The Biggest Movie Flops Of All Time

What have Gone With The Wind, The Wizard Of Oz and Citizen Kane got in common? They're all box office flops - or at least were when they came out. The Wizard Of Oz, one of the most treasured films in cinema history, didn't actually make money until 20 years after its release. Gone With The Wind, at the time the most expensive movie ever produced, couldn't even come close to recouping its production costs at its first run in the cinemas. Two re-releases in the 40s and 50s saw the civil war classic limp towards the black, but it took television in the late 50s to see MGM into the money. And Orson Welles may have directed the world's best film aged 25, but his thinly disguised biopic of newspaper baron William Randolph Hurst ran into booking problems when the media magnate pressured cinema owners not to screen the film - consequently Citizen Kane couldn't get enough screen time to recoup.

The calibre of these all time classics in the pantheon of cinema history means they can never be described as flops. Waterworld, a movie about twentieth century civilisation destroyed by the seas, was hit by a tsunami of negative publicity and crippling production costs when its floating sets were destroyed by...er, the sea. The common assumption is that this Kevin Costner turd sank without trace, but Waterworld proved to be a plucky little floater and eventually did its director proud after worldwide TV and video sales came in.

So what is a flop? What does it take to make it onto this, our Top Ten all-time suckfest? In a business in which most films fail to make money, or even fail to get the thumbs up from jaded critics, noble failures do not count. No, to be a true flop, we decided a film had to fail in every sense of the word. There may have been worse films out there in your opinion, but each film here has inflicted lasting damage on all concerned with it. Financiers have not just lost but gone bust, and the trickle of punters duped into seeing it haven't left quietly, but run screaming from the cinema pinching their noses at the god-awful smell. And while you ponder over these turkeys that 'ain't just for Christmas', remember it's not a definitive list. There's bound to be another gem, coming along soon to a cinema near you (Gigli, anyone?).