Movie News
Spider-Man 3 the Most Expensive Movie Ever?
Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on April 23, 2007
Of all the places to pick up movie news, I grabbed this off of What Would Tyler Durden Do?, one of my favorite pop culture sites. They are commenting on a report from Radar Online, who is claiming that Spider-Man 3 has cost Sony over $500 million dollars to make. While this really wouldn’t surprise me, it is notable. Here is what the Radar Online report had to say:
As production dragged on into late summer—it had been scheduled to conclude in June—stories about the project’s ballooning budget started popping up all over town. But in the end, even the most hyperbolic of observers may have underestimated the final tab. Industry insiders claim that Sony spent $350 million or more on production alone. With marketing and promotion factored in, the total price tag will approach half a billion dollars—positioning Spider-Man 3 as the most expensive movie of all time. (Cleopatra, the 1963 epic that has long held the title of priciest picture, had an inflation-adjusted budget of $290 million.)
It goes with out saying that you have to spend money to make money, but $500 million? That is a bit excessive. That would make Spider-Man 3 almost 2.5 times more expensive than Spider-Man 2, which grossed $784 million world-wide in 2004. The industry expectations around this latest installment into the Spidey franchise is somewhere around $800 million, so turning a profit is not going to be hard, but one must ask why this film cost so much? Isn’t most of it CG? And with plans for 3 more films, will they continue to become exponentially more expensive?
I don’t predict that this will be the last of the big budget blockbusters for 2007 either. Dreamworks is yet to report how much Michael Bay has spent to bring Transformers to life and Disney is saying that Pirates 3 only cost $200 mil. Combine these two with Rise of the Silver Surfer and we’ve got ourselves over a billion dollars spent on blockbusters this year. The only question that remains is whether Hollywood will see a huge return on it’s multi-billion dollar investment? Beginning May 4 with Spider-Man 3, we shall see…
Tags: spider-man 3, big budget, blockbuster, movies, sony
Read more articles by Neil Miller
26 Comments
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:35 pm
HALF A BILLION!?!?! HOLY JESUS CRAP!~!!
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:42 pm
I would pay $13 to go see Holy Jesus Crap. Also, I would pay $13 to see a Triple Feature of those 3 films in a classic drive-in. But i’m not going to pay $13 to see all 3 in the theatre individually. Personally… Transformers > Spider-Man 3 > Pirates 3
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:26 pm
I wouldn’t mind watching Spider-Man 3 gazillion times though. Spider-Man is the best comic to animation movie ever made!
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:22 pm
I think 350 is stretching it, I think that story is a joke. I’ll see what I can dig up on the budget….
April 24th, 2007 at 4:26 am
The US could have made 1000 of these movies with the scrill pissed away on the iraq war. Think of all the vegetarian paella they could have made!
April 24th, 2007 at 5:05 am
yeah … guess i’m gonna watch it atleast more than once …
so i guess … if i’m doing it … there’ll be a lot like me who’ll watch it more than once …
500 million sounds a bit steep for a movie …
but yeah … its gonna earn a lot more … a LOT more …
go spidey …
April 24th, 2007 at 6:59 am
OK, I’m back, other estimates, which are more believable put it in the 250 million range.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:50 am
I’d be more inclined to believe that the $350 budget figure is a slush fund to cover losses for movies like “Catch and Release,” “Perfect Stranger,” “Premonition” and “Reign Over Me,” all loss-leaders on the Sony slate this year.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Maybe they’re just hyping the cost to attract curious puppies like me into the theatre to see what all the fuss is about.
And, yeah, Spideybaby is the best comic feature, if you don’t count Jack Nicholson as The Joker in Dick Tracy.
April 25th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
this movie sucked balls i got it bootlegged
April 25th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Wow thats a lot
May 1st, 2007 at 8:12 am
Why waste $500m?? Everyone saw Sony coming and fleeced them for all they were worth!! More cost = less profit (just look at Sony’s other products…ps3 anyone lol)
May 4th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
[…] It’s probably a bad sign if, as you are watching a movie, you think, “Napping would be a better use of my time.” And then fall asleep. It’s a particularly bad sign if you are in the theater watching the most expensive movie in history. […]
May 5th, 2007 at 10:18 am
250mil, 500mil it doesn’t matter, its still a rather large pile of $$. More than most can imagine, and more than the amount spent on aid in a year. Welcome to the West; where 2 hours of (mediocre) entertainment is valued more than morality.
May 7th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Fuck every one who said spiderman sucked i swear i will kick ur ass it was the best movie ever in the history of the world and it is worth being the most expensive movie of all time hell yeah rock on spiderman……………….if u think it sucked and u want to throw down u can catch me at the theater watching spidey 3 over and over again bring it biotches
May 8th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
This movie was so bad I wrote an article about it examining why:
http://www.debonairmag.com/the_death_of_spiderman.htm
May 8th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
fuck u dick head go right an article on why ur a bitch you little cock sucker “ooh look at me my names john i write articles oooh” FAG!!!!!!!!
May 8th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
ooh hey chris beaumont yeah dude uuuh it did cost over 500 mill to make the movie so sorry bro
May 9th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
hell yeha andrew dude where ever you are so tired of these wanna be movie critic bitches thinkin they know whats up well yall are a bunch of dildo fuckers so shut the hell up and enjoy spidey it is the shit so either learn what a good movie is or go to hell
May 13th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
yeah spider man 3 pretty damn good movie but shoot 500 mill……….well yah i guess i can see that it’s alot of money but it was a pretty good movie and it had alot of effects and stuff so yah
May 14th, 2007 at 12:01 am
I would pay 500 Million just to watch all 3!!! theyre such good movies, i saw it 1st day it came out each time!!
June 2nd, 2007 at 6:54 am
Indeed Spider-Man 3 was a super-expensive movie. I think the visual effects makes it really expensive and also the shooting location of the movie. Thank you for the information. I see you are interested in movies. You might want to look at this site to see some more very expensive movies ever made.
http://www.most-expensive-movies.blogspot.com/
June 15th, 2007 at 5:43 am
I was disapointed with spiderman when it first came out with Tobey maguire. They made a very horrible mistake choosing him. He looks and sounds more geeky than any geek out there. If you’ll notice in the cartoons, peter parker was simply smart and not as geeky as Tobey maguire. They kept tearing his mask, revealing the ugly face of Tobey Magiure and therefore rubbing it in our faces that spiderman is a geek. Plus spiderman never cracked any awesome jokes in the face of danger as he does in the cartoons. If they couldnt get the main character right, then in my eyes the movie was a flop.
The only thing they got right was his costume. He’s the only comic character turned to feature film that had his costume made nicely. I’ll give them that much but again, if the character wasnt correct then even getting the costume right doesnt make much difference.
July 16th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
that was a waste of money..
October 10th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
[…] read more | digg story […]
June 14th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
That is a lot of money to pay for a movie, but if you think about it, they are getting money back from making the movie, and since spiderman is a hot running movie, why not. All that should matter to us is that it is a AWESOME movie, which it is !