This Is the Most Expensive Movie Ever Made

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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This Is the Most Expensive Movie Ever Made

© Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Hollywood has a long history of films with production costs that went over budget. Directors like Clint Eastwood who make movies quickly and inexpensively are prized by studios. Extremely expensive movies clearly run the risk of losing money — and they have with some regularity over the 100 years plus since moviemakers began hiring actors and building sets.

24/7 Tempo found the most expensive movie ever made by reviewing film budgets unadjusted for inflation. Most of the movies we screened were made in the last two decades. Ultra-expensive movies are becoming increasingly more common — and they often pay off. Indeed, some of the most expensive movies ever made are also among the highest-grossing. Some of those that have lost the most money were also on the list we reviewed.

To identify the most expensive movie ever made, 24/7 Tempo reviewed the production budgets for 4,768 movies in our database. Production budget and domestic box office figures come from The Numbers, an online movie database owned by consulting firm Nash Information Services. Box office figures are not inflation-adjusted. Cast information comes from IMDb, an online movie database owned by Amazon.

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Sequels to successful movies have become a safe bet for studios to pour money into. Many of the most expensive films to make are extensions of popular franchises, including four Avengers films, four Pirates of the Caribbean spin-offs, and four additions to the Star Wars canon.

The most expensive movie ever made was “Avengers: Endgame” (2019), which also made money. Here are some of the details:

> Production budget: $400 million
> Domestic box office: $858.4 million
> Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth

Click here to read The Most Expensive Movies Ever Made

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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