10 Chaotic Productions That Somehow Resulted In Great Films

2) Heaven’s Gate

The Production:

Heaven’s Gate is the film that bankrupted a studio. Literally. United Artists forked out a then-unprecedented $44 million (up from an original budget of $11 million) for Heaven’s Gate, just to see it tank at the box office and sink the studio for good.

Over-running by months to take the total shooting time to almost a year, Heaven’s Gate was plagued by rumors regarding animal cruelty and cocaine being factored into the budget, while director Michael Cimino took precise megalomania to new levels, spending whole days on single shots and endeavoring to shoot one million feet of film in order to ‘beat’ Apocalypse Now‘s Francis Ford Coppola.

The Film:

Critics at the time were unkind to Heaven’s Gate, and audiences mostly steered clear, but the film has since come in for a significant critical re-evaluation. Now, it’s generally accepted that Heaven’s Gate is a sumptuous (if flawed) epic, with every frame a picture thanks to Vilmos Zsigmond’s wondrous cinematography. It’s the western as imagined by David Lean, complete with eye-popping imagery and melancholy tone.