10 Movies With The Biggest Budgets To Date

When it comes to Hollywood, the amount of money invested in the film doesn’t guarantee a big success in return. There are millions of dollars behind movies like Joker: Folie à Deux, Argylle, and Snow White, which were not the best received. Meanwhile, low-budget indie filmmaking has seen greater success with the likes of Anora, which only cost $6 million, and The Brutalist, which was just short of $10 million.

Nearly every high-budget movie is suffering at the box office unless you’re Minecraft. And if you can believe it, Joker: Folie à Deux’s budget of $200 million isn’t even expensive enough to make it on this list. These movies all had budgets that exceeded $300 million.

10

The Electric State

Budget: $320 Million

• Directors: Joe and Anthony Russo (The Russo Brothers)
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 15 percent
• IMDb Rating: 5.9
• Streaming: Netflix

Netflix shelled out $20 million more than the budget of 2017’s Justice League for The Electric State, an expensive robot story directed by the Avengers duo, Joe and Anthony Russo. The Electric State has now joined other poorly reviewed Netflix movies, and, to make matters worse, even defended its use of AI.

The Electric State has a budget nearly totaling both Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies, and a cast comprised of names like Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, Ke Huy Quan, Woody Harrelson, and Stanley Tucci. The story is adapted from a 2018 Swedish illustrated novel by Simon Stålenhag, but it seems like the film isn’t the best representation of the original work.

9

Fast X

Budget: $340 Million

• Director: Louis Leterrier
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 57 percent
• IMDb Rating: 5.7
• Streaming: Starz

The tenth installment of the Fast and Furious series has an even higher budget than The Electric State. Fast X became the most expensive Fast Saga film and also the one with the poorest story, but let’s face it, all the entries after Fast 7 can hardly fall into your favorite of the series.

Remember when the Fast and Furious movies were about low-level street racing and heists? Now, there’s all these Mission: Impossible-adjacent missions and villains infused into it. Fast X’s biggest shortcomings were actually its CGI, especially in the final scene, which seems counterintuitive to the budget. Jason Momoa’s psychotic villain performance also came off more cringey than scary or intense.

8

Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny

Budget: $387.2 Million

• Director: James Mangold
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 70 percent
• IMDb Rating: 6.5
• Streaming: Disney+

In 2023, Indiana Jones finally had a new entry from James Mangold, the director of Logan and A Complete Unknown. Its budget was higher than the past four films combined, and, sadly, it turned out to be the weakest entry yet for fans, which also bombed at the box office.

The chemistry between characters didn’t have the same effect, and the movie was slow and drawn out, with some storylines needing to be cut. The best parts were Mads Mikkelsen’s Jürgen Voller and seeing the actual Dial of Destiny in action to send the characters back in time, with MachineGames’ Indiana Jones and the Great Circle being a superior outing that completely overshadows it.

7

Avengers: Endgame

Budget: $356 – 400 Million

• Director: Joe and Anthony Russo (The Russo Brothers)
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94 percent
• IMDb Rating: 8.4
• Streaming: Disney+

Joe and Anthony Russo certainly didn’t disappoint, however, with Avengers: Endgame. It was Marvel’s biggest spectacle since probably the first Avengers movie in 2012. On a budget of somewhere between $356 and $400 million, Avengers: Endgame earned $2.799 billion worldwide and became the second highest-grossing film of all time, falling just short of James Cameron’s Avatar.

Avengers: Endgame is often regarded as the last great MCU movie because the MCU movies that came after are still struggling to capture the same level of quality. Endgame sees the entire MCU roster take on Thanos and his forces, resulting in one of the most epic MCU battle sequences, but also the tragic death of Tony Stark AKA Iron Man.

6

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

Budget: $400 Million

• Director: Christopher McQuarrie
• Streaming: Paramount+ (After theatrical release)

Much like the Fast and Furious series, Mission: Impossible also comes to a close with 2025’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the second part to 2023’s Dead Reckoning. At $400 million, its budget is the most expensive of the franchise and is now worthy of the title of being one of the most expensive movies ever made.

Scenes will take place underwater, and the big stunt in this installment is Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt jumping onto a plane in midair for an action sequence. Part of the reason why the budget reached such a high price was due to the work stoppage amid the SAG-AFTRA strikes.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One only grossed $172 million domestically and made an underwhelming $571 million worldwide on a budget of $291 million. Part of that was also because it came out right before Oppenheimer and Barbie, or Barbenheimer.

