These Were Hollywood's Worst Moves

'Rolling Stone' ranks moviemaking's bad decisions

By Gina Carey, Newser Staff

Posted Sep 30, 2023 5:30 AM CDT

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Hollywood's Worst Blunders — This 20th Century Fox image shows the characters Neytiri, right, and Jake in a scene from the 2009 movie "Avatar." Matt Damon turned down the lead role, plus 10 percent of the back end. (AP Photo/20th Century Fox, File)

Perhaps the hardest part of listing the worst mistakes in film history is narrowing it down to just 50. That's what Rolling Stone has attempted to do in a new list of Hollywood hot takes. The categories span actors turning down giant roles (and choosing terrible ones), execs making poor choices based on cash, and creative choices we all could have lived without for a pretty entertaining read. A sample of 10 from the list:

Allowing William Shatner to direct Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (#40)
Stretching The Hobbit into three films (#39)
Elvis' 1964 flop, Kissin' Cousins (#36)
The digital fur in 2019's Cats (#28)
Removing director David Fincher from Alien III (#25)
Everything about Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars prequels (#16)
Japanese racism in Breakfast at Tiffany's (#13)
Warner Bros. ditching Home Alone over production costs (#8)
Matt Damon turning down the lead role in Avatar, plus 10% of the back end (#5)
Shooting the 1956 Genghis Khan flick The Conqueror on nuclear testing sites (#1)

Read the full list of blunders here. (The magazine previously ranked the worst TV blunders.)

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