The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)

The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) stands as Hollywood's most catastrophic literary adaptation of the late 20th century, squandering Tom Wolfe's satirical masterpiece through disastrous miscasting. Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, and Melanie Griffith were woefully wrong for their roles, and the film's production chaos became the subject of a bestselling making-of book. It grossed just $15.5 million against a $47 million budget, making it over 67% less profitable than the average mid-budget drama of 1990, and it outperformed only Gulliver's Travels in box office return among this list.