From Gladiator 2 to Jaws, the most difficult productions in Hollywood history

It takes a lot of effort to make a film like Gladiator 2. The gargantuan new historical epic has to match up to its predecessor, which was a box office hit and a Best Picture winner at the Oscars. That means director Ridley Scott needed to go all-out on spectacle, which is why Gladiator 2 has taken so long to reach our screens.

He certainly did that, mounting an ambitious production that, according to The Hollywood Reporter, ballooned in cost from a budget of $165m (£128m) to $310m (£240m). In June 2023, six crew members were injured in a fireball on the set in Morocco and the entire production had to shut down in July of that year due to the Hollywood strikes. Leading man Paul Mescal also had a tough time, admitting to EW that he was "borderline throwing up" due to the heat of the Colosseum on some days.

But Gladiator 2 is far from the first Hollywood production to struggle with chaos on the set. Some of them have emerged as masterpieces, while others have become notorious as Hollywood flops. Let's have a look at some of these stories...

Cleopatra (1963)

In September 1960, director Rouben Mamoulian began shooting his epic take on the story of Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor in the lead role — on a massive salary for the time. Production shut down two months later with only 10 minutes of usable footage and the budget skyrocketing. The pause was due to Taylor being diagnosed with meningitis, but there was also a new script in the pipeline and Mamoulian soon exited as well.

Read more: Gal Gadot: My Cleopatra will be sexy and smart (BANG Showbiz, 2 min read)

Joseph L. Mankiewicz replaced him and production was due to begin again in early 1961, only for Taylor to be hospitalised again — this time with pneumonia. Expensive sets were torn down and dismantled, costing 20th Century Fox even more cash. By the time shooting did begin again in September 1961, the new script wasn't even finished.

Cleopatra eventually hit screens in 1963 and, despite being the highest-grossing movie of the year, it still lost money. Yikes.

Jaws (1975)

In the humble opinion of this writer, Jaws is the greatest movie of all time. But back in the early 1970s, handing such an ambitious and costly production to the relatively unproven Steven Spielberg was an enormous risk. Initially budgeted at $3.5m (£2.7m) for a 55-day shoot, Jaws ultimately cost $9m (£7m) and filmed for 159 days. The heat was on.

Read more: Jaws boat the Orca will sail again to help save sharks (Yahoo Entertainment, 3 min read)

The behind-the-scenes carnage on Jaws is well-documented. The animatronic shark was a disaster that seldom worked, while Spielberg's determination to shoot the film out on the ocean caused continuous problems. It's not for nothing that there's an entire stage play, The Shark Is Broken, based around the production's many mishaps.

Fortunately for all involved, Jaws went on to get the widest cinema release in history at that time, en route to becoming the highest-grossing film of all time until Star Wars turned up a few years later.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

A year after Jaws' record-breaking summer, Francis Ford Coppola headed off to the Philippines for what was supposed to be a five-month shoot. Apocalypse Now was a loose adaptation of the classic novella Heart of Darkness, transplanted into the era of the Vietnam War. Ultimately, Coppola shot for over a year and had more than one million feet of film to edit.

Read more: Francis Ford Coppola's many crazy, troubled movie productions (Yahoo Entertainment, 7 min read)

The film was beset by problems. A typhoon destroyed most of the sets, Marlon Brando turned up completely unprepared for his role as the renegade military man Kurtz, and leading man Martin Sheen had a near-fatal heart attack on the set. One very expensive sequence set on a plantation was eventually cut from the finished movie, though it exists in some of the newer cuts.

Apocalypse Now is considered a masterpiece today and, even in its unfinished form, it won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Its various problems are now a part of its legend.

Heaven's Gate (1980)

Heaven's Gate was a cinematic flop so enormous that it brought an end to United Artists as an independent studio. Michael Cimino was Hollywood's greatest filmmaking star after he won an Oscar for The Deer Hunter, which meant he was given the keys to this enormous Western tale.

Cimino's determination to realise his expansive vision for the film sent it four times over budget and, when it floundered at the box office, the effects were profound. United Artists effectively had to disappear and the freedom afforded to "New Hollywood" directors like Martin Scorsese and William Friedkin essentially came to an end.

