In this week’s blog we’re taking a look at some of the highest budget films!
In our previous blog we spoke about what are the best low budget films and now we are finding out the highest ever budget films! So please sit back and read along.
The world of film is forever changing and adapting, there is so much versatility within production now. You have a variety of different films to pick within different genre’s, it almost feels as if there’s nothing left to make a film about! But if you do have a new idea for a film well, they cost a ton of money to make with budgets required for sets, crew and, of course, the cast.
Hollywood is a HUGE business, raking in billions of dollars a year in revenues and profits. Movie budgets can average around “£100 million” for a big budget film, meaning a lot of tickets have to be sold to break even. When going into research on how the £100 million is broken down into part by part you are looking at the average cost to produce a major studio movie has been around £65 million!
But the production costs don’t cover distribution and marketing, which adds another £35 million. So, you can see that the distribution for the film can cost just as much as the film itself! Show’s that the promotion work has to be just as good.
This on average brings the total cost to produce and market a major movie to right about £100 million. Those kinds of numbers are a long way from the lowly £400,000 it cost to make “Napoleon Dynamite.”
Major costs include paying cast and all staff their salaries, CGI and special effects, and marketing. Most are granted strict budgets based on forecasted box office figures, although studios will occasionally go all out and gamble huge amounts of money in the hope of making astronomical money at the movie theatre.
Are you wondering what the most expensive films ever made are?
Here are the 5 most expensive movies ever made for your own curiosity.
Top 5 Highest Budget Films
Number 5. Avengers Infinity War
At Number 5 we have one of the most epic movies in cinematic history! When this trailer was released for the film, it actually broke the internet, hitting 230 million views inside 24 hours! This had never been seen before and showed the much-anticipated movie.
The reason this had such a build up towards the film was that prior to this it had 23 movies that built up to this one single movie where it saw a cast total of 141. Which you can imagine with a cast that HUGE and especially with some big-name actors in there such as Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlet Johansson and Samuel Jackson the budget is going to be extremely high!
In-fact the overall budget for the film came to a HUGE £300 MILLION. While £300 million might seem like a lot of money (it is!), if you compare it to Disney’s overall entertainment budget of $5.9 billion, Avengers: Infinity War only makes up around 5.4% of the total pie.
Number 4. Star Wars EP 7 – The Force Awakens
One of the biggest reboots in film we have ever seen! Fans were made to wait over a decade before a new Star Wars film had come out as previously it had been the “Revenge of the Sith!”.
A 30 year wait also for a follow-on film from the 6th movie “Return of the Jedi” since then fans were told to use their imagination for what happened after that movie and chose to tell the back story instead starting from Episode 1 “The Phantom Menace”. Until J.J Abrams was chosen to be director and left to reboot the franchise and was given a HUGE budget of £306 Million. Now if you take this into context the last Star Wars film that appeared a decade ago had a budget of £113 Million (which is still a lot) but nothing compared to their newest budgets!
Saying all of this though Star Wars EP 7 – The Force Awakens still managed to almost triple its budget domestically by hitting a whopping £936 Million and then the numbers get even bigger after grossing £2.06 Billion!
Number 3. Age Of Ultron
Up next is Avengers; Age Of Ultron it is the sequel to The Avengers (2012) and the 11th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). After having so much success with the first film they brought back the same director for the film and also increased his budget from the measly £220 Million to the £365 Million so only the £145 Million difference…
Saying this the film did not receive the same amount of love and reception as the first film did with some critics calling the film “grossly underwhelming” and “mindless action and cool CGI” but even with their critics the film still managed to gain £495 Million domestically and grossing a massive £1.3 Billion.
Number 2. Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
At Number 2 is Stranger Tides which is the oldest out of all of these films! But probably one of the most criticize films of the early 2010’s generation for it’s confusing and misleading plots and it’s under-development of characters. Which is a shame because speaking from a completely bias point I use to love the Pirates of the Caribbean!
Despite the huge production costs, Disney’s haul from On Stranger Tides was impressive. The movie had a worldwide box office gross of $1,045,713,802 according to analysts Box Office Mojo with theatres taking around half of that.
Which is crazy numbers but the budget came to £379 Million but I have to say I was not surprised by the budget at all, after you saw the magic, they did in the previous films with Davy Jones especially, they really made that character come to life and it even beats some of the CGI we see today and that film came out in 2007.
Although with all this said after the budget, they spent on this film they ended with their profit margins being a bit closer than expected! But this does not surprise me it was bashed by a lot of critics scoring them a 33% out of %100 on rotten tomatoes.
Number 1. Avengers: Endgame
Drum Roll Please .. .. .. …
At Number 1 the biggest movie arguably of all time is Marvel’s Endgame. Marvel has spent the last 11 years constructing a complex, interconnected web of stories, and in the process, built an entire universe for us to enjoy.
Character by Character, Film by Film and Now, they give us what is essentially their grand finale! 22 individual films have all led up to this moment. “Avengers: Infinity War”, which is essentially part 1 of this story. The part 2 coming together to try undo what had been done in “Avengers: Infinity War”.
While we thought Infinity war was big, we were not expecting this they spent an extra £100 Million on this film bringing this to a total of £400 Million! The biggest budget for any film EVER. While you think that is a lot of money which it most certainly is, they sure earnt that money back! Grossing over £2.7 Billion and breaking another record becoming one of the biggest grossing films of all time, doing £500 Million more sales than titanic and just short of £100 million off over-taking Avatar.
