34 Celebrity Projects That Were Probably a Big Ol’ Mistake
![34 Celebrity Projects That Were Probably a Big Ol’ Mistake](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/7/1/864071_320x180.jpg)
A lot of people on the list below have done genius work. They've recorded timeless albums, directed truly great films or brought unquestionably vivid characters to life on our screens. But as much as they would like it to be true, it doesn’t mean that every single thing they touch immediately turns into gold. Many of our greatest creative minds have taken side projects that can at best be described as questionable.
Steven Spielberg’s submarine-themed restaurant sounds more like a migraine than a novel dining experience. MC Hammer probably should have predicted that his search engine would inevitably make Google say “Can’t Touch This.” Oliver Stone has taken several tries at getting his passion project Alexander right, and that movie still stinks.
This list doesn't have to be all schadenfreude, though. Maybe we can look at it as an inspiration! Once you have enough money, you can follow dreams, even if your dreams are incredibly stupid.
Shaquille O'Neal
![Shaq Fu, the 1994 video game featuring Shaquille O'Neal, was a huge failure. SHADFU . In 2014, O'Neal launched an Indiegogo campaign, asking for $450,000 to make Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn. The game came out in 2018 and also flopped, with a Metacritic score of 36. CLEVELAND 33 CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/9/2/863592.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
Metallica
![Metallica were excited to make an album with Lou Reed. They blamed fans when it sucked. Lulu debuted to pitiful sales, selling only 13,000 copies in its first week. James Hetfield later called the fans who criticized the effort fearful people who are probably typing from their mom's basement that they still live in. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/9/0/863590.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Sylvester Stallone
![Sylvester Stallone's '40s-era Rocky rehash Paradise Alley was based on his memories of growing up in Hell's Kitchen. Stallone wrote, directed, and starred in it, and even sang the theme song (badly). So when it tanked at the box office, he took it as a personal blow. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/9/1/863591.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Paul McCartney
![In 1984, Paul McCartney wrote the screenplay for and played himself in Give My Regards to Broad Street. Somehow, he has zero charisma, and manages to make being a rock star look dull and plodding. Also, there's a rehashed plot, flat characters, and many pointless dream sequences. It bombed hard, critically and financially. Why did McCartney make it? Because being the star of his own movie was his childhood dream. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/8/9/863589.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Jessica Biel
![Jessica Biel launched a fancy restaurant for rich kids. Her place, Au Fudge, offered kid favorites like banana sandwiches with almond butter? Well, there was a creative space that looked, uh, like a trendy startup office - kids love that, right? Mysteriously, Au Fudge didn't make any money. They closed after two years. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/8/8/863588.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Brian McKnight
![Grammy winner Brian McKnight wrote and performed YouPorn's theme song. After his song If You're Ready To Learn (How Your P***y Works), YouPorn came calling and asked for a theme tune. Не obliged with Head On Over To YouPorn. Does YouPorn even need a theme song? Does a theme song play on their site? No. And that apparently doesn't matter. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/8/7/863587.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Charlton Heston
![Charlton Heston narrated the nuclear industry's training films. When a Los Alamos worker complained about their boring videos, another one asked Who in the hell do you want, Charlton Heston? The answer was yes, and they got him. The job involved talking about major nuclear secrets, so they gave him top nuclear security clearance. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/8/6/863586.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
Kevin Spacey
![Kevin Spacey sang and danced to get investors for Beyond the Sea. Не wrote, directed and starred in it because his mom loved Bobby Darin. Audiences, however, did not share his passion, and the movie bombed at the box office, making less than a third of its $25 million budget. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/8/5/863585.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
Patrick Stewart
![Sir Patrick Stewart's lifelong dream was to play Othello, Shakespeare's famously dark-skinned lead. And in 1997, he did. Не played a white Othello in an all-black cast. The director called it a photo-negative version of the story. Stewart continues to insist that actors should be free to play roles that differ from their own ethnicity or gender. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/8/3/863583.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
Terry Gilliam
![Terry Gilliam started working on The Man who killed Don Quixote in 1989. It took him 29 years to finish. Delays included legal disputes, natural disasters and the deaths of two lead actors. It earned less at the U.S. box office than Lost In La Mancha, a documentary about Gilliam's troubled first production. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/8/2/863582.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
Francis Ford Coppola
