Cutthroat Island - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[liam]

Adjusted for inflation, Cutthroat Island lost over $147 million at the box office, the largest in cinema history.

[violet]

Carolco Pictures had finished preproduction on another mega production at the time, called 'Crusade', to be directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Filming was slated to begin, but the movie was canceled at the last moment, when Carolco could not finance two blockbusters at the same time. They opted to do this film, which was supposed to have been less costly, but which later went massively over budget, and put the already ailing studio further in debt. Verhoeven went on to make Showgirls (1995) instead, largely as a favor to Mario Kassar in an attempt to save Carolco from financial downfall. After both Cutthroat Island and Showgirls bombed at the box office, the studio was bankrupted, and Crusade was shelved indefinitely.

[jeffrey]

Carolco Pictures, which financed the film, filed for bankruptcy six weeks before it reached theaters.

[ella]

In a radio interview in 2011, Renny Harlin discussed the film's box office failure. He pointed out that Carolco Pictures was already in ruin before the film even began shooting, but had to make the film since financing from foreign investors was already in place. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the film's distributor, was in the process of being sold and thus could not devote itself into financing a marketing campaign for the film.

[melinda]

Geena Davis' "impossible stunt" (jumping out of a window, rolling onto the roof of a building, and landing on a moving carriage) was a digital composite of two shots; one shot of her falling, and a second shot of her already in the carriage, pretending she just landed there.

[jessica]

Broken pipes caused raw sewage to pour into the water tank where the actors were supposed to swim.

[lynn]

The origins of this movie actually date back to 1986 when a movie called Bloody Bess was in production. The movie also starred a female swashbuckler, but was set to be a lot more violent and darker than Cutthroat was. The movie was cancelled but Renny Harlin, who was working at Empire Studios at the time the film was in talks, liked the idea of a female pirate and reused it later on.

[lynn]

When Renny Harlin fired the chief camera operator following a dispute, more than two dozen crew members quit.

[jeffrey]

Oliver Reed was originally cast as Mordechai Fingers. He was fired after getting in a bar fight and mooning at Geena Davis.