Nightmare Film Shoots: The Most Grueling Films Ever Made, from ‘Deliverance’ to ‘Mad Max’ to ‘Avatar 2’

“The African Queen” (1951)

During the Golden Age of Hollywood, 80 percent of films were shot on Hollywood soundstages — and another 15 percent were Westerns shot in the California desert. That made “The African Queen,” John Huston’s adventure romance starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn as two Americans traversing German-controlled Africa during World War II, a rarity of its period, as the majority of it was shot in the Congo and Uganda. The difficulties of mounting the film showed why location shoots were so rare at the time, as the film’s large Technicolor cameras were almost impossible for the crew to move around. But the harsh living conditions proved the most cumbersome element to handle for the crew, as almost everyone but Bogart and Huston got sick with dysentery; Hepburn had to have a bucket off-camera during at least one scene that she could vomit into between takes. In addition, the titular steamboat sank twice during production and was infested with ants, while the ship’s boiler nearly fell on and crushed Hepburn. Although she was ultimately proud of the film, the star had such a miserable experience on the set that she would write a tell-all book about production titled “The Making of The African Queen: Or How I Went to Africa With Bogie, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind.” —WC

“Deliverance” (1972)

The making of John Boorman’s “Deliverance” is full of horrific production stories, one of which includes an alleged fistfight that broke out between the director and screenwriter James Dickey. Even more worrisome was Boorman’s decision to have his leading actors perform all of their own stunts in the movie, which was dangerous since the plot follows the characters as they head out on a perilous canoe trip. Burt Reynolds once said Boorman was adamant about filming the movie in chronological order in case an actor died. In one scene, Reynolds was in a canoe when it went barreling over a waterfall and he cracked his tailbone. Jon Voight, meanwhile, put his life on the line to film a rock climbing sequence without a harness or any wires. Boorman wanted the scene to be shot in a close-up, preventing Voight from using a stunt double. —ZS

“Jaws” (1975)

Steven Spielberg wanted to shoot “Jaws” out on the open ocean, a decision that resulted in a grueling film shoot and a production that went way over budget. Filming at sea forced the crew to deal with the unpredictable, including boats sailing into the frame and ruining takes, water getting on and damaging the equipment, and various actors and crew members getting seasick. The giant mechanical sharks created for the film also malfunctioned several times during production, resulting in numerous reshoots and filming delays.

Spielberg once told Entertainment Weekly about making “Jaws,” “I was naive about the ocean, basically. I was pretty naive about mother nature and the hubris of a filmmaker who thinks he can conquer the elements was foolhardy, but I was too young to know I was being foolhardy when I demanded that we shoot the film in the Atlantic Ocean and not in a North Hollywood tank. But had I to do it all over again I would have gone back to the sea because it was the only way for the audience to feel that these three men were cast adrift with a great white shark hunting them.” —ZS

“Sorcerer” (1977)

William Friedkin’s thriller about four men transporting dynamite through a South American village is today well-regarded as a classic. But “Sorcerer” was negatively received upon its release: a final kick-in-the-pants after Friedkin and his cast and crew went through endless headaches during production.

Shot in Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, the film lasted a hellish 10 months, thanks in part to a bridge scene that ran into numerous logistical difficulties, eventually requiring the crew to build a new bridge. Friedkin lost 50 pounds during production and was diagnosed with malaria after the film finally premiered, and he wasn’t the only one to catch the disease while shooting in the jungle. He estimated that at least 50 people had to be evacuated from production due to malaria, food poisoning, gangrene, or injury. —WC

“Apocalypse Now” (1979)

The hellish production of Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam war epic “Apocalypse Now” was so grueling that it got its own documentary, “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse” (1991). Coppola shot the movie in the Philippines, where severe weather destroyed sets and forced the budget to skyrocket. The director notoriously clashed with Marlon Brando, who often struggled to remember his lines. Brando’s weight gain became an infamous point of controversy after Coppola wanted him fired because he got too fat for the role. Leading actor Martin Sheen suffered a breakdown during production and nearly shut the entire film down after suffering a near-fatal heart attack. —ZS

“Rapa Nui” (1994)

