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The 50 Most Expensive Movies of All Time

By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under Seriously Random Lists | Comments (32)

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The thing about Hollywood suits is that, though they often have no idea how to make a good movie, they’re very good at making profitable ones. Given the escalating production budgets on blockbuster films, you’d think that the studios would be seeing a lot of red. Not true. In fact, of the 50 Most Expensive Movies of All Time, only one failed to recoup its production budget after worldwide grosses were accounted for, the 2007 Evan Almighty, which only lost $2 million (and no, marketing budgets are not included, but let’s assume for the sake of this list, that the marketing budget was recouped in DVD and digital sales). Indeed, of the 50 Most Expensive Films of All Time, only 7 films (including Evan Almighty) failed to make at least $100 million more than their production budgets: Rush Hour, Wild Wild West, Waterworld, Poseidon, Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and Alexander. Yes, even Van Helsing made back more than $100 million Clearly, studio focus-testing works, even if the product ends up a diluted, inartful mess of explosions and celebrity voice-overs. It also proves that, if you throw a lot of money at a movie, audiences will throw it all back and then some.


1. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End: $300 million ($960 million)

2. Tangled: $260 million ($560 million)

3. Spider-Man 3: $258 million ($890 million)

4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $250 million ($933 million)

5. Avatar: $237 million ($2.7 billion)

6. Superman Returns: $232 million ($391 million)

7. Quantum of Solace: $230 million ($576 million)

8. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest: $225 million ($1 billion)

9. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian: $225 million ($419 million)

10. Robin Hood: $210 million ($322 million)

11. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: $210 million ($836 million)

12. King Kong: $207 million ($550 million)

13. His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass: $207 million ($372 million)

14. Toy Story 3: $200 million ($1 billion)

15. Spider-man 2: $200 million ($783 million)

16. Tron: Legacy: $200 million ($397 million)

17. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time: $200 million ($335 million)

18. Alice in Wonderland: $200 million ($1 billion)

19. 2012: $200 million ($766 million)

20. Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins: $200 million ($371 million)

21. Titanic: $200 million ($1.8 billion)

22. Disney’s A Christmas Carol: $190 million ($323 million)

23. Iron Man: $186 million ($582 million)

24. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: $185 million ($786 million)

25. The Dark Knight: $185 million ($1 billion)

26. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: $180 million ($748 million)

27. Wall-E: $180 million ($532 million)

28. Rush Hour: $180 million ($253 million)

29. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: $175 million ($302 million)

30. Up: $175 million ($731 million)

31. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor: $175 million ($397 million)

32. Wild Wild West: $175 million ($221 million)

33. Waterworld: $175 million ($264 million)

34. Evan Almighty: $175 million ($173 million)

35. Monsters and Aliens: $175 million ($381 million)

36. Van Helsing: $170 million ($300 million)

37. Iron Man 2: $170 million ($623 million)

38. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines: $170 million ($433 million)

39. Polar Express: $170 million ($306 million)

40. How to Train Your Dragon: $165 million ($494 million)

41. Shrek Forever After: $165 million ($752 million)

42. Shrek the Third: $160 million ($798 million)

43. Poseidon: $160 million ($182 million)

44. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: $160 million ($329 million)

45. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: $160 million ($215 million)

46. Inception: $160 million ($832 million)

47. Alexander: $155 million ($167 million)

48. Pearl Harbor: $151 million ($449 million)

49. Transformers: $151 million ($708 million)

50. Troy: $150 million ($497 million)









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Comments

Two comments:

1. Is that a real photograph of Kate Bosworth? I always knew she had a rather large forehead, but whatever is going on there is frightening. Her hairline is like 3 inches further back than mine and I am 37 year old guy with a male pattern baldness thing going on.

2. How in the hell did Rush Hour cost $180 million to make?

Posted by: Forbiddendonut at March 31, 2011 12:15 PM

@Forbiddendonut: Half of that was for Jackie Chan's insurance policy. The other half went into Ratner's petty cash box to use on coke, whores, and coke whores.

