Editorials Reviews Previews Essays Worth Playing

Movies & Series

Movies & Series 21 April 2022, 13:26

author: Jan Tracz

The Most Expensive Scenes in Cinema History

Today, we present nine movie scenes that filmmakers and studios paid through the nose for. Which movies are they from? What is their story? See for yourself!

Table of Contents

Speed 2 – cruise ship scene

  1. Movie budget: $110-160 million
  2. Scene budget: $25 million
  3. Where to watch: Chili, Rakuten

Speed 2, the sequel to the pretty solid original starring Keanu Reeves, turned out a total flop. The film is said to have barely covered its production costs, so it's hard to talk about any form of success here. Sandra Bullock re-impersonated the heroine from the first installment, but even her presence in this production (alongside Willem Dafoe) did not save the sequel. It doesn't change the fact that if we do not take Speed 2 seriously, we'll get a kind of guilty pleasure for a casual viewing with friends.

The very scene of the ship entering Saint Martin lasts about five minutes: it was calculated that every second of this sequence cost as much as 83,000 dollars! The creators created an approximately 300-ton and 300-meter replica of the ship (which they then pimped up in post-production). At that time, CGI was associated with extremely high costs.

If the entire scene was created using only CGI, it could cost as much as $500 million. No wonder that a more traditional approach was chosen. In contrast, the first installment cost only thirty million dollars (which is practically as much as this single scene). Well...

Jan Tracz

Jan Tracz

Graduated Film Studies (BA and MA) at King's College London, UK. Currently, he writes for Collider, WhyNow, The Upcoming, Ayo News, Interia Film, Przegląd, Film.org.pl, and Gamepressure.com. He has had publications in FIPRESCI, Eye For Film, British Thoughts Magazine, KINO, Magazyn PANI, WP Film, NOIZZ, Papaya Rocks, Tygodnik Solidarnosc, and Filmawka. He has also collaborated with Rock Radio and Movies Room. Conducted interviews with Alejandro González Ińárritu, Lasse Hallström, Michel Franco, Matthew Lewis, and David Thomson. His published works include an essay in the anthology "Nikt Nikomu Nie Tlumaczy: Swiat wedlug Kiepskich w kulturze" (Brak Przypisu Publishing, 2023). Laureate of the Leopold Unger Scholarship in 2023. Member of the Young FIPRESCI Jury during WFF 2023.

more

See/Add Comments