If we line up all those movies from the cheapest to the most expensive then we get the chart below. $18 million, give or takeīetween 19, half of all movies released in US cinemas cost under $18 million to make. So for the rest of today’s article please imagine I have added “reportedly” ahead of any statement of budget figures. In reality, some will be over- or under-estimates and almost all publicly available figures have murky provenance. See the Notes section for details and caveats of budget information.įor readability, I’m going to write as if all the budget figures stated below are pure fact. in US & Canadian cinemas) for which I could find a public budget figure. I built up a dataset of 5,713 feature films released domestically (i.e.
This would make for rather a short blog article, so instead I thought I’d take a deeper look at whether there are useful ballparks which can give a sense of scale on movie budgets.
is involved (ok, so maybe this last one only applies to movies). It’s similar to asking “How much does the average meal cost to make?” It depends where you are, who’s making it, for whom and whether Robert Downey Jr. Among the most frequent questions I’m asked by those new to the film industry is “How much does the average movie cost to make?”