After directing “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” to critical and commercial success, Kevin Reynolds went on to helm his Easter Island passion project “Rapa-Nui.” As Reynolds told Den of Geek, “That’s probably also the most difficult picture I’ve ever done because of the remoteness of the location and the circumstances we were shooting under, it was like a Werner Herzog picture.” Reynolds made the decision to shoot on location, but mounting a film production on a remote island in the Pacific Island resulted in severe challenges. As the director explained, “We had one flight a week from the mainland, and there were times we ran out of food to feed people, and things like that, it was…it was very bad.” Distributed by Warner Bros., “Rapa-Nui” became one of the biggest box office bombs in film history by grossing $305,070 on a $20 million budget. —ZS

“Heaven’s Gate” (1980)

The notorious production of “Heaven’s Gate” has been well documented, with Michael Cimino’s demand for multiple takes of every scene not only driving the budget up but also causing emotional turmoil for his actors. According to Brad Douriff, the majority of scenes in “Heaven’s Gate” were filmed with anywhere between 32 and 60 takes. Cimino also put actors in danger on set by having small extras involved in performing their own stunts. Journalist Les Gaspay famously got a job as an extra on the “Heaven’s Gate” set during a large scale battle sequence and wrote: “Because of the mad rush, there are several injuries as the scene is filmed over and over for several days. Some of the immigrants, mostly extras, are brushed by horses and knocked into the mud. One minor actor has both feet stepped on by horses. Several persons tumble out of lurching wagons.” —ZS

“The Shining” (1980)

When it comes to psychologically grueling film shoots, few films are as extreme as Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.” The director’s affinity for doing multiple takes of the same scene proved punishing for actors Jack Nicholson and especially Shelley Duvall. The latter clashed with Kubrick over her acting style and the constantly-changing screenplay. Duvall became so overwhelmed by the demands of the Wendy Torrance role and working with Kubrick that she became sick for months. Stories from the set allege Duvall’s hair began falling out because she was so stressed from the production. —ZS

“Roar” (1981)

Often described as the most dangerous movie ever made, Noel Marshall’s “Roar” had such a grueling production that it infamously left 70 cast and crew members injured. The movie stars Marshall, Tippi Hedren, and Melanie Griffith as a family that lives alongside lions, tigers, and other animals in Africa. Marshall was adamant about using real animals, and it turns out acting opposite lions is not the safest decision. Marshall was bit by a lion through the hand on the first day of production, while Griffith was attacked by a lion and was left with 50 stitches. Griffith was forced to undergo facial reconstruction surgery. Hedren fractured her leg and hand after being tossed off an elephant, while a lion attack forced her to get 38 stitches in her scalp. Many of the crew experienced similar trauma. —ZS

“The Evil Dead” (1981)

Sam Raimi’s low budget horror movie “The Evil Dead” was something of a horror show to make. Just remember the story of actress Ellen Sandweiss, whose feet were shredded by twigs while performing a night scene in the freezing cold in nothing but a nightgown. She never acted again. Raimi himself has been honest about what an arduous experience it was filming “The Evil Dead,” writing in “The Evil Dead Companion” book: “I never worked so hard or so long in my life…It got so cold there. After Tim Philo left and I had to operate the camera, be my own first assistant and load the cameras, etc, I also had to help blood up Bruce…My hands would be covered in syrup, and I’d realize, I gotta change the film magazine, I gotta change the lenses, so I would have to wash this blood off my hands. It was like fifteen degrees in this place, and there was no heat. The only thing we had was the coffee maker, full of coffee, not water. So I had to pour hot coffee over my hands to get the blood off them, and to warm them up enough to be able to load the 16mm cameras. It was a very hard, physically difficult experience. We should have taken days off, we should have rested, but it got to the point where we’d work eighteen-hour days non-stop for, it seemed like, months.” —ZS

“Fitzcarraldo” (1982)

Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo” is based on the true story of Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fermín Fitzcarrald, who once transported a ship across land from one river to another. Herzog was hellbent on recreating this feat as authentically as possible for his movie. The production purchased a 320-ton steamship to manually transport over a hill because Herzog wanted no special effects involved in making the film. The decision led to a grueling film shoot in which six crew members were injured during one scene in which the ship experiences turbulence while sailing through violent rapids. Several indigenous extras who worked on the film were either injured or killed, and a Peruvian logger was bit by a venomous snake on set and cut off his own foot with a chainsaw to stop the poison from spreading. Throw in two plane crashes that occurred near the production and what you get is one of the most infamously grueling films ever made. —ZS

“Twilight Zone: The Movie” (1983)

The 1983 film revival of Rod Serling’s classic anthology TV series featured four segments from different directors, and three of them (from Steven Spielberg,  Joe Dante, and George Miller) went smoothly. But the segment directed by John Landis, “Time Out,” became the site of one of Hollywood’s most devestating tragedies.

