As I learn more and more about film making, it's very hard for me to believe that movie studios truly pay $100, $200, or even $300 million dollars on fantasy/visual effect heavy/action-adventure/summer block buster movies. I don't know if those reported budgets are including advertising/marketing campaign budgets, but if they are --I can't find myself believing their budgets balloon to that degree. Do movie studios lie about their budgets publicly to sensationalize the importance of seeing the movie? To make it a "must see" in the public's eyes? Make it seem more "special"? Are they being truthful? Do I not understand how they could be spending so much? Do you understand how they could be spending so muchBudget MOvie Studio? Not be spending so much? How could they? Couldn't they?
Of course they lie. But it still costs a lot of money to produce a movie.
Look at the end credits; Let's say there are 150 people listed. And that
each of those 150 people earn $300/day (some will be higher, some
lower) which is around $25/hr. So that's $45,000 per day for labor. A
typical fantasy/visual effect heavy/action-adventure/summer blockbuster
will have a post production period of 12 to 16 months. One week is
$225,00 is salaries. 12 months? That's almost $12,000,000 in post
production salaries.
$12mil is about what the director gets. A typical fantasy/visual effect
heavy/action-adventure/summer blockbuster will have a producing team
of 8 to 12 people and a total cost of $15 to $20mil so we're talking $50mil
and we haven't even touched on stars and the production team. So yes,
it's very easy to spend $100 to $300mil on a typical fantasy/visual effect
heavy/action-adventure/summer blockbuster.
I guess things have changed.
We got a different answer the last time this question was asked.
http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=31210
When you look at the links rayw posted you will see that the production
budget is separate from the marketing. The Hollywood Reporter link says
the same thing. His “the-numbers” links also show that production budget
and marketing budget are separate.