The largest money-losing film of all time was a 1980 film about land wars in Wyoming, which cost over $55 Million and grossed less than $2 Million. Critics panned this 3 1/2 hour film, and audiences rejected it. What was the title, and who was the directo

Fresh off his Oscar-winning success with The Deer Hunter, director Michael Cimino was given unprecedented creative control for his next project, an epic Western based on the Johnson County War in 1890s Wyoming. The production, however, became legendary for its runaway excess. Cimino's meticulous perfectionism led to enormous delays and a budget that ballooned from an initial $11.6 million to an astonishing $44 million, an almost unheard-of sum for the time. He insisted on historical accuracy down to the smallest detail, building and rebuilding entire towns and reportedly shooting over 200 miles of film.

When the movie was finally released, its nearly three-and-a-half-hour runtime was met with scathing reviews and complete audience rejection. The critical reception was so toxic (Review) that the studio, United Artists, pulled the film from theaters after only one week. A drastically shorter version was re-released months later, but the damage was done. The film's catastrophic failure, earning back only a tiny fraction of its total cost, is widely credited with not only bankrupting the historic United Artists studio but also ending the era of director-driven "auteur" filmmaking that had defined 1970s Hollywood.