Making a movie is no cheap task for indie filmmakers or even the largest studios in the world; if you want to make a movie, you better be ready to invest some amount of money. There will always be ways to cut back production costs and find methods to save some extra money here and there, but if a movie is a big enough hit to generate return on investment, no company seems to find a problem shelling out the cash to make sure that the sequel is an even bigger production. Let’s take a look at the 10 most expensive movie budgets of all time…
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10. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian – $225 Million
Back in 2008 the third installment of the famous book series by C.S. Lewis was released with a huge budget for the massive production efforts it took to bring the fantasy world to life. Throughout the production process, 35 people were actually brought on as full time employees while the rest of the crew included around 200 carpenters just to build the massive sets. There were over 7,000 props needed for this film and although $225 million was poured into it, Prince Caspian paid off as it brought in just under $420 million at the box office.
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9. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – $225 Million
The sequel in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean series was a massive production after the huge success of the first film. Money was mainly put towards the creation of set pieces such as both huge pirate ships (The Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman) from scratch as well as paying the series’ star cast members boat loads (hah) of money. Johnny Depp is said to have made $20 million from Dead Man’s Chest while the other cast included Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Bill Nighy and Stellan Skarsgård. In the end, Dead Man’s Chest was another mega hit for Disney and earned them a return of $1,066,179,725 at the box office.
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8. Man of Steel – $225 Million
While my guess would have been that Man of Steel ran up its budget with all of the special effects in the movie, I would surprisingly be wrong. The 2013 superhero movie actually put $150 million towards marketing and distribution which seems odd because Superman is such a household name, I would have thought they needed a minimal amount of marketing. Regardless, the goal was to earn back as much as possible before the motion picture was even released. While Man of Steel only earned $662 million worldwide, it gained an extra $160 million from product placement with (to name a few) companies such as CNN, Walmart, and Nikon.
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7. The Dark Knight Rises – $230 Million
Following up with another DC comic book character, The Dark Knight Rises was another big budget superhero movie. The third installment of Christopher Nolan’s trilogy featured even more vehicles, cast members, and production required to bring Gotham to life one last time. I’m sure that the big star actors like Christian Bale, Gary Oldman and Tom Hardy were making a nice penny for this but expect that more money was once again put towards the destruction of Gotham city. The Dark Knight Rises ended up being the third highest grossing film in 2012 (behind Marvel’s The Avengers and Skyfall) but still brought in a massive return of $1,084,439,099 at the box office.
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6. Avatar – $237 Million
The epic James Cameron sci-fi blockbuster that was originally thought up in 1999 took ten years just to get started because Cameron wanted to wait until he believed the technology was good enough to properly bring his fantasy world to life. The budget was mainly spent on the cutting edge visual graphics but also was allotted towards some sillier things like paying a linguist to create the entire Na’vi language. Despite James Cameron’s extreme film making antics, Avatar was still able to bring in a ridiculously large $2,782,275,172 at the box office, so I doubt anyone was complaining about this one.
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5. John Carter – $250 Million
John Carter released in 2012 and ended up being a huge flop for Disney. The movie had a $250 million budget and barely ended up breaking even with a return of $282 million. The movie’s main costs came in the different types of filming techniques that were chosen but Disney’s biggest flaw probably came in allowing the cast to be very obscure and not have any huge immediate name draws.
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4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – $250 Million
Despite having the same budget amount as John Carter, Harry Potter at least has a huge following of book readers and movie watchers along with a proven cast, so there was justifiable reasoning behind putting that much into the film. The sixth installment of the Harry Potter series ended up setting the record for largest single day gross and continue to earn much more than the budget amount, making it well worth the money.
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3. Spider-Man 3 – $258 Million
Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy was one of the early superhero series that really took off to become something big, so it definitely doesn’t surprise me to see this landing so far up on the list. At this point I’m sure the main cast members were making a nice amount, each Spider-Man film required a ton of special effects to bring everything to life. The third movie was released in 2007 and featured three villains who all needed a decent bit of visual effects.
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2. Tangled – $260 Million
Disney’s 2010 recreation of the classic story Rapunzel was the most expensive animated movie created. The film took six years to put together and the reasoning behind that is because there was a mix of CGI and normal animation, which complicated things. Aside from the effort put into creating an animated movie, this was the largest budget assigned to a princess movie as well. In the end, Tangled brought in a successful $591,794,936 a the box office.
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1. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End – $300 Million
Earning the list’s top spot is the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, At World’s End. Following up with an even bigger budget than Dead Man’s Chest, this movie piled up its expenses from a couple of things. As I mentioned with Dead Man’s Chest, a huge amount was being paid to the main cast, but At World’s End filmed around in many different locations around the world and on top of that had to pay for the transportation of all of the cast, crew, and set needed to those locations.
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