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How ‘Cutthroat Island’ Cost — Then Lost — a Fortune, Sank Carolco Pictures and Sent Renny Harlin and Geena Davis Into Perilous Straits (EXCLUSIVE)
Read an exclusive excerpt from Tim Robey's new book 'Box Office Poison,' exploring a century of Hollywood flops.
Davis was content to play Morgan Adams, a swashbuckling pirate’s daughter hunting for part of a treasure map in 1668 Jamaica, so long as Michael Douglas, angling for a lighter romp after his post-“Basic Instinct” hot streak, would be William Shaw, a roguish, Errol-Flynn-alike con artist who steals her heart. Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, Keanu Reeves, Liam Neeson, Jeff Bridges, Ralph Fiennes, Charlie Sheen, Michael Keaton, Tim Robbins, Daniel Day-Lewis, Kurt Russell and Gabriel Byrne were all offered it. After getting back to business by giving sharks bigger brains in the gleefully idiotic “Deep Blue Sea” (1999), Harlin’s only had one palpable hit since, a Jackie Chan/Johnny Knoxville buddy-cop comedy called “Skiptrace” (2016), which was huge in China and nowhere else.
Or read this on Variety
