The Sixties used to be a perfect decade for Hollywood epics, however no longer they all carried out in addition to some from the former 10 years, like “Ben-Hur” and “The Ten Commandments.” Nonetheless, the last decade plowed on with a number of notable titles, together with “The Fall of the Roman Empire,” starring Sophia Loren, Alec Guinness, Marcel Mason, Stephen Boyd, Christopher Plummer, Omar Sharif, and Mel Ferrer.
The movie’s name provides away the plot, as it is a unfastened adaptation of Edward Gibbon’s “The Historical past of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” The something the movie had going for it at first used to be Charlton Heston, who used to be all however a demand for an epic to paintings. Sadly, he subsidized out prior to manufacturing started, leaving Boyd to take the position of Livius in his stead. Like all epic, prices had been prime, amounting to $19 million, or about $187 million these days.
Sadly, the field place of work wasn’t type, totaling handiest round $4.75 million. Samuel Bronston produced “The Fall of the Roman Empire” by way of his corporate, Samuel Bronston Productions, which failed to live to tell the tale the huge loss. The corporate ceased industry in 1964, the similar yr the movie used to be launched, and entered into chapter 11. Bronston used to be convicted of perjury because of the court cases and took it to the Ideally suited Court docket, which in the long run sided with Bronston.