Why Are Modern Movies Getting More and More Expensive?

Over the past 20 years, the direction of the Hollywood movie landscape has changed drastically, with different views on if it has changed for the better or the worse. There have been many different changes but one thing for certain is that the budget for most movies seems to just keep getting higher and higher, more specifically the budget for big blockbusters. But why is this? Is it due to inflation? Is the economy just not as good as it used to be? While those are definitely a factor they are not the main culprit so let's take an in-depth look into the inner workings of what makes up the budget of a movie.

Firstly let's take a look at how expensive modern blockbusters are and how do they compare to those of the past. The average budget for a blockbuster movie is between $150 million to $200 million but before the year 2000 the most expensive movie ever made was Titanic with a budget of $200 million. Now there are 41 movies made with a budget higher than that, the most expensive being Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides which cost a whopping $379 million. Unsurprisingly 13 of those movies are comic book movies which have taken over the majority of the market for blockbusters in the past 10 years, five of those being movies in the MCU.

Now the main culprit for these expensive movies is the notorious CGI. Ever since CGI was created movies have used and abused the poor thing to create all sorts of creative things, sometimes it works like in Avengers: Endgame and Avatar. Sometimes it does not work, we won't talk about Green Lantern or Superman's mustache. As good as CGI can be it costs a lot of money especially if you don't use it efficiently which a lot of filmmakers seem to do. Recently there has been a trend where filmmakers just seem to use CGI for almost every little thing even when they don't need to when they could use a practical effect which would save them more money. For example, John Wick features a scene where they show dog poop for a few seconds which they could have gotten for a few bucks from any joke shop or even Amazon. Instead, they decided to add it in digitally which cost $5,000. Similarly, in Attack of the Clones instead of dangling a pear off of a string and moving it across the scene, they decided to use CGI which looked horrible. Using practical effects would be a lot cheaper and movies like Mad Max: Fury Road have shown us that it is still possible to use practical effects in modern-day movies and still have it look amazing.

Another big factor that hikes up the price of most movies is the cast and crew that are used in the production. Filmmakers often choose to hire big production companies they've probably worked with before who cost an arm and a leg but are probably going to deliver good results. Rarely do you see them cast their net further to other smaller production companies who cost a fraction of the price but can still deliver to the same results; the same can be said for when they hire actors. In their defense, it can be hard to find those kinds of talents and they probably would like to stick to who they trust but doing to could lead a much lower budget and also paving a way for smaller filmmakers to get their work out there and seen by a bigger audience.

So while this may seem like a bad thing, movie profits seem to indicate otherwise. Yes, the budget for these movies might seem to be going up but the amount of money they get in return seems to be increasing even more. Avengers: Endgame might have cost over $350 million to make, but it almost made $3 billion. What filmmakers can learn from this is that it's not about how much money you spend, it's about how you spend it.