Cutthroat Island

Cutthroat Island
Theatrical release poster by Drew Struzan
Directed byRenny Harlin
Screenplay by
Story by
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyPeter Levy
Edited by
Music byJohn Debney
Production
companies
Carolco Pictures
Cutthroat Productions[1]
Distributed byMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer[1] (United States)
AMLF (France)
Release dates
  • December 22, 1995 (1995-12-22) (US)
  • February 14, 1996 (1996-02-14) (France)
Running time
124 minutes[2]
Countries
LanguageEnglish
Budget$92-115 million[3][4][5]
Box office$16 million[6]

Cutthroat Island is a 1995 adventure swashbuckler film directed by Renny Harlin and written by Robert King and Marc Norman from a story by Michael Frost Beckner, James Gorman, Bruce A. Evans, and Raynold Gideon. It stars Geena Davis, Matthew Modine, and Frank Langella.[7] It is a co-production among the United States, France, Germany, and Italy.

The film had a notoriously troubled and chaotic production involving multiple rewrites and recasts. Critical reactions were mixed to negative, and the film was one of the biggest box-office bombs in history, with losses of $147 million when adjusted for inflation.[8] It is listed in the Guinness World Records as the biggest box-office bomb of all time,[9] and significantly reduced the bankability and Hollywood production of pirate-themed films until 2003's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Its failure caused the closing of Carolco Pictures.

  1. ^ a b c d "CUTTHROAT ISLAND (1995)". catalog.afi.com. Archived from the original on March 29, 2023. Retrieved February 20, 2022.
  2. ^ "CUTTHROAT ISLAND (PG) (CUT)". British Board of Film Classification. March 13, 1996. Archived from the original on May 30, 2019. Retrieved March 10, 2013.
  3. ^ "Cutthroat Island (1995) - Financial Information". The Numbers. Archived from the original on May 23, 2023. Retrieved March 23, 2022.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference mojo was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ https://variety.com/2024/film/global/cutthroat-island-lost-fortune-renny-harlin-geena-davis-box-office-poison-book-excerpt-1236193554/
  6. ^ Hayes, Dade (March 20, 2000). "Bombs away: Biz disavows duds". Variety. p. 7.
  7. ^ Brennan, Judy (December 21, 2005). "Troubled Route to Pirate Epic 'Cutthroat'; Movies: As the swashbuckling adventure starring Geena Davis, directed by her husband, Renny Harlin, opens this weekend, financial woes surround its release". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on March 23, 2011. Retrieved May 24, 2011.
  8. ^ Gabbi Shaw (February 27, 2017). "The biggest box office flop from the year you were born". Insider. Archived from the original on March 3, 2018. Retrieved June 21, 2018.
  9. ^ "Largest box office loss". Guinness World Records. April 30, 2012. Archived from the original on July 18, 2019. Retrieved July 17, 2019.