50 Riskiest Movie Projects

Pacific Rim (2013)

The Movie: Guillermo Del Toro unleashes the pitch of the year - giant robots vs giant monsters.

Did It Pay Off?: A recent test screening reported off the scale, with Looper director Rian Johnson amongst those declaring it to be a hit. "Go into Pacific Rim prepared to be transmogrified into a 12 year old. And then to pee your pants with joy. I love it so much," Johnson tweeted.

Grindhouse (2007)

The Movie: Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino resurrect the inglourious days of fleapit drive-in cinema with a double bill of horror ( Planet Terror ) and action ( Death Proof ).

A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

The Movie: Robert Altman's last film adapted Garrison Keillor's famous radio show with a typically Altmanesque, all-star cast including Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

The Movie: The fourth in Tom Cruise's spy franchise sees the star getting a little too cocky about performing his own stunts.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

The Movie: David Fincher's adaptation of Stieg Larsson's Swedish crime smash, already filmed to great acclaim in its home country by Niels Arden Oplev.

Doctor Doolittle (1967)

The Movie: Hollywood's big hope for 1967- a musical epic starring Rex Harrison as the eponymous physician, who talks to the animals.

American Psycho (2000)

The Movie: Mary Harron's icy adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' shocker, starring Christian Bale as yuppie slasher Patrick Bateman.

The African Queen (1951)

The Movie: John Huston took Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart to Africa to film the romantic adventure about a missionary and a cantankerous boat captain.

Trust (2010)

The Movie: David Schwimmer directs Clive Owen and Catherine Keener as parents of a 14-year old daughter who, unknown to them, is being groomed by an Internet paedophile.

World War Z (2013)

The Movie: Based on Max Brooks' ambitious, experimental novel about a zombie apocalypse, Brad Pitt plays a U.N. official traversing the globe to find a solution.

The Adventures Of Baron Munchhausen (1988)

The Movie: Terry Gilliam, a visionary filmmaker with no truck for screen realism, finds possibly his perfect material in notorious fantasist Munchhausen. Cue tall tales about trips to the moon and under the sea.

The Fountain (2006)

The Movie: Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz x 3, as Darren Aronofsky tells a tale of parallel lives in the past, present and future.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

The Movie: Quentin Tarantino tackles WWII and decides that - history books be damned - Adolf Hitler was murdered by a crack squad of Nazi hunters.

Crash (1996)

The Movie: J.G. Ballard's novel about the sex appeal of car crashes found a sympathetic director in David Cronenberg, but an entirely unsympathetic audience in Britain.

Do The Right Thing (1989)

The Movie: Spike Lee's daring portrayal of modern racism saw a New York's ethnic melting pot boil over on a riotous summer's day.

The Conqueror (1956)

The Movie: The 1950s Cinemascope overreaches itself by casting John Wayne as Genghis Khan.

Casino Royale (2006)

The Movie: James Bond is rebooted. This time, 007 is the blond.

Freaks (1932)

The Movie: Tod Browning's mix of documentary and horror about a group of circus freaks (all played by real-life disabled performers) who are betrayed by a gold-digger.

Steamboat Bill, Jr (1928)

The Movie: Buster Keaton's comedy about the son of a paddle steamer captain who has to save the day when his town is ravaged by a storm.

Cleopatra (1963)

The Movie: The Queen of Egypt, coming at'cha in the form of Elizabeth Taylor and as much bling as Hollywood could throw at it.

Life Of Pi (2012)

The Movie: Yann Martel's Booker-winning novel about a boy adrift at sea with a tiger for company has been brought to the screen by Ang Lee.

Citizen Kane (1941)

The Movie: Radio wunderkind Orson Welles arrived in Hollywood to tell the rise and fall of a newspaper mogul and his sled.

Lolita (1962)

The Movie: Vladimir Nabokov's novel about a paedophile's lust for his step-daughter scandalised America... and then Stanley Kubrick announced he was filming it.

Django Unchained (2012)

The Movie: Quentin Tarantino continues his mission to tackle history's most controversial, hot-button topics. This time: slavery.

The Passion Of The Christ (2004)

The Movie: Mel Gibson tells the story of Jesus' final days... in Aramaic.

