Movies are expensive. How expensive? This article (I’ve transcribed the list below) from /Film does a pretty good job of enumerating the huge budgets on modern blockbuster trilogies like The Hobbit and Transformers.
Keep in mind too, that when you see a movie’s budget it only includes the production costs. All of those TV commercials, internet ads, and press junkets can oft times double the price of these already massive budgets.
While I’m all for entertainment, it does kinda seem like we could put some of this money to better use than making yet another Transformers movie or adapting the latest dystopian YA novel du jour.
- The Hobbit Trilogy – $745 million
- The first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies – $650 million
- The Dark Knight Trilogy – $610 million
- Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy – $597 million
- The Chronicles of Narina trilogy – $560 million
- Iron Man trilogy – $556 million
- The first three Transformers movies – $556 million