History is littered with blockbusters designed with the intention of launching a franchise that end up imploding at the very first hurdle, but few suffered quite as badly as Sahara, which tanked at the box office and then ended up being drawn into a string of legal battles that would rage on for years.
There were plans for Matthew McConaughey’s Dirk Pitt to lead an entire string of stories based on the Clive Cussler novels, but when the $160 million adventure couldn’t even reach $120 million in ticket sales, a bucket of the iciest water imaginable was tossed all over those plans.
After losing en estimated $70 million by the time it left theaters, Sahara‘s troubles went from bad to worse when Cussler ended up filing legal action by alleging he wasn’t consulted on the screenplay as had been promised. The author was then countersued with strong verbiage like “blackmail” and “sabotage” being bandied around, before production company Crusader Entertainment secured $19 million in damages in a result.
Thing were far from done, though, with the decision ultimately being overturned, and we haven’t even mentioned the 10 screenwriters who cycled through the project at various points, accusations of Moroccan officials being bribed, and a multi-million dollar action sequence being shot and then left on the cutting room floor.
Sahara is etched in cinematic infamy for all the wrong reasons, then, but streaming subscribers are willing to give anything a shot. Underlining that sentiment once again, the widely-panned and catastrophically cursed desert-set romp has conspired to snag itself a position as one of the most-watched films on Paramount Plus this week, per FlixPatrol.
