Cutthroat Island cost $115M to make, lost $96M total
The film received mixed reviews from critics and was a major box office bomb. It is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest box office flop of all time. It was the last film Carolco Pictures produced before it went bankrupt.
Cutthroat Island had a total cost of $98 million and the total U.S. gross was approximately $10 million. It may have been a contributing factor to the demise of the film's production company, Carolco Pictures, and of Davis as a bankable star. It debuted at No.13 at the US box office.
In a radio interview in 2011, director Renny Harlin discussed the film's box-office failure. He pointed out that Carolco was already in ruin before Cutthroat Island even began shooting, but had to make the film since financing from foreign investors was already in place.
MGM, the film's distributor, was in the process of being sold and thus could not devote itself into financing a marketing campaign for the film. Carolco filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy a month before Cutthroat Island's release.
The abject disaster of Cutthroat Island is also credited with significantly reducing the bankability and Hollywood production of pirate-themed films, which only recovered with the production of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl in 2003.
This film was nominated for one Razzie Award, for Harlin as Worst Director, and has a 44% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 32 reviews.
