It was only a few years ago that a movie costing $100 million seemed extortionate, but according to a new report in the New York Times, when all the costs for James Cameron’s upcoming Avatar are added together, the total tally to get it into cinemas could be $500 million. Yes, half a billion dollars for a single movie.
Well, not quite just a single movie, as the costs include things such as the investement in developing the 3D cameras used in the film, which cost an awful lot to make, but the company that owns them hopes to get its cash back by using them on other movies. Even so, it’s a hell of a lot of money, including around $230 million for the film itself, and over $150 million for the marketing of the movie.
However, the people behind the movie don’t seem too worried, because they’ve spread the cost out among numerous partners and backers, so that no one company’s exposure on the movie is intolerably high. It’s believed that as long as the film makes more than $250 million at the US box office – a level achieved by five movies in the past year – it should eventually turn a profit. However, the people behind the film must still be hoping for more Titanic sized results, which took $1.8 billion around the globe 12 years ago.
While in tha past a single film could bankrupt a studio, as Heaven’s Gate did for United Artists, nowadays the spreading of risk and creative accounting means even spending $500 million on a single film is unlikely to be a genuine disaster for a film, even if it was a massive flop. However it just goes to show how vast the amounts of money have become that a single film can swallow up to get to the screen.