By Arifa Akbar
April 12, 2010 independent.co.uk
When Overboard – a dubious 1987 comedy about the antics of a rich woman who suffers from amnesia after falling from her yacht – was released, not even a stellar cast featuring Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn could stop it from sinking at the box office. Then there was Dune, the lavish 1984 science fiction odyssey directed by the ultra-hip David Lynch, starring the acclaimed Francesca Annis and Sting, which cost $40m to make. It pulled in a grand total of $29.7m at the box office.
Then there was The Shadow, 1994's offering about a masked vigilante, with Alec Baldwin in the title role. The film was meant to be a summer blockbuster and the starting point for a new franchise with toys and clothing lines to boot. Critics and fans did not agree, and it flopped.
These films not only have failure in common. With a rafter of other screen turkeys, they are all to be remade as part of a growing trend in Hollywood to look to the past for big budget failures in the hope of transforming them into success stories.
Revenge of the epic movie flops