Posted by: RobP at March 31, 2011 12:18 PM

And then whores who just like to drink Coke (C).

Posted by: e at March 31, 2011 12:25 PM

@Forbiddendonut

That's got to be the budget for Rush Hour 3, which is disturbing considering: a) it's only 80 minutes long and b) it's a Brett Ratner movie.

Posted by: Eli at March 31, 2011 12:28 PM

They forget that a starving person will eat green peppers if that's all there is at the salad bar. I hate green peppers.

Posted by: Odnon at March 31, 2011 12:28 PM

I'm not a big Avatar fan, but you've got to admit that profit-wise, that movie looks down on the competition from a very, very great height.

I'm curious how Tangled ended up so much more expensive than other CG movies.

Posted by: Todd at March 31, 2011 12:30 PM

Ok, here's something I don't get: how did so many computer animated movies end up costing so much? I know alot of people work on the animation and in some cases the voice talent might take up a bigger chunk of the budget (Toy Story 3 for instance; but what about Up? The only big name in that movie is Ed Asner), but man, $260 million for Tangled? What in the hell am I missing?

Posted by: birdgal at March 31, 2011 12:32 PM

Jesus, look at all that money.

Posted by: Anna von Beav at March 31, 2011 12:34 PM

Are there whores who aren't on coke?

Posted by: superasente at March 31, 2011 12:40 PM

I just hear a long series of ka-chings! when looking at that list.

Posted by: Bigby at March 31, 2011 12:41 PM

Wow, I remember back when Titanic was being made there was all of this talk about how Cameron was spending an insane amount of money on it. Now it's down to number 21.

Posted by: Fracas at March 31, 2011 12:44 PM

33. Waterworld: $175 million ($264 million)

Worldwide gross saved this formerly largest budget of all time, as it didn't even break $90mil domestically. I remember how huge a story it was that Costner almost doubled Universal's authorized budget for the film.

Also, this film is now old enough to NOT incur rental car age penalties.

Posted by: branded at March 31, 2011 12:44 PM

I'm with everyone on the Tangled confusion, but why the hell did Robin Hood cost so much? Were the costumes made from the skin of baby bald eagles? Were the trees shipped in from the deepest forests of Siberia? Was Russell Crowe feted with Charlie Sheen-level prostitutes? Was the entire movie CGI'd, then lost, then CGI'd again, then lost again, then CGI'd a third time before being CGI'd again? I'm flummoxed, goddamnit!

Posted by: Kballs at March 31, 2011 12:47 PM

Just remember: Ian Mckellan was going to be the Max Von Sydow character. Then Ian remembered he'd already done one Brett Ratner movie and wanted to get back to real movies.

Posted by: bignick at March 31, 2011 12:50 PM

I'm struggling to put my kids through private school and worried through the night about college costs, and seeing these numbers for such poisonously bland pieces of utter shit is hurting me. Real pain.

Posted by: klingonfree at March 31, 2011 12:53 PM

What's really interesting was the reaction of the studio to these movies. Superman Returns made $159 million in profit but killed the franchise again. Golden Compass made $165 million and killed a chance at a sequel. Terminator Salvation made $175 million but there's no talk of a Terminator 5. If the marketing and advertising costs of these movies were factored in, I bet that their profit margins would drop precariously. Terminator Salvation was an 187% return on investment, which is pretty good. However, if the marketing costs were $100 million then the movie was only a 125% return, in which case a sequel would be too big a risk. It would be nice if the studios included marketing costs in their budgets so we could get a better idea of a film's true costs. I'm sure that it would upset a few of the top earners.

Posted by: Lewis Jackson at March 31, 2011 1:07 PM

I am boggled as to how At World's End could possibly make nearly a billion dollars. How?!?! I couldn't even get through it once on DVD.

And Terminator Salvation had a subtitle? Huh, never noticed that.

In agreement with those wondering how animated films cost so much. Double huh.

