Penelope Cruz, Matthew McConaughey, Steve Zahn, 2005.
This buried-treasure adventure flick grossed nearly $120 million worldwide – a healthy haul by most standards. But Sahara’s production and marketing costs came in over $240 million, the lurid details of which were outlined in a 2007 Los Angeles Times expose. Some of the more colorful examples of exotic expenses include hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes passed out to local officials in Morocco, where the film was made, and $2 million to produce a plane crash that didn’t even make it into the final cut. Too bad the film wasn’t as entertaining as court records detailing its producer’s spendthrift ways. Inflation adjusted, the film lost $144,857,030.