For production of this segment, featuring Vic Morrow as a man transported to the Vietnam War, the studio violated numerous child labor laws by hiring two six and seven-year-old actors — Renee Shin-Yi Chen and Myca Dinh Le — without required permits and having them work extremely late at night and in proximity to dangerous stunt elements. During a shoot of a scene where Morrow and the kids were pursued by a helicopter, shrapnel from a controlled explosion got caught in the helicopter’s rotor, and caused it to crash on the three actors, killing them instantly. The movie was later released, but the tragedy overshadowed the film completely, and civil and criminal action against the filmmakers lasted for almost a decade. —WC

“Ishtar” (1987)

“Ishtar” is widely considered one of Hollywood’s biggest flops, and even director Elaine May can admit why the production became such a nightmare. As the filmmaker once explained, “I knew about acting, but I knew nothing about film. I thought one of the big lights on the first day of shooting was the camera. It was a really screwed-up production. It really was.” Shooting the film on location in the Sahara Desert made the project a costly endeavor, and May’s multiple-take directing style led to tension among the actors. A Vanity Fair deep dive into the production revealed that May’s number of takes was so excessive that a cobra that was to appear in the film died of a heart attack. —ZS

“Predator” (1987)

Filmmaker John McTiernan and his “Predator” cast shot the movie in the jungles of Palenque, Mexico, which led to several production troubles. The temperature in the jungle was so cold that heat lamps were required to be on set at all times, while the location’s terrain was so rough it forced filmmaking delays. Many of the cast and crew got sick with travelers’ diarrhea because of the unpurified water at the hotel they were staying at. Kevin Peter Hall, who starred in the film as the title character, famously said that making “Predator” “wasn’t a movie, it was a survival story for all of us.” —ZS

“The Abyss” (1989)

Making a James Cameron movie often means putting yourself through torture. For “The Abyss,” a giant water tank was created to film the underwater sequences and it required actors Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Michael Biehn to endure long and arduous filming days (the movie’s production reportedly had 70-hour weeks). Decompression sickness was always a risk for the actors, and Mastrantonio is said to have suffered a physical and emotional breakdown on set. During one take, Harris’ helmet was flooded with water and fluid rushed up his nose. Cameron has famously admitted, “I knew this was going to be a hard shoot, but even I had no idea just how hard. I don’t ever want to go through this again.” —ZS

“Alien 3” (1992)

The making of “Alien 3” was so grueling for director David Fincher that he has long wanted to remove his name from the critically-panned science-fiction actioner. Fincher was a first-time director brought on to replace exiting filmmaker Vincent Ward. Fincher clashed with the studio as his personal touches for the film were impossible to execute since the script was being written and rewritten while production was happening. The studio kept a close eye on the “Alien 3” shoot to ensure the entry would fit in tonally with the previous installments, Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and James Cameron’s “Aliens,” resulting in many of Fincher’s ideas being shot down. Fincher would famously say about the film, “No one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me.” —ZS

“Waterworld” (1995)

Kevin Reynolds’ career didn’t get any easier when he decided to follow box office bomb “Rapa-Nui” with “Waterworld,” which marked a reunion between the director and his “Robin Hood” star Kevin Costner. Universal’s $100 million budget for the movie was a then Hollywood record, but filming the movie in water tanks in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii blew up by $75 million after a hurricane destroyed the set. Then Costner was injured when he got caught up in a squall. The production also left two stuntmen injured and other cast members, such as Tina Majorino, with jellyfish sting injuries.

