Director: James Cameron
Budget:500 million $
David Poland is pissed about Michael Cieply's story in the New York Times about the budget of James Cameron's Avatar. See, Cieply reports that the film cost about 500 million dollars when production and marketing are added in, a number I actually agree with. But Poland finds the claims spurious and then nitpicks Cieply's entire article, which is a touch confused, and which is really about how Fox is sort of protected from taking a bath on this movie when it doesn't make a billion dollars, which it will need to clear to be profitable.This just underlines a running battle over the budget of this film; in the modern world nobody tells you what their movie actually cost. Paramount lied about Paranormal Activity's low budget - the 11 grand figure they touted didn't include the reshoots, re-edits and special effects that were added, to say nothing of the marketing - and now Fox is lying about Avatar's budget. The film is being estimated at 230 million dollars, semi-officially, and anyone with a working knowledge of recent blockbuster budgets and James Cameron's budget history must know this is a bullshit number.Let's put it this way: Pirates of the Caribbean 3 cost 300 million dollars. Spider-Man 3 cost 258, although I understand the budget to be closer to 300, if not over it. Yeah, these are sequels, which are susceptible to cost overruns as everybody's salaries climb, and Pirates has a couple of big money actors hogging up cash, but the reality is that these films, these FX-heavy blockbusters, are unconscionably expensive. The idea that the guy who has spent his career making ludicrously expensive films has suddenly reigned in his habits is silly, especially when it comes to the budget of a film designed to be a game changer and to forever alter the way we watch movies.
