The movie that earned 4000% less at the box office than Michael Caine predicted

Not only that, but the movie in question was being released during an especially lean time in Caine’s career. After earning his third ‘Best Actor’ nomination at the Oscars for Educating Rita, he followed it up with a string of duds. The Honorary Consul and The Jigsaw Man flopped amid a mixed response, and while Blame It on Rio didn’t bomb, it was nonetheless criticised for being weirdly creepy.

The tide had to turn eventually, and he believed that 1985’s Water would be the thing to do it. Director Dick Clement’s period-set comedy finds Caine as a British diplomat dispatched to the fictional Caribbean island of Cascara, with his easy life becoming more complicated than he would like when an offshore oil rig discovers a lucrative deposit of pristine mineral water.

Unlike some of the credits he came to regret, Caine believed in the film, albeit a little too much. “This picture is very funny, but it’s not going to get anybody an Academy Award,” he noted before its release. “It might get a $50-60 million gross, which to me is just as important. If they go broke on this picture, they’re not going to give me any more work.”

Having laid down a marker, when Water arrived in cinemas, he had to wipe the egg from his face. It debuted in the top ten in the United Kingdom, but couldn’t find an American distributor. When it did, the film tanked there, too, and ended its theatrical run with less than $1.3 million in the coffers.

The hugely optimistic, and with the benefit of hindsight, incredibly foolish, leading man had suggested that he’d settle for a $50 million take. In reality, though, it earned over 3,800% less, which is ever so slightly wide of the mark. He seemed confident that he’d made a winner, but it goes without saying that there’s quite the fucking discrepancy between his prediction and the cold, hard, bleakly hilarious truth.

It didn’t help that, in an ironic twist, much like the adverse side effects it causes onscreen, Water was the drizzling shits. “You don’t go into a film thinking, ‘This is a load of crap, but I need the money,’” Caine offered. “I do things that I like, and then make sure I get the maximum amount of money out of it. I figure if I’m going to work, someone’s going to make massive amounts of money. One of the people is going to be me.”

The movie didn’t make any money, that’s for sure, and let’s hope that Caine got his wish and was paid massive amounts of money for his efforts, looking at the 4,000% swing between hope and reality.