Posted by: cydeleida at March 31, 2011 1:12 PM

How the fuck was tangles so expensive? That's asburd.

Also, can someone adjust this list for inflation please.

Posted by: miked at March 31, 2011 2:33 PM

None of the LOTR trilogy movies made the top 50 for cost? Didn't they have to bring motion capture technology way ahead of where it was at the time and outfit 50,000 hobbits or some such shit? those feet couldn't have been cheap.

Posted by: bokchoi at March 31, 2011 3:24 PM

My God! Reading this list made me sad and depressed! How did so many of those movies cost that much??

Posted by: The Minn at March 31, 2011 3:38 PM

I think the animated movies cost so much mostly because they take a long time to make and require a lot of people to get things done. Pixar movies take 4 years to make, somehow Tangled was in production for 6 years. All those salaries start to add up.

Posted by: benjiep at March 31, 2011 4:03 PM

For those confused: The estimated $260 million figure for Tangled includes the production/development costs of two other previous incarnations of the film -- Rapunzel Unbraided and Rapunzel -- that were in the works for six-seven years prior, and the number also encompasses the technology created to produce this and those versions (which has gone on to be used for other Disney productions).

Again, they were three separate films, so the figure is a tabulation of the cost of different projects that are traditionally not combined, and so Tangled -- which was in production for around two-and-a-half years -- technically did not cost anywhere near $260 million. The film's budget was in line with other animated films.

Posted by: Alex at March 31, 2011 4:30 PM

@bokchoi

I think because the LoTR movies were all made at the same time costs were saved.

Posted by: feelsgoodman at March 31, 2011 5:29 PM

Wait a second... Alexander made HOW MUCH?!?!

Posted by: Holly at March 31, 2011 11:09 PM

wow! Worldwide gross saved this formerly largest budget of all time, as it didn't even break $90mil domestically. I remember how huge a story it was that Costner almost doubled Universal's authorized budget for the film.
Also, this film is now old enough to NOT incur rental car age penalties

Posted by: cosplay wigs at April 1, 2011 5:30 AM

None of the figures can really be trusted as its in studios interest to massively inflate production costs to reduce the net profit that they have to account for:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

The story I've heard also is that these animation flicks apparently cost a shitload because of all the 3d rendering which is done frame by frame, so with 30 odd frames a second... it takes a farm of computer geeks ages to do. But, yeah, the number still sound like bullshit to me for a movie where nothing gets blown up.

Posted by: lenoir at April 1, 2011 9:03 AM

By my count, 11 of those movies don't count as disappointments. I haven't seen all 11, either, so I'm going by other people's opinion, and I'm counting Iron Man even though it was terrible.

Posted by: Pinky at April 1, 2011 3:14 PM

This list is the main reason why they keep shelling out crappy movies to us. More than half of these movies didn't deserve the box office they got. Shameful.

Posted by: Candy at April 1, 2011 4:01 PM

Here's the math.

$9.759 billion invested
$30.759 billion returned

it's interesting and coincidental, the .759! but yes that shows you how rich - more than $20 billion pure profit - these top 50 movies alone have been.

Posted by: tstportal at April 3, 2011 1:55 AM

Superman Returns was the biggest disappointment I've ever had at the theatre. Bryan Singer should never do anything related to superheroes again.

Oh wait, they gave him the next X-Men. Too late.

Posted by: ctallg at April 3, 2011 3:46 AM

Interestingly enough, this does NOT allow for inflation, which means it's probably bollocks. 'Of all time'? If it WAS, both Cleopatra and Ben Hur would surely appear on the list. Ben Hur had 7 full-sized roman Triremes in battle for gods sake!

Posted by: DannyBoy at April 3, 2011 6:49 AM

Ridiculous for Tangled. They probably didn't make that much for the net gain because they wasted so much money on it. LOTR was actually a low budget film, believe it or not. They just worked extremely hard at attention to detail. I'm so stoked for the Hobbit to come out though. (That one will definitely not be low budget).

Posted by: Kel at April 5, 2011 1:24 AM