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Comment by caconym_ | Hacker News Reader

> Same with movies, television shows and music. They just don't have the impact they used to. You can do special effects for a few grand that cost a million dollars a few decades ago. As it is faster and easier than ever to make a movie, we don't need to offer such a long period of time for exclusivity.

You should take a look at the Wikipedia list of the most expensive films, inflation-adjusted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films#M...

There are a lot of problems with your comment (are impressive special effects the only thing you need to make an "impactful" movie or television show? can you show your work to prove your claim that music, film, and television today are less "impactful" than in the past?) but I think this is the most obvious one: we are, evidently, spending more to make blockbuster movies today than we ever have before. This would seem to put your "faster and easier" claim on very shaky ground.

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> You should take a look at the Wikipedia list of the most expensive films, inflation-adjusted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films#M...

How on earth is Tangled #9 on this list?

IIRC development hell. I think they had to scrap basically the whole movie and start over at one point.

That it cost more than Avatar (released around the same time) in both actual and adjusted costs is staggering .

Many of those most expensive films spent much of their budgets on major actors. That’s a function of Hollywood accounting where actors need to be paid upfront for the potential value of the income generated rather than paid based on how well a film does.

The most expensive film on that list Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) out of a nominal 378.5 million paid $55 Million for Jonny Depp. Orlando Bloom made 11 million on that same film etc.

By comparison Orlando Bloom made got $175,000 For The Lord Of The Rings trilogy and 21 million for the Hobbit trilogy.

> Many of those most expensive films spent much of their budgets on major actors. That’s a function of Hollywood accounting where actors need to be paid upfront for the potential value of the income generated rather than paid based on how well a film does.

A brief Google safari suggests that while this may sometimes be the case, it's far from universal, and can't really account for the overwhelming trend of recent films appearing on the list I posted.

So where's the source? Where's the inflation-adjusted budget breakdown equivalent of what I posted?

Relevant Wiki page with a handful of budget breakdowns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_budgeting

The budget breakdown you just linked is fine for what I am describing.

The logic here is a little strange but it does explain why more recent movies especially sequels dominate that list. More recent films have larger audiences due to population growth and ticket prices have kept up with inflation. That means more recent films have a larger likely revenue stream especially sequels for popular movies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films EX: Ben-Hur the most expensive movie that had been made in 1959 at the equivalent of 158 million and pulled in the equivalent of 900 million would hardly worth mentioning as a major film today.

Actors/directors/screenwriters/music rights holders/etc are going to negotiate based on the potential revenues therefore the larger the potential revenue the more they want to be paid upfront.

Now, that doesn’t directly impact shooting or special effects budgets, but if you’re already spending 100+ million on the “Actors/directors/screenwriters/music rights holders/etc” then there is little reason to economize on the special effects budget. Trying to economize at that point is just not worth the risk especially when the budget is fixed before you start. Might as well keep things padded at that point.

Ok, I think I see what you're saying. I would definitely expect the expanded market for modern blockbusters to be a big factor in driving the upward budget trend. As you say (I think), most or all of the different production departments will then get a bigger piece of pie.

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