Editor's note: This is a nostalgic theater.
"Shazam 2" failed at the box office! "The Flash", box office failure! "Raiders of the Lost Ark 5", box office failure! In this year's Hollywood, although there are "Pabpenheimer" blockbusters, but the box office is not as expected, it seems that there are more blockbusters than in previous years. However, these blockbuster commercial blockbusters are probably nothing compared to the "Cleopatra" released sixty years ago.
Elizabeth Taylor offers astronomical salary
On June 12, 1963, "Cleopatra" finished its premiere in New York, the United States, and gradually expanded to many places in the United States two weeks later, and it has been at the top of the weekly box office list for three consecutive months; and in Italy, France, Germany and even the Soviet Union , have won quite excellent box office results. In the end, the film became the North American box office champion in 1963, and it also received nine nominations at the Oscars the following year. However, the executives of 20th Century Fox, who invested in the film, were not happy at all. Because no matter how impressive the box office results are, it will pale in comparison to the high production cost of $31.1 million -- $44 million after publicity costs, which is about $422 million in today's dollars.
A few days ago, veteran British entertainment journalist Patrick Humphries (Patrick Humphries) published a new book "Cleopatra and the Undoing of Hollywood: How it almost destroyed the entire studio system on its own" (Cleopatra and the Undoing of Hollywood: How One Film Almost Sunk the Studios), and unearthed many unknown secrets before and after the filming, especially the amazing extravagant and cost-intensive practices on the filming scene. The film failed at the box office, laying the groundwork for it.
"Cleopatra" and the Destruction of Hollywood: How It Single-Handedly Nearly Destroyed the Entire Studio System
"Before writing this book, I have been paying attention to the movie "Cleopatra" for a long time. I have seen a lot of related behind-the-scenes information over the years. However, after I really started to do in-depth research for writing this book , Only then did I realize that in the production process, all kinds of extravagant methods are far beyond my imagination." Humphreys, 71, recalled when he attended the book promotion event.
"For example, the ornaments that appear on Cleopatra's dressing table in the film, they stay on the screen for a few seconds at most, but they are all specially designed by the luxury brand Bulgari. There is also the big scene of Cleopatra’s arrival in Rome. I also found out after researching that they used at least 20,000 Italian extras, and made a full set of costumes for everyone, and uniformly arranged board and lodging for them. , before the filming, we will come to the scene in a unified car."
Many of Cleopatra's accessories in the film were specially created by luxury brand Bulgari.
Filming "Cleopatra" was a long-time dream of legendary Hollywood producer Walter Wanger. He has long cooperated with Paramount Pictures, also produced Hitchcock's films, and won the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 1946. On the other hand, Fox Films in history made a silent film called "Cleopatra" as early as 1917. (Theda Bara) leads the starring role. Therefore, under the proposal of Walter Wanger, Spyros Skouras, the president of 20th Century Fox, decided to remake it into a sound and color blockbuster, hoping to reverse the company's loss situation for several years. .
However, 20th Century Fox originally planned to invest only $2 million in production costs for "Cleopatra", and hoped to finish filming in two months. But Walter Wanger, who has high ambitions, does not intend to do so. If you want to do it, you have to do it with big votes. Moved by his sincerity, the 27-year-old Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor agreed to play the leading role Cleopatra, but she offered a record-breaking $1 million, which is equivalent to about 1,000 today. Ten thousand U.S. dollars—and a ten-point box office share, quickly became the focus of media discussion. Since then, stars such as Richard Burton and Rex Harrison have also joined in one after another. The salary alone may have exceeded 2 million US dollars, and the entire production plan has also rapidly expanded.
Elizabeth Taylor paid a then-record $1 million for Cleopatra.
The protagonist Shuangshuang's derailment in marriage caused a sensation in the public opinion
"Cleopatra" was officially released, six years after it started filming. The final cost of Fox was more than 20 times that of the original plan.
