Top 10 Box Office Flops That Are Actually Pure Gold
10. Citizen Kane (1941)
Considered by many to be the greatest film ever made, Orson Welles’s 1941 Citizen Kane disappointed in ticket sales.
With a budget of $839,727 and box office profit of $1.5 million, Citizen Kane failed to attract the masses and lure them into movie theatres, and there might have been a good reason why.
Although the film received stellar reviews as soon as it came out, when a newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst heard that the movie’s mean main character was based on him he blocked any mention of the film in the media, thus contributing to poor results of Citizen Kane as many cinemas refused to show it.
The studio that produced the film, RKO, lost $160,000 but Citizen Kane went on to win nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Director for Orson Welles.
