The 10 most expensive movie scenes ever made
Hollywood has always been an industry that has attracted big money, with the ‘Golden Age’ of the industry spending crazy amounts constructing vast cabaret sequences, while contemporary cinema tends to channel all its money into special effects. Indeed, for filmmakers to generate their own fantasy worlds and frenetic action set pieces, one, of course, needs plenty of explosions and expensive sci-fi immersion.
Yet, some filmmakers take this to the next level, injecting such an insane amount of cash into their movies that just one short scene can end up costing millions of dollars. Many of these pricey scenes come from modern Hollywood, thanks to the sheer effort needed to create vast CGI landscapes, but this doesn’t mean that classic cinema gets off the hook easily, with inflation skyrocketing historic budgets.
Unsurprisingly, many of these scenes come from the lover of bombastic drama himself, Michael Bay, with his CGI-heavy flicks costing tens of millions to bring to life. Take, for example, the moment the Japanese army attacked Pearl Harbor in the 2001 film named after the conflict, a scene that used so many visual effects, extras and miniatures that it cost over $7million to put together.
But this scene barely compares to the ten most expensive movie scenes of all time, which can be found below.
The 10 most expensive movie scenes:
10. Return to Krypton – Superman Returns (Bryan Singer, 2006)
In Bryan Singer’s 2006 superhero film Superman Returns, the ‘Return to Krypton’ scene is a pivotal moment that delves into the hero’s origins. Set against the backdrop of space, Superman’s journey back to his destroyed homeworld evokes a sense of nostalgia and longing.
However, despite costing the production a staggering $10m, the scene was taken out of the final edit and left on the cutting room floor. Considering it might well be one of the best scenes of a fairly mediocre movie, it should have likely been added to the final project. As it was, Singer’s film was largely forgotten by pop culture, with Henry Cavill picking up the Superman mantle in the forthcoming years.
9. The D-Day landing – Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998)
Opening scenes are usually worth their weight in gold, and there are few as potent and poignant as the D-Day landing in Saving Private Ryan. Steven Spielberg is never one to shy away from a blockbuster moment, and in the 1998 production, he provided a generational scene that not only set up his narrative perfectly but captured the horrors of war so succinctly that many veterans experienced traumatic flashbacks.
But that reaction did not come cheaply. The meticulous 20-minute scene was shot over four weeks and not only exalted actors’ time and artistic fuel but also drained the coffers, with replica props, visual effects and explosives all adding to the final receipt. Costing a whopping $12m to make, it is one of the most expensive reopening scenes in history. But, for our money, it’s worth every penny.
8. The Highway Chase – The Matrix Reloaded (Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski, 2003)
While it may feel counterintuitive, it can sometimes cost a lot less to blow up the real thing. Setting a car up with a few pounds of plastic explosive and hitting the trigger is certainly going to cost a few pennies, but not nearly as much as using visual effects to render the entire scene. Putting those two things together is always likely to land you in debt. That’s the issue that faced the Wachowski sisters during the highway chase scene of their 2003 sequel to The Matrix.
The initial production costs of $2.5m to build their own highway for The Matrix Reloaded was one of the scene’s larger expenditures, but they also forked out for specialist training, many, many vehicles, visual effects and a whole host of other costs, which takes this scene in up to the $10-15m mark.
7. The junkyard – Transformers: The Last Knight (Michael Bay, 2017)
Transformers is not a franchise that is done by halves, and the movies are almost entirely made out of CGI effects, thanks to the explosion-obsessive filmmaker Michael Bay. This means that they are some of the more expensive movies to make in the realms of modern cinema. Indeed, if you add up the budgets of each of the seven Transformer movies, you get to the staggering sum of $1.2billion.
$15million is no small fee, however, and Transformers: The Last Knight snaffled that up in just one scene. The junkyard scene may have taken ten days to shoot, but with its visual effects and the extensive budget Bay always puts aside for explosives, the scene quickly added dollars to the overall budget.
6. Flying bus – Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001)
So far, there are few surprises on this list. A Spielberg war epic: check. A scene from The Matrix franchise: check. Michael Bay blowing up everything in sight: check. But it’s very hard to predict a flying bus scene. That’s exactly what we got with Dominic Sena’s 2001 movie starring John Travolta, Swordfish.
In another $15m scene, the vision of a bus being carried through the city by helicopter was not one hampered by visual effects. Instead, Sena and his team largely relied on practical effects for this dynamic moment. It’s a historical moment that even Travolta’s filmography has rarely come close to matching.
5. Rome car chase – Spectre (Sam Mendes, 2010)
The iconic James Bond franchise is known for its grand explosions, epic set pieces and intricate fight scenes, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to see the British spy on this list. Yet, another thing that 007 is very well known for is his love of cars, with director Sam Mendes choosing to break the character’s heart by spending at least $32m destroying a handful of luxury vehicles.
The moment comes when Bond speeds through the streets of Rome in an Aston Martin DB5, trying to evade capture. However, in his violent efforts to do so, he totals around seven Aston Martin DB10s, giving M a financial headache when it comes to clearing up his mess.
4. Ship crash – Speed 2: Cruise Control (Jan de Bont, 1997)
Everyone remembers Speed, starring Keanu Reeves, from 1994. It was a film that perfectly bottled the infectious energy of 1990s action movie-making with a central plot that followed a police officer trying to prevent a bomb from exploding on a getaway bus. Its strange sequel, however, 1997’s Speed 2: Cruise Control, wasn’t quite so adored, with Sandra Bullock returning for the second instalment without Reeves.
Perhaps even stranger, though, was the fact that so much money was pumped into one massive scene when the cruise ship crashes into the port of St. Martin, with the somewhat brief moment using a replica of the 300-tonne ship, which cost a whopping $25m to put together.
3. Chariot race – Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1959)
Every single one of the movies we’ve discussed so far was produced in or around the turn of the new millennium, with grand pyrotechnics and special effects elevating production costs. But the sheer lack of all this Hollywood magic in William Wyler’s Roman epic Ben-Hur demonstrates just how revolutionary this film really was, with the studio spending $4m on one magisterial nine-minute chariot chase, which helped it earn the ‘Best Picture’ Oscar in the process.
This might not sound like that much at all, but take that figure and adjust it for inflation, and you’ll discover that it costs the equivalent of $34m in today’s money, easily making it one of cinema’s most expensive moments.
2. Neo vs. the Smiths – The Matrix Reloaded (Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski, 2003)
This is the second time the Wachowski sisters’ revolutionary action flick The Matrix Reloaded has appeared on this list, with Warner Bros pumping in over $125m into the movie at the time, hoping it would be a sure-fire hit. Making a grand total of $741.8m, the film was certainly a success, yet this came at the expense of millions of dollars spent on special effects.
In fact, they had to entirely invent the special effects used during the scene in which Neo takes on the army of Smiths, with the remarkable amount of CGI needing a total amount of $40million to get over the line.
1. Battle of Borodino – War and Peace (Sergey Bondarchuk, 1965)
Hold onto your hats because this entry blows all the others out of the water. You might think number one would be reserved for something like Star Wars or Dune that uses copious amounts of special effects, but the reality is that the most expensive movie scene of all time goes to the Battle of Borodino from Sergey Bondarchuk’s four-part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s 1867 book War and Peace.
Despite being made in 1965, War and Peace had a staggering budget of $100m, which translates to over $700m when adjusting for inflation. Of that adjusted budget, approximately $100m alone was used to film the Battle of Borodino, a one-hour-long sequence that involved over 100,000 extras and is a marvel of cinematic ambition even by today’s standards.
