10. Waterworld (1995): The biggest culprit was a huge 1,000-ton floating atoll that was created off the coast of Hawaii. This specially built island measured a quarter-mile in circumference and used up all of the available steel on the Hawaiian islands, forcing producers to ship in more from California! The movie went about $75 million dollars over budget, mostly in set costs. Adding that to whatever was in the original budget and we're probably well over $100 million.
9. Cleopatra (1963): Adjusted for inflation, Cleopatra remains one of the most expensive films ever made. In fact, the $44 million–roughly equivalent to $340 million in modern money–that the film racked up nearly killed Fox, the studio that held the production’s purse strings. Lavish sets were one of the biggest money pits; in fact entire backdrops were built and then never used as the botched production moved from London to Rome midway through shooting. In total, there were 79 sets created for this film.
8. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946): That set was a sprawling four-acre recreation of Bedford Falls complete with a three-block main street, 75 stores and buildings–including a working bank–and more than 20 fully grown oak trees. They probably should have just gone with an actual town, but they needed to be able to control the snow.
7. Titanic (1997): In fact, adjusted for inflation, the set for Titanic cost a staggering $30 million with much of that going towards the creation of a 90% scale replica of the ill-fated ship, which in turn was housed inside a whopping 17-million gallon tank that cost $40 million. When all was said and done, the movie's $200 million budget was more than the cost of the real ship.
6. The General (1926): Known for his silent movie mugging, Buster Keaton doesn't seem like the kind of guy to be responsible for what is undoubtedly one of the most expensive movie sets ever created. The set, which involved an old train being blown up on an actual bridge, cost $42,000 back in 1926, a figure that equates to roughly $500,000 in today’s money.
5. The Matrix Reloaded (2003): And yet $1.5 million worth of the movies’ multi-million dollar budget went on building the freeway that was used for the chase scene in Matrix Reloaded. The end result was a mile and a half long stretch of road built over an old runway at a former military base, complete with its own off-ramp and 19-foot concrete walls.
4. Stalingrad (2013): While some people might turn to green screen and visual effects to recreate the horrors of World War II era Stalingrad, Russian director Fedor Bondarchuk decided to go the old fashioned route and build his set from scratch. The end result, a meticulously detailed recreation of the war-torn city. It cost $4 million and took an army of 400 workers more than 6 months to build.
3. Intolerance (1916): Best known for his racist caricatures in his 1915 film Birth of a Nation, D. W. Griffith also blazed the trail for pricey sets. For his 1916 epic Intolerance, he built a 300-foot tall replica of the Great Wall of Babylon, a colossal construction that took up more than four city blocks.
2. Ben-Hur (1959): There were 10,000 extras, 100 wardrobe technicians and more than 400 pounds of human hair used to fabricate fake beards. But these all pale in insignificance in contrast to the film’s 300 sets, which extended over 148 acres and nine sound stages. Over 1,000 workers constructed the stadium out of a rock quarry which cost more than $8 million in today's dollars.
1. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001 – 2003): Considered perhaps the most ambitious movie series ever made, the sets for Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy were as expensive as you might expect. Recreating the likes of Hobbiton and Helm’s Deep doesn’t come cheap—the production budget was $281 million, but the New Zealand Army did help out for $20 a day. And while filming has long since finished today, the sets still stand as tourist attractions.
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