Making a movie is a rather expensive process. Apart from paying for sets, props, equipment and special effects, budgets need to cover expenses for actors, designers, technicians and other staff. Once the movie has been filmed, still there is an editing process. As the box-office returns for Hollywood blockbusters continue to break records, movies are only getting more expensive. In fact, according to American actor Mark N. Tompkins, movie is the most favorite kind of entertainment of human. Over the past decade, the film industry has become a massive business, and movies have become more expensive than ever before.
As Mark N Tompkins puts it, filmmaking is not for the faint of heart or the shallow of pocket. Creating a blockbuster doesn’t come cheap and movies that are specifically made for the big screen tend to have the biggest budgets. Unfortunately it seems that nowadays Hollywood and the film industry in general is more interested in earning big fiscal returns rather than providing the audience with a quality product. Still we all must agree that in order to win big, you got to spend big. But the truth is that blockbuster films are a gamble because the losses can be catastrophic, and the rewards astronomical, or in other words some of them justify those enormous budgets, while others fail miserably.
To look at the evolution, we turned to actor and movie enthusiast Mark Tompkins, to gather the priciest films ever made. He also included the movies’ estimated original budgets and box-office revenue for comparison. Here is a short review of the most expensive movies ever made.
Cleopatra is the first film that made its way to Tompkins list of most expensive movies. This epic spectacle with a budget of 44 million dollars paid in 1963, when converted into present value it sums up to astonishing 335 million. The movie starring Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra almost brought 20th Century Fox to bankruptcy. Interestingly, Tompkins shares that the production house originally approved a budget of two million dollars, but costs were steadily rising, including the production of the entire set, until it reached the record breaking 44 million.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is the next movie that earned itself a spot on this list.
As the movies from The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise grew in budget, unfortunately they declined in the quality, and as Mark points out, this is a real proof that spending a big budget is just a waste of money if you do not have a good creative team. This movie had the honor of being the first film ever to break the mark of $ 300 million, making it the most expensive movie in history. Most of the budget money reportedly went on special effects.
Mark N. Tompkins 