![Francis Ford Coppola's 1982 musical film One From The Heart was backed by the director's own money because he wanted to focus on what he wanted to say instead of becoming Hollywood's hired gun. The film brought six years of financial troubles to Coppola. Не likened the film to a kamikaze attack. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/8/4/863584.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
Morrissey
![In 2015, Morrissey wrote a novel about a 1970s relay team that gets embroiled in black magic. The novel, List of the Lost, has phrases like bulbous salutation (meaning erection), lush houses of beddy-bye shut-eye snoozled in sleepland, and Whoever put the pain in painting had also put the fun in funeral. Book reviewers and Morrissey fans both hated it. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/8/1/863581.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Leonard Nimoy
![Leonard Nimoy ran a Los Angeles pet store with exotic animals. Avide from joining *Mission Impossible this year, Leonard found time to fulfill - lifetime dream-he opened . per shop. Nimoy's PET SHOP! PSTP His wife and the children all helped out con opening das and it turns out the love of animals is all through the family Would you believe we finally learned Не wanted to see more crocodiles and brightly colored birds, which he loved, in California. So his store sold monkeys, chipmunks, otters, and-yup-crocodiles. The store, Leonard Nimoy's Pet Pad, was only open for one year (that](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/8/0/863580.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Bob Dylan
![34 Celebrity Projects That Were Probably a Big Ol’ Mistake](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/9/863579.gif)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Kevin Costner
![Kevin Costner ran a Wild West-inspired casino in Deadwood, South Dakota. with His Midnight Star Casino and Restaurant was a Costner-themed grand saloon. Next to old-timey glasses hung Costner memorabilia (like the Elvis suit from 3000 Miles To Graceland). Somehow, the Costner/Wild West mashup wasn't enough of a draw, and the place closed in 2017. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/8/863578.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Nick Carter
![A bunch of boy band singers made a gritty zombie western. LARGER THAN LIFE! Members of Backstreet Boys, O-Town, 98 Degrees, and NSYNC star in SyFy's Dead 7. There's no singing or dancing, just killing zombies. It was Nick Carter's passion project, that he helped fund with $150,000 from his failed IndieGoGo campaign (for another movie). CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/7/863577.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
Will Smith
![Will Smith came up with After Earth as a parenting metaphor. In the movie, a sci-fi soldier (Will Smith) guides his son (his real-life son Jaden) through a post-apocalyptic landscape. For Will Smith, it was really about him helping Jaden navigate show business. The movie got an 11% Rotten Tomatoes score and six Golden Raspberry nominations (the Smiths won an acting Razzie each, and another one as the Worst Screen Combo). CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/6/863576.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
Heidi Montag
![CRACKED COM ie TV ds Heidi Montag spent nearly $2 million of her own money on her first album, titled Superficial. The album, which she and her husband produced themselves, took three years to make. Despite boasts that it was comparable to Michael HETDI Jackson's Thriller in terms MONTAS of sound and quality, SUPERACIAL Superficial was met with poor sales and bad reviews. Au](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/5/863575.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
Oliver Stone
![16% ALEXANDER was the legendary Oliver Stone's dream project, but was reviled by critics and moviegoers alike. Не was so committed to the flop that there are three versions of the movie out there, because he couldn't live with the failure and kept trying new edits. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/4/863574.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
Mel Gibson
![Mel Gibson worked passionately for two decades to make the movie The Professor and the Madman. It was a box office disaster which didn't even recoup a third of its budget. It also only got 38% on Rotten Tomatoes. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/1/863571.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
MC Hammer
![MC Hammer tried to go head-to-head with Google. WIREDoo In 2011, he started the deep search engine WireDoo. It was supposed to be more informative than Google - search results for, say, Honda Civic would also include pricing and insurance info. For unknown reasons, it went belly-up a few months after it was announced. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/7/863567.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Matthew Perry / Jennifer Aniston
![In Friends' heyday, Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry filmed a Windows 95 guide. It's a very meta cyber sitcom where they wait for Bill Gates so they can audition for, uh, the Windows 95 video tutorial. (Gates doesn't show up.) Major concepts are explained by wacky characters - like a Russian maintenance dude who's there just to explain plug and play. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/5/863565.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Michael Cera
![Dorky, lovable Michael Cera makes David Lynch-style short movies. They range from absurd comedy to pure weirdness. In Gregory Go Boom, say, he's a paraplegic who fails to perform sexually, then gets thrown out of a window, then rolls his wheelchair into a field and sets himself on fire. If that's your thing, his shorts are on the YouTube channel JASH. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/9/863569.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Stephen King / Stan Winston / Michael Jackson
