Biggest film budgets 2023: why most expensive films like Fast X, Dial of Destiny, and The Marvels flopped

For 11 years from 2007 to 2018, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End was the most expensive film ever made, at a whopping $300 million. But in the last five years, nine films have overtaken it, and now films with budgets of $250 million which were once very rare, come along a couple of times each year at least.

With huge budgets, huge box office receipts are all but guaranteed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that extremely expensive films are a certain success.

In fact, 2023 showed that it was the films on the lower end of the high budget bracket that performed the best at the box office, whilst many of those with inflated budgets cost studios hundreds of millions of dollars.

What were the most expensive films of 2023?

Fast X had the highest budget of any film this year, with a massive $340 million in production costs. However, going by the 2.5 rule, the film likely lost money for Universal.

The 2.5 rule means that a film typically needs to make back 2.5 times its production budget at the box office to turn a profit - this is to factor in marketing costs which are generally the same as the production budget, and the percentage of ticket sales that cinemas receive.

Therefore, Fast X needed to make $850 million to see a profit, but it only managed $704 million, leaving an estimated $146 million shortfall for the studio.

The next most expensive movie of the year was Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which was made for an estimated $295 million and made $384 million. Marketing was only $100 million for the sequel, but with the cinema’s cut of the sales, it still chalks up to a loss of around $100 million for Disney.

In third place is Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One which had a budget of $290 million and made less than $600 million globally. As it was made in a $500 mill co-production with Part Two, the sequel may yet turn a profit, but right now it looks like another big budget movie that has lost millions of dollars.

The only huge budget film to come out of 2023 clearly in profit is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which cost $250 million and made $845 million - using the 2.5 rule that’s a tidy $220 million profit.

But the other Marvel films of the year didn’t do so well - Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania (budget $200 million) probably lost the studio in the region of $125 million, and The Marvels (budget $220 million) did even worse and could have lost as much as $200 million, wiping out Guardians 3’s success.

What are the highest grossing films of 2023?

For the clear box office success we must look to the movies that fall in the low to mid-range blockbuster budget, costing around $100 million - $150 million to make.

Barbie’s budget rose to $145 million, but this means the film only had to make around $360 million to be in the black. In fact, it became the highest grossing movie of the year, making $1.4 billion, doing far better than films with twice its budget.

The second and third highest grossing films of 2023 were The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and Oppenheimer, both made for $100 million, and returned $1.3 billion and $952 million respectively. At an estimate, this puts Mario Bros. in profit to the tune of $1 billion, and Oppenheimer to $700 million. All of these films performed better than those that had up to and over twice their budgets.