It may come as no surprise that all the most expensive movies were made in the past 15 years or so—and that they’re all part of franchises (almost all from Disney).
While film production companies are notoriously tight-lipped about how much they actually spend, estimates from experts in the film industry give us a glimpse into which movies are the highest-budget films ever made and what made them so costly.
To keep things simple, we only factored in costs that actually went into making these films. So if you think hundreds of millions of dollars is a lot to spend on one movie, just remember that marketing costs tack on an extra few million!
Table of Contents
- 1. Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
- 2. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
- 3. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)
- 4. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
- 5. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
- 6. Spider-Man 3 (2007)
- 7. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
- 8. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
- 9. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)
- 10. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
1. Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Estimated Budget: $250–$460 million 1 2
Estimates for the total cost of creating Avatar: The Way of Water vary widely, but most are in the range of $350–$400 million. 3 A lot of the expenses went into creating the movie’s awe-evoking visuals.
Designed for the big screen, it was filmed in several formats and used cutting-edge motion capture technology to bring a dimension of realism to the fictional world of Pandora. 4 It’s a wonder it didn’t cost more, considering that new motion-capture technology that didn’t exist yet had to be developed to film the movie’s underwater scenes. 5
2. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Estimated Budget: $250–$444 million 6 7
As if it wasn’t expensive enough to bring together a jaw-dropping cast of A-list stars, the production of Avengers: Age of Ultron involved multiple filming locations, including South Korea, South Africa, and Italy. 7
Like several other films on this list, Avengers: Age of Ultron was at least partially filmed in the UK to qualify for the government’s 25% tax rebate. 8 All in all, this saved $78.52 million during production. 7
3. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)
Estimated Budget: $250–$410.6 million 9 10
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is currently the most expensive movie ever made. According to Forbes, the biggest expense was paying the actors and production staff, with Johnny Depp alone taking home an estimated $55 million. 10
Special effects undoubtedly also contributed to the high cost, considering the CGI work needed to pull off some of the film’s most visually spectacular scenes, which included life-like mermaids and a full-scale pirate ship.
4. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Estimated Budget: $350–$400 million 11
The franchise era has paved the way for unprecedented spending on movie production. In the past 10–15 years, Disney has churned out a near-constant stream of franchise films, sitting comfortably in the knowledge that fans will return to theaters again and again to find out what happens next in their favorite stories. The Avengers films are perhaps their biggest success.
According to film director Joe Russo, Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity Way each cost more than $500 million to make (a combined budget of over $1 billion). 12 But this likely includes marketing expenses, which we’ve excluded.
The majority of these funds went to employing a high-profile cast, building massive set pieces, and using state-of-the-art CGI to bring the action in the storyline to life. Needless to say, Endgame had enormous success at the worldwide box office, achieving record-breaking profits during its debut. 13
5. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Estimated Budget: $300–$400 million 14 15
Like Endgame, Infinity War was a major blockbuster film that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make. The two films were shot back to back, and there was a lot of overlap between them when it came to filming, editing, and costs. 16
Just think of all those tiny names running through the credits—cast members, editors, special effects experts, and other production personnel involved in making the Avengers movies. They’re all top names in their fields, and their salaries run high. Not to mention the cost of casting A-list actors like Robert Downy Jr. and Scarlett Johansson.
6. Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Estimated Budget: $258–$350 million 17 18
A big part of the Spider-Man 3 budget went into the film’s visual effects. After 2.5 years of research and intense work by a team of 30 special effects technicians, the final film had 900+ special effects shots. 19
In particular, creating the Sandman as the villain required intense effort from over 200 programmers, who wrote the code to render each individual sand particle.
7. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
Estimated Budget: $200–$317 million 20 21
Like the case with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi involved heavy costs just to bring in famous cast members from the original trilogy: Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher. It also couldn’t have been cheap to fly staff and equipment to the movie’s several filming locations, including in the USA, the UK, Ireland, Croatia, Bolivia, and Mexico. 22
Granted, The Last Jedi used twice as many practical effects than The Force Awakens when it came to bringing different creatures to life, which must’ve helped to offset these costs. 22
8. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
Estimated Budget: $201–$306 million 23 24
Like the case with many of the other films on this list, a good chunk of the money (around 20%) that went into making Star Wars: The Force Awakens went straight into the pockets of actors.
It wasn’t cheap to get in the cast members from the original trilogy, with Disney offering special “legacy pay” to Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher. 25 Ford alone is estimated to have gotten $10–$20 million for taking part in the film. 26
Creative team members, like the director and writer, also got their fair share of around 15% of the overall budget. Production equipment and set design accounted for around 25% of the overall cost of the film. 24
9. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)
Estimated Budget: $300 million 27
Extensive set design is a big part of what made Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End so expensive to make. Set designers spent a solid 2.5 months creating a set resembling what experts imagine an 18th-century Singaporean fishing village would’ve looked like, complete with cobblestone roads, huts, and bridges. 28
Even with all that, hand-crafting several period guitars and getting rock legend Keith Richards to play them on set was probably one of the film’s cooler investments. 28
10. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Estimated Budget: $250–$300 million 29 30
This entry into the Star Wars saga cost slightly less than some of the other films, but it was still a big financial commitment for Disney. It didn’t help that there were issues during early production.
Apparently, early screen tests weren’t doing great, and Disney shelled out $20 million to get George Lucas to step in and save the film from becoming a total disaster. 31
The bottom line is that a movie’s production budget can go toward various expenses, from cast and crew member salaries to cutting-edge special effects, elaborate set design, and costly reshoots. Every film here earned its spot on this list, but whether the expenses were worthwhile—that’s up to viewers.