“Logistically, it’s crazy,” Reynolds told Den Of Geek. “Each day you shoot on the atoll with all those extras, we had to transport those people from dry land out to the location and so you’re getting hundreds of people through wardrobe and everything, and you’re putting them on boats, transporting them out to the atoll, and trying to get everybody in position to do a shot. And then when you break for lunch, you have to put everybody on boats and take them back in to feed them.” —ZS

“The Island of Dr. Moreau” (1996)

Tensions were sky high during the making of John Frankenheimer’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” adapted from H.G. Wells’ 1896 novel of the same name. Val Kilmer proved to be a bully during the first days of filming, openly criticizing Richard Stanley’s screenplay and replacing his scripted dialogue with his own improvisation. The majority of Kilmer footage was said to be unusable for the film’s theatrical cut. Supporting actor Rob Morrow begged to be let go of the film because of the rough production, while original director Stanley was fired from production and replaced by Frankenheimer. The new director did not solve the movie’s production troubles. Similar to “Apocalypse Now,” Brando proved unpredictable on set and would fail to show up to shoot his scenes when scheduled. Brando and Kilmer grew to hate one another. The film would go on to become a box office bomb. —ZS

“Titanic” (1997) 

Pulling off the biggest movie of all time meant going a little mad. Similar to Cameron’s “The Abyss,” the actors were forced to spend days on end in water tanks full of cold water and many of them ended up with the flu. Cameron battled the studio as the film’s budget continued to skyrocket and the production went over schedule by 138 days, leading to explosive altercations between the filmmaker and studio heads. The Times writer Christopher Godwin described the director on set as being a “300-decibel screamer, a modern-day Captain Bligh with a megaphone and walkie-talkie, swooping down into people’s faces on a 162-foot crane” (via Dan of Geek). At one point during production, a crew member spiked soup the crew was eating with the hallucinogenic drug PCP. As a result, nearly 50 crew members were rushed to the hospital. —ZS

“Team America: World Police” (2004)

Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s “Team America: World Police” required a crew of nearly 200 people to successfully pull off the puppeteering that was central to the film’s concept. The film featured 270 puppet characters, but the limited capabilities of the puppets’ movements forced Parker and Stone to make changes to the script on the spot. “It was the worst time of my entire life. I never want to see a puppet again,” Stone memorably told The Guardian after the movie’s release. “You work 20 hours a day, take sleeping pills to go to bed, and drink coffee to stay up. You feel like a piece of shit, none of your friends like you, your parents don’t like you, but you have a movie at the end.” —ZS

“World War Z” (2013)

The production of “World War Z” was not easy for leading man Brad Pitt or director Mark Forster. The team discovered in the editing room the third act they shot for the movie was not working, so Damon Lindelof was brought on to overhaul the script of the entire last act of the film. Reshoots were ordered to film at least 30 minutes of new footage so that “World War Z” would have a coherent ending. Some reports say the decision lifted the movie’s budget to just under the $200 million mark. Things got more complicated when the studio mandated a zombie battle set in Moscow, Russia be removed from the film so as to not stoke political controversy. —ZS

“Fantastic Four” (2015)

Josh Trank’s “Fantastic Four” reboot proved grueling emotionally as 20th Century Fox battled him over the creative vision of the film. Trank’s pitch for “Fantastic Four” was to create a superhero movie influenced by David Cronenberg’s body horror movies, but sources say that led to an overtly bleak tone and boring performances from the cast on set. Fox intervened to reshape the script, which reportedly led to chaos between the studio and the filmmaker. Trank is said to have isolated himself from the cast and crew, pitching a tent around his monitors so that he would not have to interact with others on set. The director was also accused of causing damage to his rental home near the set estimated around the $100,000 mark. —ZS

“Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015)

“Mad Max: Fury Road” was a pain in the ass for George Miller long before cameras started rolling in June 2012. The sequel spent several years in development hell and failed to get off the ground twice before filming started on location in the Namibia desert. Brutally hot temperatures and complicated action choreography created tension between the cast and crew. Leading actors Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron famously feuded on set. As co-star Zoe Kravitz explained, “They didn’t get along. We were also in the desert for so long. I think everyone was tired, and confused, and homesick. We saw nothing but sand for six months. You go crazy, you do. I actually don’t know if there was one issue. I just think it was like they weren’t vibing.” —ZS