According to Humphreys in the new book, the cost of drinking paper cups used by everyone on the set of "Cleopatra" was as high as $100,000! There is also the British actor George Cole (George Cole), who is responsible for playing Caesar's dumb servant in the film. The original contract only required him to shoot for three months, but it was continuously extended and extended. A year and a half.
"In the scene where Cleopatra arrives in Rome, the sets in the square used more cement to build them than Rome used to build the stadium for the 1960 Olympic Games," Han said. Fleiss added, "A lot of what Elizabeth Taylor ate every day had to be flown to Italy from her favorite New York deli throughout the filming period. Originally, the film crew was filming exteriors at Pinewood Studios in England, but the local The bad weather forced them to rebuild a location in Italy. The pictures shot in the UK before finally appeared in only eight minutes in the 250-minute "Cleopatra", but the total cost of shooting in the UK , but also as high as 6.45 million pounds, which is staggering."
The scene in which Cleopatra arrives in Rome is magnificent.
Of course, going back to the beginning, the deepest impression left by the outside world on the filming of "Cleopatra" must be the extramarital affair scandal caused by Taylor and Burton. The two had their own families at the time, but they fell in love shortly after filming started, and it was hard to extricate themselves. The news of celebrity cheating in marriage, no matter at that time or now, is the focus of attention of the media and the general public. "It became the front page news at the time." Humphreys said, "Reviewing the newspapers and magazines of the year, I found that the popularity of the news even surpassed that of the Nazi butcher Adolf Eichmann's trial at the same time, Events like American astronaut Alan Shepard going into space and the Cuban Missile Crisis."
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor fell in love while filming Cleopatra.
'Cleopatra'-style runaway still playing out in Hollywood
After "Cleopatra" was officially released, Fox had considered taking Taylor and Burton, who had caused an uproar on the set, to court for compensation on the grounds of violating professional contracts, but failed to file the case. In this way, "Cleopatra" became the most expensive movie in history at that time, and it also brought 20th Century Fox almost into bankruptcy. At the request of shareholders, President Sparrows Skouras stepped down and returned management to the company's majority shareholder Darryl Zanuck. Two years later, relying on the global sales of "The Sound of Music", the financial hole caused by "Cleopatra" was finally filled, and 20th Century Fox successfully overcome the financial crisis.
Today, sixty years later, the status of "Cleopatra" in film history has long been judged. However, among the new generation of viewers, how many people are willing to put down their mobile phones, sit in front of the TV or even the computer for four hours, and watch this epic masterpiece in one go. Over the past sixty years, Hollywood and even other countries have filmed a lot of Cleopatra's film and television works. Just in May of this year, there was a Cleopatra documentary produced by Netflix, which became the focus of public opinion because of the actor's skin color. However, a real Cleopatra biopic like the 1963 version of "Cleopatra" has never appeared in this period.
Once upon a time, the media reported that Angelina Jolie or Lady Gaga would shoot a biopic of Cleopatra, but several years have passed, and there is no further news. As for the news that Gal Gadot will star in the new version of "Cleopatra" that came out last year, more than a year has passed. After successive changes in director candidates and production companies, although it was early confirmed that it will be released in the summer of 2025, but Still haven't started filming. Perhaps, today, it is even more difficult to spend huge sums of money to shoot a new work that can surpass the 1963 version of "Cleopatra".
Israeli actor Gal Gadot to star in new Cleopatra remake.
On the other hand, Hollywood seems to have failed to fully learn from the mistakes "Cleopatra" made sixty years ago. "Raiders of the Lost Ark 5" and "Mission: Impossible 7", which were released this summer, have received nearly US$400 million and over US$500 million in global box office respectively, but considering that the production costs of the two films are both 3 100 million U.S. dollars, plus at least 100 million U.S. dollars in publicity expenses, the actual expenditure exceeded 400 million U.S. dollars. This is actually very close to the current amount of the cost of "Cleopatra", which also makes them among the most expensive movies in history, and they will probably lose tens of millions of dollars, or even hundreds of millions of dollars in the end.
