Word: ishtar
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Aside from a few major hits such as Ghostbusters, The Karate Kid and When Harry Met Sally . . ., Columbia's movie-production unit has been floundering for years. The most spectacular flop: Ishtar, the Dustin Hoffman-Warren Beatty desert lark released in 1987, which lost $25 million. Three top-management teams have come and gone since CEO David Begelman was forced out in 1978 amid a financing scandal. Coca-Cola, which bought the studio in 1982 and still controls 49% of its stock, fired British producer David Puttnam (Chariots of Fire) in 1987 after barely a year at the helm, during...
...keep in mind that Elaine May, a white filmmaker casting two white stars, squandered over $40 million on Ishtar, which, in terms of quality, makes Daze look like Citizen Kane. Trust me. I'm one of the four or five people who saw it. And as Lee pointed out in a letter to the New York Times on Sunday, the industry average is $18 million...
...with Johnny Carson or Barbara Walters to refute stories that they were ill with AIDS. Ringwald switched mentors, leaving John Hughes, who had made her a star with Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink, for Warren Beatty. It didn't work. Their film, The Pick-Up Artist, was the Ishtar of youth comedies: better than its rep, but still a resounding flop...
...FUNNIEST SCENE STEALER The blind camel who upstaged Co-Stars Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman in Ishtar, the $40 million-plus bust-of-the-year, and thereby proved that big salaries ($5 million apiece for Beatty and Hoffman) do not necessarily produce either big laughs or big bucks at the box office...
...rich lately was when he played 007 one more time. As for the leading man, Kevin Costner, his most memorable movie turn was as the corpse in The Big Chill. So there's no way this film is going to make back its $25 million tab. It will be Ishtar without the camel...