Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

I never would've guessed in a million years that this is the most expensive film ever made:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films

Wow indeed. I don't even remember that movie (I can't really tell which Pirates of the Caribbean I have seen...).

I never would have guessed. I always thought "Tangled" still topped the list (which was itself surprising news), but according to this chart this forgettable pirate sequel cost over $100 million more. Seriously? Wow.

There are some other really surprising movies high up in that list! The live action "Beauty and the Beast?" "Solo?" "Justice League?" At a certain point it's gonna be cheaper to just skip CGI and train talking fish to sing or teach Ben Affleck to shoot lasers or whatever.

I was at WDW when they were animating Tangled and saw some test footage and was like 'wow, that's like some Veggie Tales-level bad animation, holy shit' and this clearly is not reflected in the final film which has long led me to believe they did a massive overhaul on the thing at some point and would explain the $$$.

Is it the CGI that make the Pirate movies that costly or did they have to build "real" ships or whatever "classic" movie sets ?
Also I suppose J. Depp and all the Marvel movies actors don't come cheap...

xpost I didn't even know what Tangled was and had to look it up !

I imagine, re: Pirates, it's the old adage about not working with children or animals (Depp) and shooting on water.

But yeah, I'm sure reshoots and whatnot inflate some of these costs (Solo, Justice League, etc.)

LOL @ the number of completely forgettable live-action Disney movies on that list.

the maelstrom scene in potc3 involved -- as well as a fvckton of (good) CGI obv -- the largest physical model set ever built iirc, involving two life-size ships w.many articulated elements, the whole on a variety of gimbals, able to function while water was being jetted in all directions

potc3 is good not bad, ditto tangled: despite lovejoy (always good in everything) potc4 is overlong and boring sadly

I like "Tangled," I think it's funny and perhaps the most underrated of its ilk.

Just reading the wiki about On Stranger Tides, the thing that seems to be unique about it was that it was shot with 3D camera in an outside environment? That is, not using bluescreen. Perhaps that made it so complex and expensive?

Which is the kind of outsized spectacle that only someone who's directed mostly musicals could fully capture on camera.

At World's End came out three years before Tangled - the latter was never at the top of the list.

Obviously all of these films made a lot of money, which is why there's another one after this, and another in the works.

I could have sworn Tangled was on top of the list at one point, I remember it because it was so surprising. Of course, all these numbers are make-believe and unverified anyway.

xpost You raise a good point. There have been a handful of musicals in the new 3D era, why has nobody made a giant spectacular 3D musical yet? Or did I just forget about it?

Oh! Calcutta! 3D: WANGS FLY @ U FACE

needs more gimbals

Moulin Rouge would totally have been 3D if the tech had been there at the time.

I only saw Madagascar 3 in 2D, I can imagine that one of the most amazing musical numbers in it would be head-popping in 3D

The catch: it's set to Fireworks.

LOL, as I was reading your post I was like 'okay, how did DreamWorks manage to taint the scene being described?'

My first guess was 'showstopping musical number takes a quick break so several characters can fart at one another'.

I was at WDW when they were animating Tangled and saw some test footage and was like 'wow, that's like some Veggie Tales-level bad animation, holy shit' and this clearly is not reflected in the final film which has long led me to believe they did a massive overhaul on the thing at some point and would explain the $$$.

That's how any 3d animation works - up until the last run of design/rendering, they can pretty much manipulate everything in real-time as far as placing characters, syncing dialogue, etc. and once everything's good they actually render it with the real textures, facial expressions, highly detailed 3d models, lighting, etc

Back in the Toy Story days I'm pretty sure the first cut that was presented was practically stick figures moving around a vague blur

Half of the reason Terminator 3 is so high on the list despite being less visually interesting than virtually every other entry in the franchise is Arnold's salary was 1/4 of the budget

Actor salaries on anything that's a sequel to a successful film bumps the total cost up a bunch, unless it's a labor of love or they decide to negotiate for a post-release payout

supposedly Johnny Depp made $55 million for this particular film so uh...