Most Expensive Movies

This is a non-definitive list of the most expensive movies, both non-adjusted (top) and adjusted (bottom) for inflation. Only movies with a budget of $100 million U.S. dollars or more are listed here.

These lists contains only the movies that are already released to the general public, and no movies that are still in production, post-production or just announced movies, for the reason that these costs can still change in the production process. Most studios, however, will not give a statement on production costs, so only estimates by professional researchers and movie industry writers are available. These include those from the Internet Movie Database, Box Office Mojo and The Numbers

Spider-Man 3

Spider-Man 3 was commercially released in multiple countries on May 1, 2007, and released in the United States in both conventional and IMAX theaters on May 4, 2007. Although the film received generally mixed reviews from critics, in contrast to Spider-Man 2's highly positive reviews, it broke most of the opening weekend records, both in the United States, and in foreign markets, including records held in IMAX theaters.

X-Men: The Last Stand

X-Men: The Last Stand is the third movie film adaption of the Marvel Comics' X-Men superhero comic books. It was directed by Brett Ratner and written by Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn. The previous two movies were X-Men (2000) and X2 (2003). The movie revolves around a "mutant cure" that causes serious repercussions among mutants and humans, and on the mysterious resurrection of Jean Grey, who appeared to have died in X2. The movie film is based on two X-Men comic book story arcs: writer Chris Claremont's and artist John Byrne's "Dark Phoenix Saga" in The Uncanny X-Men (1980), and writer Joss Whedon's six-issue "Gifted" arc in Astonishing X-Men (2004).

The movie was released May 26, 2006 in the United States and Canada, and one or two days earlier in approximately 22 other countries. Despite mixed reviews from critics, the movie has done extremely well at the box office. Its opening-day gross of $45.5 million is the third-highest on record while its opening weekend gross of $103 million is the fifth highest ever. Currently it holds the record for highest grossing movie during Memorial Day weekend totaling nearly $122.9 million in its first four days.


The movie film is sometimes colloquially referred to as X3 or X-Men 3.

King Kong (2005)

King Kong is the 2005 remake of the original 1933 King Kong movie film about a fictional giant ape called Kong. It was directed by Peter Jackson, produced by Jackson and Fran Walsh, written by Jackson, Walsh and Philippa Boyens, and its cast included Naomi Watts in the role of Ann Darrow, Jack Black as Carl Denham, Adrien Brody as Jack Driscoll and, through performance capture, Andy Serkis as Kong.

In 1933, Great Depression-era New York City, actress Ann Darrow has just lost her job at the local theater and is recruited by director Carl Denham because of the presence of her favorite writer Jack Driscoll. They set sail to a remote Indian Ocean island known as Skull Island, inhabited by prehistoric creatures and the mighty giant gorilla Kong.

The movie film's budget climbed from an initial $150 million US to a record-breaking $207 million. With a huge marketing campaign and many commercial tie-ins, the December 14, 2005 release was all-encompassing for the movie market, and was seriously challenged only by its other major competitor, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The film made a modest opening of $50.1 million, and significantly underperformed expectations at the box office. Nonetheless, Kong turned out to be very profitable as ticket and DVD sales combined, the film earned well over $700 million,[1] becoming the fourth-highest grossing movie in Universal Pictures history. It also received positive reviews, with some considering it one of the all-round best movies of 2005, though it has been criticized for its excessive length at three hours and eight minutes. It won Academy Awards for visual effects, sound mixing, and sound editing.

Superman Returns

Superman Returns is a 2006 superhero movie film based on the fictional DC Comics character Superman. It was directed by Bryan Singer and stars Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth and Kevin Spacey. The screenplay was written by Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris, based on a story by Bryan Singer, Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty.

Filming began in February 2005, and the movie was released in the United States on June 28, 2006 after sixteen months of filming and production. It was theatrical Superman movie since 1987's Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. The movie received mostly positive critical reviews and grossed over $391 million worldwide.

The movie revolves around Superman's return to Earth after a five-year absence. He re-assumes his secret identity of Clark Kent, and discovers that Lois Lane—now in a "prolonged engagement"—has a five-year-old son. Superman's nemesis, arch-villain Lex Luthor has devised a new plan to defeat Superman. Director Bryan Singer has said that the continuity is "taking off from the first two Superman movie films with Christopher Reeve", which serve as its back-story, or as he put it, a "vague history". The late Marlon Brando's role as Superman's biological father Jor-El is reprised with the help of computer-generated imagery and earlier footage.

History

Mechanisms for producing artificially created, two-dimensional images in motion were demonstrated as early as the 1860s, with devices such as the zoetrope and the praxinoscope. These machines were outgrowths of simple optical devices (such as magic lanterns) and would display sequences of still pictures at sufficient speed for the images on the pictures to appear to be moving, a phenomenon called persistence of vision. Naturally, the images needed to be carefully designed to achieve the desired effect — and the underlying principle became the basis for the development of film animation.

With the development of celluloid film for still photography, it became possible to directly capture objects in motion in real time. Early versions of the technology sometimes required the viewer to look into a special device to see the pictures. By the 1880s, the development of the motion picture camera allowed the individual component images to be captured and stored on a single reel, and led quickly to the development of a motion picture projector to shine light through the processed and printed film and magnify these "moving picture shows" onto a screen for an entire audience. These reels, so exhibited, came to be known as "motion pictures." Early motion pictures were static shots that showed an event or action with no editing or other cinematic techniques.

Motion pictures were purely visual art up to the late 19th century, but these innovative silent films had gained a hold on the public imagination. Around the turn of the twentieth century, films began developing a narrative structure by stringing scenes together to tell narratives. The scenes were later broken up into multiple shots of varying sizes and angles. Other techniques such as camera movement were realized as effective ways to portray a story on film. Rather than leave the audience in silence, theater owners would hire a pianist or organist or a full orchestra to play music fitting the mood of the film at any given moment. By the early 1920s, most films came with a prepared list of sheet music for this purpose, with complete film scores being composed for major productions.

The rise of European cinema was interrupted by the breakout of World War I while the film industry in United States flourished with the rise of Hollywood. However in the 1920s, European filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein and F. W. Murnau, along with American innovator D. W. Griffith and the contributions of Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and others, continued to advance the medium. In the 1920s, new technology allowed filmmakers to attach to each film a soundtrack of speech, music and sound effects synchronized with the action on the screen. These sound films were initially distinguished by calling them "talking pictures", or talkies.

The next major step in the development of cinema was the introduction of color. While the addition of sound quickly eclipsed silent film and theater musicians, color was adopted more gradually. The public was relatively indifferent to color photography as opposed to black-and-white,[citation needed] but as color processes improved and became as affordable as black-and-white film, more and more movies were filmed in color after the end of World War II, as the industry in America came to view color as essential to attracting audiences in its competition with television, which remained a black-and-white medium until the mid-1960s. By the end of the 1960s, color had become the norm for film makers.

Since the decline of the studio system in the 1960s, the succeeding decades saw changes in the production and style of film. New Hollywood, French New Wave and the rise of film school educated independent filmmakers were all part of the changes the medium experienced in the latter half of the 20th century. Digital technology has been the driving force in change throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century.