The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Operational decision · 2001
New Line let its star's control push a $40M comedy's budget past $90M
Town & Country ran nearly three years through twelve delayed release dates, and closed at $10M worldwide against a negative cost north of $90M.
New Line Cinema · 2001-04-27
What happened
New Line Cinema greenlit Town & Country, a comedy starring Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn and Garry Shandling, with a budget that grew to around $40 million once the full cast was assembled — already a large commitment for the genre.
Production stretched to nearly three years, with New Line's own chairman Bob Shaye later attributing the delays to Beatty's rushed, controlling approach to the shoot, which drove the negative cost from $40 million past $90 million and forced twelve separate release-date postponements.
The film finally opened to scathing reviews and grossed just over $10 million worldwide — about $6.7 million of it domestic — against a cost north of $90 million, making it one of the biggest financial disasters in studio history relative to its modest genre.
Why it happened
- The studio let one star's creative control over the production drive costs and delays without an intervening check.
- Twelve release-date postponements were each treated as a minor scheduling issue rather than a cumulative signal the production was out of control.
- Nobody reassessed the budget's viability as costs more than doubled from the original $40 million plan.
- A mid-budget comedy carried financial risk on the scale of a blockbuster once costs and delays compounded.
The lesson
A star's creative control on a mid-budget film needs the same cost discipline as any other production — genre size doesn't cap the damage of an unchecked shoot.
Aftermath
Town & Country became a standard reference in Hollywood coverage of studios ceding too much control to a star during production, and it remains cited among the biggest box office losses relative to genre and budget scale.
Sources
- Town & Country (film) — Wikipedia
- NME — How 'Town & Country' turned into one of the biggest flops in movie history
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