“The Revenant” (2015)

Alejandro González Iñárritu insisted on shooting “The Revenant” in chronological order and with as much natural light as possible, resulting in an arduous production schedule that was continually stalled and delayed in order for the film to maintain continuity in weather, lighting, and more. The weather turned out to be excruciating. On the film’s Calgary set, the temperature often dropped to subzero temperatures. “Sometimes the weather would change seven times a day in Calgary,” Iñárritu said during a 2015 interview. “It’s the worst place for any producer to shoot a film. But it’s an incredible landscape, so we didn’t have a choice.” Iñárritu later admitted both he and his cast and crew went “a little crazy” making “The Revenant.”  -ZS

“Don’t Breathe” (2016)

There’s getting an authentic reaction, and then there’s genuinely terrifying your actors. Fede Álvarez appeared to burn a bridge with “Don’t Breathe” star Jane Levy over that distinction, with a tense social media exchange in 2021 hinting at a bad experience on the film that caused Levy to opt out of the (laughably heinous!) “Don’t Breathe 2.”

While promoting the sequel, Alvarez hand-waved Levy’s absence, saying she was “not happy” on the first movie. Levy retorted on Twitter: “Maybe we should be asking why these films are made in such a way that their directors are averse to having committed actors participate?”

Alvarez and Levy had previously worked together on the 2013 “Evil Dead” reboot, which was physically demanding and involved Levy actually getting buried alive for a climactic scene. But the filmmaker claimed it was the psychological side of “Don’t Breathe” that caused friction with the actress. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Alvarez described lying to his cast on set about the scenes they would be performing: “You have to make sure that the actors are not too relaxed or not too comfortable. You misdirect the actor, you tell them, ‘You’re gonna walk down this hallway, and the guy’s going to come from the left, and you prepare for that.’ But, at the last second, you change it, and make him come from the right. You get great reactions out of them. Then they just scream at you but that doesn’t matter.” —AF

“Silence” (2016)

Martin Scorsese’s “Silence” was shot in Taiwan and the weather proved so unpredictable that the production often had to wait or move the filming of scenes to dusk or dawn so that there would not be inconsistencies in lighting in each shot. Driver famously lost 51 pounds for his role in the movie. By the end of the production, Driver’s starvation led him to hallucinate. “I don’t think I’ve ever taken it to the extreme before,” Driver said of making the film. “You’re so hungry and so tired at some points that there’s nothing you can do. You’re not adding anything on top of what you’re doing. You only have enough energy to convey what you’re doing, so it’s great. There are other times where a scene’s not working and you don’t have the energy to figure out why it’s not working.” —ZS

“Suicide Squad” (2016)

Production on “Suicide Squad” was more or less doomed from the start when Warner Bros. rushed director David Ayer into production because the studio had already set a theatrical date for the comic book tentpole. Ayer filmed the movie with a dark tone, but the box office bomb of the overtly bleak “Batman v Superman” resulted in Warner Bros. forcing “Suicide Squad” to become more lighthearted. Several editors were brought on during post-production to Frankenstein together a different tone for the movie, but reshoots were needed to redo action scenes so that witty banter among the characters could be added. “Suicide Squad” opened to some of the worst reviews of 2016 and Ayer was phased out for the sequel, directed by James Gunn. —ZS

“Aquaman” (2018)

Director James Wan admirably vowed to shoot as many water scenes as possible without the use of CGI, preferring to actually film actors underwater. Of course, such a decision can complicate matters on set, and “Aquaman” ended up being one of the more difficult comic book film shoots in recent memory.

“It’s a very technically challenging shoot to be on,” Wan said at the time. “Working with water, and even the dry-for-wet sequences are very complex.” Wan clearly wasn’t too burned out though, because he returned to direct the sequel: “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.” —CZ

“The Lighthouse” (2019)

The filming of Robert Eggers’ “The Lighthouse” in Nova Scotia was so intense and physically demanding that co-stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson hardly talked outside of filming scenes together. The production was grueling to the point that Pattinson nearly punched Eggers in the face. As the actor told Interview magazine, “That’s the closest I’ve come to punching a director. However much I love Robert [Eggers], there was a point where I did five takes walking across the beach, and after a while I was like, ‘What the fuck is going on? I feel like you’re just spraying a fire hose in my face.’ And he was like, ‘I am spraying a fire hose in your face.’”