![Stephen King wrote (and Stan Winston directed) Michael Jackson's 40-minute horror movie. MJ as the Mayor Ghosts is about a mob, led by a middle-aged white mayor (played by MJ), storming MJ's castle because he's corrupting their kids. In the end, the kids insist MJ is innocent, so the parents let him keep doing what he does. MJ made this movie after he got accused of molesting kids. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/5/9/863559.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Luc Besson
![CRACKED.COM VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS. This film was already on Luc Besson's mind during the filming of The Fifth Element It was torn (1997). 20 years later, apart by critics Besson put $180 and flopped so million of his own hard it struggled to money into the making break even. of the film.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/3/863573.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
Strange Magic
![George Lucas' 2015 flop Strange Magic was one of his biggest passion projects. It's an animated musical with a story built around lyrics from Lucas' favorite songs (those songs are about 70% of the movie). His goal was to make another Star Wars, but for girls, and he worked on the movie on and off for 15 years. It had the worst opening of any animated film, ever, and got 17% on Rotten Tomatoes. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/1/863561.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
Bill Murray
![Bill Murray wanted to do a serious film. It flopped. Murray and director John Byrum spent 18 months writing a film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge. The movie, about a traumatized WW1 veteran, would be his first starring dramatic role. The movie was panned by critics, with Murray later admitting, I kind of deluded myself that there would be a lot of interest. I made a big mistake. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/0/863570.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
Bob Dylan
![RENALDO & CLARA is a four hour movie created by Bob Dylan that has footage of his concerts, interviews of various singers, and vignettes based on lyrics from his songs It was pulled from theaters when critics called it incoherent, impenetrable, self-indulgent, and... virtually unwatchable. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/2/863572.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
William Shatner
![William Shatner played a man of God in an Esperanto horror flick. In 1966, before Trek, Shatner played a guy resisting sexy demons in Incubus. Like the other actors, he learned his lines by sound, so the dialogue has all the punch of a school play. Amazingly, Shatner loved the script from the start, and still thinks he made a pretty good movie. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/8/863568.jpg)
Source: 17 Celebrity Vanity Projects That Imploded Gloriously
Tom Berenger
![Platoon star Tom Berenger co-owned a restaurant that was all about twins. 37 sets of identical twins worked at the restaurant. The only non-twin staffers were Berenger, the chef, and the general manager. They had double door knobs, double light fixtures, and Doublemint gum. The slogan? You can only make a first impression once. We can make it twice. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/6/863566.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Steven Spielberg
![In the '90s, Steven Spielberg opened Dive!, a submarine-themed restaurant. Sun LA DIUE! KING Every half hour, to make guests feel like they were in a diving sub, the restaurant would go dark and huge video screens played underwater footage while lights flashed and alarms blared. A critic said it was like eating in a pinball machine. It went bust in five years. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/2/863562.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Sylvester Stallone
![Sylvester Stallone sold high-protein pudding (not a euphemism). STALLONE HIGH PROTEIN STALLONE HIGH PROTEIN Pudding 20 GRAMS OF PROTEIN 20 GRAMS MILK CHOCOLATE Pudding OF PROTEIN LOW CARBI NET WT 5.8 SUGAR FREE 5.82oz (165g) STALLONE HIGH PROTEIN Pudding 20 GRAMS OF PROTEIN LOW CARBI MILK CHOCOLATE SUGAR FREE NET WT 5.82oz (165g) It was basically a thick protein shake that, Stallone said, would make you ripped. But he got sued by a guy who claimed he really invented the stuff. Stallone's response? The ingrdients were just common knowledge. They settled, while the world forgot about muscle pudding. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/3/863563.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Selena Gomez
![A Love Story is Selena Gomez' arthouse horror Instagram video. It's two minutes of scenes like Gomez eating an eyeball, Gomez making out with a headless face, and so on. There's no, well, story, and no link to her other work. Was it made to promote IGTV, Instagram's video service? Or something filmed just because? We have no idea. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/4/863564.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through
Stevie Nicks
![Stevie Nicks posed for photos for a self-defense manual. She was turning down every photo shoot, but when her bodyguard asked her to model for his self-defense book, she happily agreed. The result? 100 photos of them in fighting poses. Не (Bob Jones) called it the most magnificent set of photos ever offered to the martial arts. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/0/863560.jpg)
Source: Projects That Celebrities Definitely Didn't Think Through