‘Avatar’ Most Expensive Movie Ever

Avatar has been 14 years in the making, ever since James Cameron wrote the first treatment in 1995. It’s finally due to be released in December, 2009, and it needs to be a massive hit in order to just make back the colossal amount of money spent on making it.

A lot has been written about Avatar in the past few years, but very little is actually know about the film for sure. Almost no-one outside of the cast and crew has seen any of the completed footage, although MTV Movies is reporting how a writer from Time magazine recently became one of the few.

He reports that more than 1000 people have worked on bringing the movie to life, and the estimated budget is around $300 million. If that turns out to be correct, it would make Avatar the most expensive movie ever made, above Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Spider-Man 3, Quantum of Solace, and every other big-budget spectacular.

To put it into context, James Cameron’s best-known film, Titanic, cost “just” $200 million to make. That film ended up making $1.8 billion worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film ever. Avatar needs to do similar business in order to make the investment (of time and money) worthwhile.

Avatar is completely 3-D and Cameron insists he won’t ever go back to just working in 2-D again. Which means all of his future projects are likely to have huge budgets attached to them. If Avatar flops (God forbid) then I’d suggest Cameron will have trouble getting studios to back him to such a degree in the future.