Written by Andrew Salmon from IVA
Ah, the annual tradition of the summer blockbusters. Some are great, some not so great, but one thing they all have in common is that they cost a fortune to make! With dozens of movies to choose from, here are the top five most expensive films to make.
5. Avatar ($250 million?)
More than the production was shadowed in secrecy for James Cameron’s latest. How much the film cost to make is also a matter of much debate in Hollywood. Some say it cost $500 million, others say a paltry $200 million. So a conservative estimate lies between these two extremes. Imagine $250 million as a conservative estimate! But when you go on to be the highest grossing film of all time, everything becomes relative.
4. Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince ($250 million)
Nothing like a successful franchise with a proven track record to loosen the wallets in Hollywood. This sixth installment in the phenomenally successful series was a pretty safe bet for the studio given the billions earned by the other five films. But Potter and the crew at Hogwarts have staying power to go along with that box office muscle.
3. Spider-Man 3 ($258 million)
Forty years of comic history have to be worth something, right? Well, for the webslinger, that history was worth hundreds of millions in production costs and billions at the worldwide box office. The overwhelming success of the first two films made ponying up big bucks for the third instalment a no-brainer. Love it or hate it, it looks amazing. That was a lot of money to throw up on screen. Walloping websnappers!
2. Titanic ($285 million)
In an age where mega-blockbusters are the norm, Titanic’s long run as the highest grossing movie of all time is staggering. Fittingly Cameron’s Avatar beat this box office champ, which cost an unheard of sum in 1996 but $1.8 billion in box office receipts kept a lot of studio executives breathing and employed. Predicted to be the biggest flop of all time before its release, Titanic beat the odds and became the all time champ, setting the standard for all blockbusters to come.
1. Pirates Of The Caribbean At World’s End ($300 million)
How much is Johnny Depp worth? A lot! Disney gladly shelled out a whopping $300 million for this third chapter of the Pirates franchise to make it the most expensive movie ever made. However the $960 million it grossed globally (to say nothing of DVD sales) more than earned those costs back. Stick that in Davy Jones’s Locker!
And there you have it. Of course, time may reveal that Avatar’s production costs makes the other films on this list look like low budget productions. And Gone With The Wind’s adjusted box office take makes these films look like horrendous flops but for production costs, these are the big guns. How long before a movie costs one billion to make? Probably not as long as you think.
Andrew Salmon runs IVA, a website with information on Individual Voluntary Arrangements.
