The 2006 Henry Cavill movie that tipped an entire studio into oblivion
In 2013, Henry Cavill joined a very lucrative club, becoming the fifth man to portray Superman in a live-action feature film.
The release of Man of Steel, the first movie in Zack Snyder’s ultimately ill-fated DC Extended Universe, launched the Englishman into the stratosphere, and he quickly became a household name, able to translate that into a highly lucrative Hollywood career. Prior to his big break, though, things were looking a little ropey.
The world’s hunkiest nerd first got started in film in the early 2000s. He would crop up in small British pictures, historical dramas, romantic comedies, and even a random instalment in the Hellraiser franchise. While none of this was Cavill’s fault, the quality of these movies wasn’t always great.
He actually auditioned for Superman years before he actually got the role, but that entire project ended up getting cancelled. It wasn’t until he landed a part on The Tudors that things really started to look up.
One year before he debuted as the Duke of Suffolk, Cavill appeared in a film that I would be shocked if anyone remembered. Inspired by the medieval tale of the same name, Tristan & Isolde starred James Franco and Sophia Myles as two lovers kept apart by a war between England and Ireland, where Cavill plays Melot, a rival to Franco’s Tristan.
The movie had a decent cast in Mark Strong, Thomas Brodie Sangster, and Rufus Sewell, among others, and the backing of Ridley Scott as a producer. Unfortunately, this didn’t help it perform well at either the box office or with the critics, and while films underperform all the time, this lacklustre effort spelt doom for the movie’s production company.
Established in 1997, Franchise Pictures produced a number of notable films in the early 2000s, such as The Boondock Saints, a thriller starring Willem Dafoe, and Heist, a crime drama directed by David Mamet, but they also had a hand in making Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever and Battlefield: Earth, both of which are regarded as some of the worst movies ever made. This might explain why, by the time Tristan & Isolde rolled around, the company was in a real financial mess.
In 2004, Franchise Pictures and its co-founder, Elie Samaha, were found guilty of fraudulently inflating the budgets of some of their productions and were forced to pay a former business partner $121.7million in damages, which sent them into a fiscal spiral. Later that year, the company filed for bankruptcy, and Tristan & Isolde would be the final movie released under the Franchise name.
Even if it hadn’t killed an entire business, Tristan & Isolde was always going to be difficult. Despite the support of a big name, the central idea wasn’t well-known enough to be a draw. Even James Franco thought it was a bad idea, which says a lot. At least Cavill was able to recover and go on to turn a profit, unlike a certain production company we mentioned.
