Where does the money go?

Saving Private Ryan had a budget of 70 million.

Today, movies like Bewitched cost 85 million.

I just don't see where the money goes in some of these films. War of the Worlds, The Last Samurai, you can look at the set pieces and effects and KNOW where the money went, but 85 million for Bewitched? Or 95 million for You've Got Mail?

Actually, boxofficemojo lists the marketing expenses separately.

It's not like the actors don't know how bad the scripts are, but they also know how big the paychecks are.

Don't forget marketing! ;)

Onijay, your remark towards Charlie's Angels peaked my interest. If Diaz, Barrymore, Lui and Demi Moore get almost $40 million in Salaries between the 4 of them (with $20 million of that alone going to Diaz) its easy to see how they could spend a full $120 million on such a movie. That movie seems too have a lot of famous names in it to play bit parts in, it could easily be mostly salary money. Actors/actresses are getting paid too much to be in too many poorly thought out movies. Diaz has done nothing to earn $20 million bucks per movie.

Alot of money goes straight into the actors/actresses pockets these days. Nicole Kidman got almost $18 million for Bewitched alone, she gets paid way too much for the films she is in. Before you say that Tom Hanks got tons for Saving Private Ryan; he took a paycut and got a profit deal, worth $40 million or so.

I look at budgets on boxofficemojo.com

sometimes its a case of poor research, as is the case of the listed budget for AVP on many websites. Most claim (IMDB in particular) that the film cost over $80 million to produce, when in actuality it was less than $40 million (as quoted by Paul W.S. Anderson in an interview late 2003). So really, you can't really believe everything you read ($120 million for Charlie's Angels 2 lised at IMDB!? Come on!)

And don't forget the perks. After X-Men II was complete, Fox gave the major players involved a million dollar bonus each. It was included in the cost of the movie.

And not to mention, most actors are just being bought. You may not want to do a certain movie, but how much can you turn down?

What I have always wondered is about those trailers that actors and directors get to use. Do they get to keep the trailers after the movie is finished? Or does a trailer belong to a studio? Or are the trailers rented in the first place?

I know, I am too queer to live.

What about the film props and sets? Don't most of them get destroyed or thrown out? You would think that the studio would try to sell those props for 5 times their worth or something to try and recover some of the budget, rather than paying out of house companies to make replicas. And some sets get hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars poured into them, only for them to be torn down after a few months. I could imagine a few people willing to buy pieces from sets (or even the entire set itself if they were rich enough, hell some people are willing to pay over $50,000 for a pair of ruby slippers...) of their favorite movies like the Matrix or Moulin Rouge or something, rather than ripping them apart with bulldozers. But whatever, what's done is done, doesn't make a difference I suppose. Just think though, one room of your house decorated using the set from Rivendell in Lord of the Rings, the other the Nebuchadnezzar from the matrix. Now that would be cool!

Props and sets are usually recycled, that's why all major studios have prop departments. Key props and models are either saved or destroyed, it depends on the film makers as far as I would guess. Kubrick had all of the models from 2001 destroyed to prevent them from being used in cheap sci-fi movies. Sets are reused from time to time, or ripped into pieces and reused seperately; Alien and Aliens shared set pieces. Some sets get a lasting position in studio backlots, the Psycho House is still around in Universal's backlot in CA, it's been moved around and the hotel was removed and then rebuilt later for the remake in the 90s, but the house is still around as far as I know.