Ryan charts its dramatic rise and fall…
Paul Verhoeven is not a happy man.
Theyre in the boardroom to discussCrusade: a lavish, $100m historical drama described asSpartacusmeetsConan.
The supporting cast includes Jennifer Connelly and Robert Duvall.
The script is vibrant and brash.
There are massive sets being built in rural Spain.
When Carolcos executives tell Verhoeven they want guarantees thatCrusadewont drift over its agreed budget, the director is outraged.
His previous films with the studio,Total RecallandBasic Instinct,had made them millions.
With he and Schwarzenegger at the helm,Crusadewould surely follow suit.
And they wanted guarantees?
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Theres no such thing as guarantees!
Guarantees dont happen and if anyone promises you guarantees, theyre lying!
Theres no guarantee that were going to make it til tomorrow!
But someone, nature, could just rain for three months and then what do we do?
How can I give you a guarantee?
And with that,Crusadewas dead.
To find out what went wrong, we have to head back to the companys beginnings in the 1970s.
Before Carolco, Mario F Kassar and Andrew G Vajna were two young outsiders with big ideas.
Andrew Vajna, meanwhile, took a rather more circuitous route into the film industry.
Born in Budapest in 1944, Vajna moved with his parents to America when he was 12.
Made for a snip at $100,000, the movie was a hit, and earned $2.5m worldwide.
We just bought the name, Kassar later told Entertainment Weekly.
The first two movies were well-received but financially less successful.
After a fair amount of back-and-forth negotiation over Slys fee, a hefty seven-figure salary was agreed on.
Carolco was now a major Hollywood production company.
Above all, Stallone wanted Rambo to survive to fight another day.
This time, Rambo would go back to Vietnam and win the war all by himself.
A young James Cameron wrote the script, and Italian filmmaker George P Cosmatos was the headlining director.
Stories of Carolcos extravagant spending became common during the late 1980s.
For Andrew Vajna, however, Carolcos growth was all too much.
AfterRambo, we were trying to become a major studio.
I disagreed with where they wanted to go, and Peter played our egos against each other.
He wanted to be a partner.
Yet as the 90s dawned, it seemed as though Carolcos expenditure was beginning to spiral out of control.
Millions were being spent on scripts and multi-picture deals with actors.
One banker damningly summed up Carolcos situation as A disaster waiting to happen.
AfterBasic Instinct,Carolcos other 1992 releases all struggled.
As a result, relatively little of the Stallone action vehicles $255m profits went to Carolco.
The films that came afterCliffhangerfaced mixed fortunes.
In 1994, they had to settle for the less bankable Matthew Modine.
If we made the film, there was at least some chance we could survive.
The lambastedBasic Instinct 2(2006) failed to follow suit.
[Nearly] 3 billion dollars in worldwide box office.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can only wonder what would have happened had Carolco decided to makeCrusadeinstead.
WouldCrusadehave succeeded whereCutthroat Islandfailed, and saved the studio from oblivion?
Ultimately, the story of Carolco is one of high-stakes gambles.
We like to creatively do the projects ourselves, and not do it by committee.
Independence is the only way we work.
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