Pattinson is not a diehard method actor, but he went to some peculiar extremes in order to stay in character during the film’s production. The actor told Esquire he would sit on the floor and drink mud off the ground in order to help him go a little mad. Pattinson also got blackout drunk and pissed himself on multiple occasions in order to match the inebriated state of his character. —ZS

“Monos” (2019)

Alejandro Landes decided to film his war drama “Monos” on location in Colombia on the Chingaza páramo and in the jungle of the Samaná river canyon, two locations never used for a film production before because of their severe conditions. A behind-the-scenes profile on the film published by The Guardian reported that “there was no electricity, no running water, no refrigerated food and torrential downpours all night every night. There were food rations. The shoot took its toll.” 

“People were dropping like flies, including me,” Landes said. “Everyone had their day. Everyone cried on this movie. You’re working six-day weeks, very high-intensity scenarios.” At one point in production, Landes woke up and couldn’t move. The filmmaker had to be put on a stretcher and carried up a canyon in order to receive medical attention at a local center. Production went on hold for 20 hours. Landes said the stress of the production and his rationed food diet led to extreme exhaustion. —ZS

“No Time to Die” (2021)

Daniel Craig famously delayed his departure from James Bond for years, but if he had any lingering doubts about leaving the role, they were likely erased by the grueling production of his final film. “No Time to Die” was plagued by problems from the start. Danny Boyle dropped out as director before filming was set to commence, causing Cary Fukunaga to fill in at the last minute. Craig suffered an ankle injury on set that delayed production. And an explosion almost burned down the famed soundstage where many of the Bond films were shot. Fortunately, the film was able to be salvaged and Craig received a fitting goodbye after 15 years of playing 007. —CZ

“The Northman” (2022)

Robert Eggers has never been one to cut corners, frequently sacrificing comfort in the name of getting the shot. But even by his standards, “The Northman” took things to another level. Eggers was determined to maximize the film’s historical accuracy, pushing his cast to their limits as he obsessed over every detail of the Icelandic shoot. Actors frequently had to do dozens of takes in brutal conditions, but the result was one of the most gloriously intense Viking movies of all time. —CZ

“Avatar: The Way of Water” (2022)

Even with three more sequels in the works, it has taken almost 13 years for James Cameron to get a second “Avatar” epic into theaters. Considering Cameron’s track-record with massive scale water epics — see the aforementioned “Titanic” and “The Abyss” — that just goes to show how tough making movies in/on/around water can be. The forthcoming film uses new technology, previewed by IndieWire’s Kristen Lopez at D23, who described the resultant underwater clips as having an “exquisite crispness.”

Still, for the actors on set, the experience was harrowing. In a 2017 interview with Collider, Cameron described the film’s pre-production process: “We’ve done a tremendous amount of testing. We’ve got six teenagers and one 7-year-old, and they’re all playing a scene underwater. We’ve been training them for six months now, with how to hold their breath, and they’re all up in the two-to-four-minute range. They’re all perfectly capable of acting underwater, very calmly while holding their breath. We’re not doing any of this on scuba. And we’re getting really good data, beautiful character motion and great facial performance capture. We’ve basically cracked the code.” —AF

“Megalopolis” (2024)

We’re probably too close to the release of “Megalopolis” to have a full story behind what exactly transpired on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s years-in-the making sci-fi epic. Still, the majority of stories that have come out about the shooting of the self-funded tale of New Rome point towards an at best messy production, and at worst a wildly problematic one. Once Coppola finally began filming on the project — after an attempt to get it made in 2001 was abandoned thanks to the 9/11 attacks — crew stories indicated that the legendary director was indecisive and altered plans constantly, leaving the cast and crew with nothing to do for entire days. Issues with special effects caused most of the visual effects team to get fired and several art department heads to leave the project. Reports also surfaced about Coppola allegedly kissing and groping female extras during the movie’s party scenes, leading Coppola to eventually sue Variety for libel. Once released, the movie received a polarized reception and failed at the box office, making $14.3 million against a budget of about $120 million. —WC