5

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Budget: $410.6 Million

• Director: Rob Marshall
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 32 percent
• IMDb Rating: 6.6
• Streaming: Disney+

Pirates of the Caribbean is a massive franchise for Disney. The first three movies were an excellent trilogy, boasting amazing action-adventure set pieces, spectacular 2000s CGI, and excellent writing and creative direction. With all the box office earnings the films brought in, it’s no wonder that the 2011 sequel would get a budget of over $400 million.

Unfortunately, the fourth Pirates movie couldn’t live up to the status of the first three films, though that didn’t stop it from grossing over $1 billion worldwide. The story brings back Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow and Geoffrey Rush’s Captain Barbossa on a quest to beat Blackbeard to the Fountain of Youth while introducing Penélope Cruz’s pirate Angelica and mermaids.

For comparison, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End cost $300 million to make, and 2017’s Dead Men Tell No Tales had a budget of $230 million.

4

Star Wars: Episode 9 – The Rise Of Skywalker

Budget: $416 Million

• Director: J.J. Abrams
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 51 percent
• IMDb Rating: 6.4
• Streaming: Disney+

Star Wars: Episode 9 – The Rise of Skywalker ended the sequel trilogy as another Star Wars miss by Disney, even receiving the series’ lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of 51 percent (just slightly lower than The Phantom Menace). Even so, it still cost $416 million to produce and earned a little over $1 billion globally.

The ending to the sequel saga was not as great a remedy to The Last Jedi as many were hoping for, choosing to bring back Emperor Palpatine and ruining the story direction. The main issue was Jurassic World’s Colin Trevorrow not getting to direct his original vision, and the script undergoing a complete rewrite, so that not even J.J. Abrams’ direction could’ve helped it.

3

Avatar: The Way Of Water

Budget: $350 – 460 Million

• Director: James Cameron
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 76 percent
• IMDb Rating: 7.5
• Streaming: Disney+

Avatar: The Way of Water is a blockbuster sequel absolutely worth every fraction of its budget. James Cameron achieved another immersive and visually stunning cinematic spectacle that resulted in a hugely successful global box office run of $2.32 billion, beating out Cameron’s own Titanic as the third-highest-grossing movie of all time.

The first Avatar movie already had an extremely high budget, but The Way of Water had to develop groundbreaking new technology for underwater capture, with scenes shot in underwater pools with all the necessary rigs and equipment. Plus, there are large-scale water battles and a ton of new water clan creatures and mounts to animate, like the Tulkun whales.

2

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Budget: $516.1 Million

• Director: J.A. Bayona
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 47 percent
• IMDb Rating: 6.1
• Streaming: VOD

In 2015, Jurassic World showed promise as a successor to Jurassic Park, grossing $1.67 billion. The sequel, Fallen Kingdom, therefore became the second most expensive movie of all time with a budget of over $500 million, but it’s a shame that the story direction they chose was a huge letdown over the 2015 movie, panned by critics and audiences alike.

Fallen Kingdom still grossed over $1 billion worldwide. The sequel tried to lean back into the series’ horror roots, beginning with a volcanic eruption on the island that would force the remaining dinosaurs and personnel to be evacuated, but then seeing the dinosaurs head to a black-market auction until they’re released to roam the world.

Though Fallen Kingdom is not his most shining example, director J.A. Bayona is a talented filmmaker from Spain who made the BAFTA-winning Society of the Snow, the impeccable ghost movie The Orphanage, and 2012’s The Impossible.

1

Star Wars: Episode 7 – The Force Awakens

Budget: $533.2 Million

• Director: J.J. Abrams
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93 percent
• IMDb Rating: 7.8
• Streaming: Disney+, Starz

Star Wars had a resurgence in 2015 with the J.J. Abrams-led The Force Awakens. It was one of the most epic moments for Star Wars fans, as they got to see the Skywalker Saga continue. And going all in on the incredible sci-fi spectacle and VFX in a galaxy far, far away, it was the most expensive movie ever made at a whopping $533 million.

The Force Awakens almost mirrors A New Hope. The new protagonist is Rey, residing on the desert planet of Jakku, who must flee the First Order (the Empire’s new replacement) with droid BB-8 and ex-Stormtrooper Finn. Han Solo and Leia’s son, Kylo Ren, is also introduced as the new Vader figure, and Supreme Leader Snoke is the big bad.