What film bankrupted Carolco Pictures?

The film that bankrupted Carolco Pictures was Cutthroat Island. Released in 1995, the pirate adventure became a historic box-office disaster and delivered the final major blow to the already struggling studio.

Directed by Renny Harlin, Cutthroat Island starred Geena Davis as pirate captain Morgan Adams and Matthew Modine as William Shaw. Michael Douglas had originally been attached to the project but left during its development. Production problems, rewrites, recasting, and a rapidly expanding budget pushed the film’s cost into the tens of millions of dollars.

Carolco was already carrying heavy debts from years of expensive productions and declining returns. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 1995, about a month before the film’s release. Cutthroat Island ultimately earned only about $16 million worldwide against a reported budget of roughly $92–115 million. The film did not single-handedly create every financial problem, but its failure is widely regarded as the event that finished Carolco.