Orphaned Reference: The brief visit to the sultan's menagerie, where the main enclosure is exited through a conspicuous torn hole, was intended to foreshadow a cut boss battle with a Sand-mutatedgriffon (which does appear in the Game Boy Advance version).
Promoted Fanboy: Producer Yves Guillemot was a big fan of the original, and once he learned Ubisoft had acquired Prince of Persia, begged his bosses to work with a new game on the series.
Box Office Bomb: Zig-Zagged. The film is one of the last victims of old-school Hollywood Accounting. Production budget: $120 million. Reported budget: $150-200 million (note the unspecific final claim). On top of that, since it didn't made even half of its budget back in home market, the studio instantly flagged it as a flop, despite earning $336 million world-wide. To put into some perspective: it was the most successful "video game movie" when it came out and first one to dethrone Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (from 2001) with its revenue of $275 million. Despite all that, since it didn't bring in the Pirates of the Caribbean-like numbers Disney expected, it was flagged as a financial disaster.
Creator Backlash: In an interview from 2019, Jake Gyllenhaal mentioned regretting picking the project and that the only real value it ended up having for him was learning to never pick such role again.
Not Screened for Critics: Fearing bad reviews due to the stigma over video game movies, the execs barred screenings for critics, while reshuffling release dates globally, wanting as many people to watch it before critics. It potentially screwed the film over from making it big, since the marketing campaign was just as weird and disjoined. And once critics eventually got to the movie, they trashed it anyway, while also bringing the subject of lack of pre-premiere screenings to hide the stinker.
Playing Against Type: Jake Gyllenhaal, an action hero? In this movie, yes. Note that he almost replaced Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man in Spider-Man 2, had Maguire not recovered from a back injury.
Screwed by the Network: And unintentionally so. Wanting to maximise profits from the release, Disney barred screenings for critics and in the same time organised release date in "reverse" order to their standard procedure: first releasing globally, and week later in the English-speaking countries, including American market. And the international release wasn't on standardised date either. The result was movie leaked online by mid-May, despite not being released anywhere until 19th of it. Since the reviews from all around the globe still reached the US market anyway, it cooled down any anticipation, then the American critics trashed the movie on their own. While the film was nowhere near the level of bomb Disney claimed, they managed to mismanage it completely in the very end to decrease their profits.