Police Story (1985)

The Movie: Jackie Chan plays Inspector Chan, whose dogged pursuit of a drug lord sees him hanging from a bus by an umbrella and sliding down a lightbulb-festooned pole.

Schindler's List (1993)

The Movie: Steven Spielberg drops the blockbuster posturing to make a sober, monochrome biopic about the reluctant Nazi who decided to save 1,000 Jews from the Holocaust.

Cloud Atlas (20112)

The Movie: Adaptation of David Mitchell's time-straddling colossus of a novel, which stacks six stories (from 19th century seafaring adventure to post-apocalyptic sci-fi) like Russian dolls.

Watchmen (2009)

The Movie: The Hamlet of graphic novels added socio-political subtexts and headscratching meta-narrative to the superhero genre. Studios circled Alan Moore's classic for years before finally bringing it to the screen.

Irreversible (2002)

The Movie: Gaspar Noe's revenge-rape film explores the futility of existence by showing its graphic, horrific chain of events in reverse.

Life Of Brian (1979)

The Movie: The Monty Python team takes on organised religion, from the Judean People's Front to the People's Front of Judea.

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

The Movie: David Lean's WWI epic sees Peter O'Toole's T.E. Lawrence unite the Arab tribes against the Turks, over four hours of retina-scorching desert spectacle.

Ben Hur (1925)

The Movie: The second screen version of Lew Wallace's Biblical epic raised the bar for silent era extravagance.

The Great Dictator (1940)

The Movie: Charlie Chaplin writes, directs and stars as both fascist dictator Adenoid Hynkel and his lookalike, a Jewish barber.

Super Size Me (2004)

The Movie: Morgan Spurlock makes a documentary about a crazy guy who decides to eat only McDonald's for a month. In the lead role: Morgan Spurlock.

Fitzcarraldo (1982)

The Movie: Klaus Kinski dreams of building an opera house in the Amazon. That's nothing compared to what Werner Herzog dreams.

John Carter (2012)

The Movie: Pixar genius Andrew Stanton switched to live action with a sci-fi epic based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' 100-year-old genre classic.

The Machinist (2004)

The Movie: Brad Anderson's psychological thriller is notable for Christian Bale's immersive, beyond-the-call-of-duty performance as emaciated insomniac Trevor Reznik.

Jaws (1975)

The Movie: Three men on a boat. Shark wants in.

The Last Temptation Of Christ (1988)

The Movie: Nikos Kazantzakis' novel about a very human Jesus was a favourite of devout Catholic Martin Scorsese, who spent much of the 1980s attempting to get his dream project off the ground.

The Lord Of The Rings (2001-3)

The Movie: Peter Jackson tackled all three volumes of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy epic in a major project that gambled on shooting the entire trilogy back-to-back before the first film was released.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

The Movie: Not content with having brought Middle Earth to life, Peter Jackson has returned to film a 'prequel' trilogy based on Tolkien's original children's story.

Heaven's Gate (1980)

The Movie: Michael Cimino, fresh off his Oscar success for The Deer Hunter , persuades United Artists to bankroll his Western epic about a land dispute.

The Godfather (1972)

The Movie: Mario Puzo's Mafia potboiler was Paramount's big hope for a hit, if only they could find the right stars and director.

Titanic (1997)

The Movie: A labour of love for James Cameron, whose desire to bring the tragedy of the doomed liner to life became the 1990s' ultimate epic.

Avatar (2009)

The Movie: James Cameron spent most of the Noughties immersed in building a new world for cinema, in which motion-capture, 3D and giant Smurfs would change everything.

Star Wars (1977)

The Movie: A long time ago - the 1970s - in a galaxy far, far away - Hollywood - a kid called George decided to change movies forever.

Psycho (1960)

The Movie: Alfred Hitchcock's dark adaptation of Robert Bloch's murder story was a no-go for Paramount, causing the director to shoot (for Universal) on a tight budget with a TV crew, and deferred payment in exchange for 60% ownership of the negative.

Gone With The Wind (1939)

The Movie: David O. Selznick dreamed of adapting Margaret Mitchel's novel of Civil War romance for the big screen. So he did.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

The Movie: Francis Coppola's war epic transposed Conrad's Heart Of Darkness to Vietnam, where the tale of a madman loose in the jungle was reflected with Wagner-soundtracked helicopter assaults and Playboy bunny stage shows.