The Most Difficult Movies Ever To Get Made

The Most Difficult Movies Ever to Get Made

It is no secret, especially to those within the confines of Hollywood, that getting a film made can be an arduous task. It all starts with the script and no matter how brilliant it could read, there are always those “in charge” who are looking to make tweaks to satisfy their own sensibilities. Sometimes that’s a good thing, but many times it’s not, making a difficult movie even more so.

Topping things off is the post-production of a film. More decisions need to be made to complete the film, bringing those who have the “final say” into the mix. We have found seven films that were extremely difficult movies to get made.

This could include fired actors (or notoriously difficult actors), weather issues, and/or massively overrun budgets. What they all have in common is that they finally did get made.

7. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018)

The first thing you should know about this Terry Gilliam film is that he had been trying to get it made for 29 years. A string of bad luck would follow early attempts at production that initially included Johnny Depp in the film. After the first production began, it was hit with F-16 fighter jets that ruined the sound, a flash flood that ruined and lost equipment, and a lead actor in Jean Rochefort who was beset with numerous physical ailments that eventually took him out of the film.

Over the next two decades, Gilliam continued to get the film refinanced, fought legal battles, and numerous casting changes. All the production troubles were seen in the documentary Lost in La Mancha.

6. The Lord Of The Rings trilogy (2001-2003)

What made this task of bringing J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth to life was the enormous undertaking Peter Jackson had on his hands filming all three movies back-to-back-to-back. It was on a scale not seen before that included complex special effects and challenges to schedules and locations. It was obviously worth the massive effort as The Lord of the Rings trilogy turned a nifty profit.

5. Cleopatra (1963)

The 1963 production of Cleopatra was one of the most difficult movies to get made. The film starred screen legends Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and that is where the trouble began. Both stars were married when they began their torrid affair and were not shy about flaunting it either.

Then there were all the delays in filming which caused half the main cast to move on to other projects, forcing those parts to be recast. Then there was the production budget, which was slated at $2 million. Before even one frame was shot, the production had already wracked up a $4 million price tag. When all was said and done, the production cost hit $44 million.

4. The Revenant (2015)

Sometimes a director is the cause of his own troubles. This was the fact with Alejandro González Iñárritu and what he attempted to pull off with the production of The Revenant, which starred Leonardo Di Caprio and Tom Hardy. With a budget that started at $65 million and saw balloon to $135 million, this difficult movie production faced issues with harsh weather conditions, poor use of natural lighting, and remote shooting locations. Because the shoot was so difficult, Iñárritu constantly had to deal with crew members who’d up and quit on him.

3. Titanic (1997)

Just by saying the name James Cameron and you knew it was going to be a rough production. Like the many directors whose ideas can only be seen on a grand scale, Cameron’s Titanic suffered this same fate. His ideas brought on an astronomical budget (for the time), that included in the price the construction of a life-sized replica of the actual Titanic.

Cameron also had to go to the ocean depths to get film of the sunken liner and to make the film as realistic as possible, he needed to employ groundbreaking visual effects. Thankfully the end result more than made up for the inflated budget.

2. Fitzcarraldo (1982)

This was one wild-ass production and for the most part, not a good one. Werner Herzog wrote and directed this 1982 film which he based on the true story of Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fermín Fitzcarrald. As the story goes, in the 1890s Fitzcarrald had a steamship transported across an isthmus from one river to another. Herzog’s goal was to attempt the same thing, the major difference being that Fitzcarrald’s ship weighed 30 tons while the tug that Herzog was attempting to move weighed over 300 tons.

This most difficult movie production was derailed by hostile indigenous people, death, and injuries. One indigenous man on the production crew was bitten by a deadly snake and to stop the venom from spreading he actually took a chainsaw to his foot and lopped it off.

1. Apocalypse Now (1979)

Today, we can call Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epic, Apocalypse Now, one of the greatest films to be made, but in the time leading up to its release, it was being called the biggest movie disaster in Hollywood history.

The film was scheduled for a six-week shoot in the jungles of the Philippines, but because of all of the setbacks, it dragged on for 238 grueling days. Whatever could go wrong did, from extreme weather (Typhoon Olga destroyed sets) to lead actor Martin Sheen suffering a heart attack while filming.

Not to mention many of the actors were dropping acid and smoking pot, which led to a whole other set of issues. You can see it all unfold in the documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse.