It's hard to think of a movie with a more appropriate name for things going wrong than 'The Fall of The Roman Empire.' When Rome fell all those years ago, it was the end of a great era, and so it proved to be the case for Samuel Bronston Productions, who made the unwise decision to bankroll this box office disaster in 1964. This movie had Sophia Loren, Alec Guinness, and Christopher Plummer. It would seem someone within the studio thought that with so much star power, they didn't need to worry about the plot. They were wrong.
'The Fall of The Roman Empire' was billed as a historical drama, and yet somehow, despite the scale and depth of the subject matter, the writers forgot to include any drama on screen. It bored its way to terrible reviews, and the public decided to give it a miss. Making the movie cost $19m in 1964. Adjusted for inflation, that would be around $164m today. It made back barely a quarter of that budget. Samuel Bronston Productions didn't have another $15m to cover the loss, and never made another film.