Although a lot of reports show Avatar as the most expensive film made at some $500 million the true cost is much lower. The $150 million marketing budget, and the costs of developing the necessary 3-D cameras and motion capture technology which were independently financed by other investors should not be included in the production cost. There was also a 15% tax rebate from New Zealand that reduced the final bill by $25 – $30 million.
As for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, it was produced on a combined budget of $450 million with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and with overruns both movies cost a total of $500 million together. Since some costs such as actors and sets could have been split between both movies the exact production cost can not be determined but is estimated at $300 million.
As a result Spider-Man 3 is officially the world’s most expensive movie ever produced.
Here are the top 10 most expensive movies ever made:
- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007) – $300 million.
- Spider-Man 3 (2007) - $258 million.
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) – $250 million.
- Avatar (2009) – $237 million.
- The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008) – $225 million.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) – $225 million.
- X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) – $210 million.
- Superman Returns (2006) – $209 million.
- King Kong (2005) – $207 million.
- 2012 (2009), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Titanic (1997), Spider-Man 2 (2004), Quantum of Solace (2008) and Terminator Salvation (2009) – $200 million.
This entry was posted on Friday, May 28th, 2010 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I was a Production Assistant on this and other shows including Pirates out at the Palmdale Hangar dating back to ’06-’07. Actually, the true cost of Spider-Man 3, including reshoots and all the weeks they went over schedule–from what was coming out of Accounting, was somewhere around $320 million. The $258 million number was about what the project was greenlit at and also did not include all of the R&D they put into VFX beforehand which if you included would probably push that figure even higher. That’s why the initial news stated a $350 million budget because they were factoring all the R&D costs. Trust me $258 million is far below what they spent on this film. That said, as a 1 to 1 ratio budgetwise, Pirates 3 by itself didn’t come anywhere near the pricetag of Spidey 3. Also a friend of mine, a construction fore-man on Avatar, who should know because much of his job includes sitting in on budget meetings with UPM’s and Producers, told me over the phone that the project ran about $425 million not including marketing costs. But I think it does include the R&D costs, but just the movie itself–fx and all still wasn’t very far from $400 million. There you have it.