ads? The film isn't called "Transformers" so no. Also if you think every film with a robot in it is a Transformers film you should start giving up on movies. No TF has 2 people in it controlling it.
The only way they could have sorted out this problem was to have large on the screen "THIS IS NOT A TRANSFORMERS MOVIE".

I think it depends on what you consider a certain flop. There are movies like Spider-man 3 and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that few remember fondly, but they did big money because of the franchises. There are movies like Grown Ups that certain posters here will defend to their last day, and you can certainly look at the cast and see some of the appeal to mass audiences. Are you talking about movies that aren't well regarded and have absolutely no reason, not franchise or cast or director or whatever, to have made it, but did? Like maybe Blair Witch Project?

Ha. I always thought your avatar was 70s-era Burt Reynolds in a Canadian Mountie uniform.

Avatar is interesting because it did usher in the era of 3D, and it was the bigger box office earner of all time, but I'm yet to meet anybody who LOVED the movie. Indeed, it's practically forgotten now.

Oh, I know people who love it. Same with Titanic.

It is actually Sean Connery, who played along with Michael Caine in The Man Who Would Be King. Now Connery has been in some stinkers but I think I can honestly say I've loved Caine in everything. Even the bad ones. I could watch the man read the phone book.

Will these people actually sit through it again? I didn't hate Titanic, but I don't think I'd ever watch it again.

I was surprised that Waterworld did as well as it did, given its troubled production. I expected it to be the next Heaven's Gate. I worked at a theater its opening day, its first show didn't start til about an hour after most of the other movies had started so I joked to the ticket sellers "Did anyone actually buy a ticket for Waterworld?" It ended up almost selling out. (And it really IS a bad movie- I cracked up at the beginning when Kevin Costner drank his own piss.)

It was probably doomed either way. But Pete Travis was kicked out of editing Dredd. I wonder what his vision was? Dredd is his best movie. He's the one who shot all of the pretty stuff. I wonder if he was going for something more exaggerated than that we got.

The story goes that when filming Operation Dumbo Drop, the stars Ray Liotta, Denis Leary, Danny Glover, etc knew it was crap. They would motivate themselves and each other between takes by carrying pictures of the land or house they were going to buy with the money they made from the movie.

As someone who was at that highlight reel (it was in August '09), the response was the 3D was great, but none of us had a solid grasp on the concept.

Then we all theater hopped into the screening of Inglorious Basterds that was across the hall.

Hey now! I'm a big fan of Oscar; it's really funny!

This discussion made me think of an article from the AV Club about actors refusing to refusing to promote their films. It's an interesting list.

From what I've seen. There are 2 actors who can still manage to entertain me even in a bad movie. Those two being Robert Duvall and Michael Caine. Thankfully I've only seen few bad films that they've been in.

To note, the big issue with Avatar was nobody thought there was any way it would make back its ridiculous budget. Actually I think that was the same issue with Titanic ($200m in 1997 = $272m today)

Also, World War Z had all the makings of a flop. On set tension between the director and star/producer, re-writing the movie as it was nearing completion, re-shooting 40 minutes of footage, $190m budget. And yet here we are 2 months later and it has $526m worldwide and only $1.1m shy of $200m in the US (which it will likely break when it is paired up with Star Trek Into Darkness double feature.)

If you like these two then I cannot give a higher recommendation than the movie "Secondhand Lions". If you haven't seen it you really should. I thought it was really good.

I wish I could think of an example of what I'm thinking of (what a paradox). The closest I can come is something like SHOWGIRLS, which was universally reviled but became something of a cult hit. But it's not quite what I meant.

Which is why a star like Brad Pitt gets paid so much per film. A bankable star can overcome a weak script or poor movie to still make money.

Barry Pepper has never really been a "star." To be in a big-budget movie with John Travolta must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

It's actually a mix of bankable star and appealing subject matter. Otherwise you end up with Killing Me Softly.