The Shining (1980)

Stanley Kubrick is notorious for his exacting and meticulous approach to filmmaking. There is some debate about whether the pressures he placed upon actors could be justified, with much of that discussion crystallised around The Shining. The actors were forced to repeat scenes over and over, with the production stretching out beyond a year.

Shelley Duvall was particularly hit hard by this. Her intense sequences meant she often had to sustain terror and hysteria for days at a time, filming one scene in which she is menaced by Jack Nicholson 127 times over the course of three weeks.

Read more: ‘Shine On — The Forgotten Shining Location’: A Documentary Meditation on Stanley Kubrick’s Rooms of Fear (Variety, 7 min read)

Critical response to The Shining was very mixed — not least from Stephen King, author of the original book — and it even got a handful of nominations at the first Razzie Awards. Years later, The Shining stands as one of the greatest horror movies ever made, but there's no denying that its production was hellish for many of those involved.

Roar (1981)

Roar started off with honourable enough intentions for director Noel Marshall and his actor wife Tippi Hedren. They had seen the plight of lions affected by poaching while filming in Mozambique, so they decided to make a film based around this idea. Unfortunately, Roar went on to become probably the most dangerous movie ever made.

The animals on the set were almost all untrained, leading to dozens of injuries. One estimate suggests that 70 members of the 140-strong crew were injured. One lion, named Cherries, bit Tippi Hedren on the head and scraped its teeth against her skull. The same creature scalped cinematographer Jan de Bont, leaving him in need of 220 stitches. There were dozens more injuries, including some very serious ones.

Roar didn't get a theatrical release in the US due to disagreements between Marshall, Hedren, and distributors about whether profits could go to helping the film's animals. In 2015, it finally hit US cinemas, using its reputation as a cult film with danger surrounding it.

Waterworld (1995)

At the time of its release, Waterworld was the most expensive movie ever made. Kevin Costner, though, was at the height of his fame and a viable leading man for such an enormous film. On the advice of a post-Jaws Spielberg, the crew opted to film in an enormous tank rather than on open water. Despite this good decision, the production overran and overspent consistently.

Read more: 'Waterworld' at 25: How Kevin Costner made one of the most expensive movies ever (Yahoo Entertainment, 12 min read)

Costner worked six days a week throughout much of the shoot and nearly died while tied to the mast of a boat in poor weather. All of this led to a wave — if you'll pardon the pun — of negative publicity that sunk the film when it arrived in cinemas. It earned a respectable $264m (£204m) worldwide, but this was not enough to pay for its absurd production.

Decades later, though, the film is profitable thanks to re-releases, home media sales, and TV broadcast rights. All's well that ends well, right?

The Island of Dr Moreau (1996)

Marlon Brando is back on this list for a second time. When he turned up to the set of The Island of Dr Moreau, playing the title role, he refused to learn his lines and insisted they be fed to him through an earpiece. Then, original director Richard Stanley was dismissed and replaced by veteran John Frankenheimer in an attempt to avert disaster, but nothing worked.

Brando and co-star Val Kilmer feuded throughout the production, while Kilmer and Frankenheimer also never saw eye to eye. The tropical heat caused problems, as did the rapidly changing script, and Brando's increasingly erratic behaviour that frequently delayed production.

The reviews were terrible and the box office was terrible. It's no wonder that all involved see the film as a rather sorry chapter in their careers.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

It's now considered one of the best action movies ever made, but George Miller's fourth Mad Max film very nearly didn't see the light of day at all. The project spent years in development hell before Miller was finally able to get the green light, bringing his cast and crew to Namibia for the ambitious shoot.

Read more: Mad Max: Fury Road tops list of 100 best films of the century (PA Media)

With sweltering heat and a lot of pressure, tensions rose. Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron didn't get on well at all, while Hardy also struggled to grasp Miller's vision — he later apologised when he saw the finished film. This was an example of a mammoth directorial task emerging as something utterly fantastic, with its notorious production actually an asset in its reputation.

The fact it made decent money at the box office — albeit still losing money due to its massive budget — and scored a healthy array of Oscars didn't hurt at all. Ridley Scott will be hoping that he can do the same with Gladiator 2.

Gladiator 2 is in UK cinemas from 15 November.