I mentioned in an earlier post that I once filled out a survey online and as a reward I got a bunch of free subscriptions. One of the subscriptions I got was to Radar Magazine. It was supposed to be a "take no prisoners" look at politics and entertainment. I had picked up the first issue at the newsstand and sort of liked it but felt there was something off about it. The most recent issue showed me what it was--not letting facts get in the way of writing inflammatory stories.
I don't know if you can read the cover to the left. If you could, and you know me, you could probably guess what blurb caught my eye. In case you couldn't read it, here's the blurb that caught my ire: "Sony's Spider Bite, The Sequel That Ate $500,000,000!".
So, right there, right on the cover, Radar is saying that Spider-Man 3 cost half a billion dollars to make.
Now, all the published reports I've seen on various publications and websites state that the production budget was $258 million. Not chump change at all, but almost half of what Radar is claiming. Where's the difference coming from?
First of all, Radar is claiming that the actual production budget was $350 million. The other $150 million of their total comes from "marketing and promotion". People have been adding "marketing and promotion" to the budgets of films for ages and I don't think it's fair. Is there a movie out there that is not marketed or promoted? With a studio like Sony, they probably had a whole marketing and promotions department which handles those tasks for all of it's movies. Sure, some movies might have more money devoted to advertising than others, but that money is probably taken from a separate budget.
And in Spidey 3's case, most of the promotion and marketing comes from companies that paid to license the character--Wal-Mart ("Spidey's back and he's at Wal-Mart), Burger King and Activison for their Spider-Man 3 video game. These corporations aren't just providing free advertising to Sony, they are actually paying to essentially market and promote the film.
So that leaves us with a budget of $350 million, $100 million more than what the studio claims. Now, where does Radar come up with this amount? Top secret Sony ledger sheets? No! Through the claims of "industry insiders".
Now, you'd think that Radar would try to back these numbers up. Maybe interview various special effects houses and see how much they would charge and stuff like that. No, again. They again use rumor and conjecture to prove their point. They mentioned a set which cost "at least a couple of million dollars to construct" that Sam Raimi was unable to finish shooting the scene that took place there before he had to shoot in NYC. The set, according to Radar was "razed" and had to be rebuilt. This leads one to believe that a studio and a director, knowing that they had to use the set again in the future, tore down the old set and had to have a new one built from scratch. Hmmm, I don't think so. Sure, it might have had to been taken down, but it was most likely reconstructed instead of totally rebulilt.
The most laughable claim by Radar for their budget is that the movie was partially shot in New York City. Granted, NYC is one of the most expensive places to shoot a movie. I'll give them that. However, EVERY SPIDER-MAN MOVIE WAS SHOT IN NYC!!! Is Radar trying to say that the shot MORE scenes in NYC for this movie than the last two? Maybe they shot in ritzier neighborhoods? Because just the fact the movie was shot in NYC was not enough reason for Radar's inflated claims.
They also say that there were a lot of scenes shot for the movie that did not make it into the final film. Obviously the writer of the article has never seen any "Special Edition" DVD. Every one of those, heck every DVD, has a bunch of "deleted scenes" on them. This is nothing new.
Another reason Radar gives is that the film went over schedule. In addition to the expense that causes, it also means that the studio had to pay extra for "rush work from effect houses" who were also working on a whole bunch of other CGI heavy summer movies.
These are all pretty flimsy reasons for the $100 million discrepancy. Especially when most of the scenarios they cite are pretty much common in Hollywood. They just don't convince me of their point, which, if they are going to mention it on their cover, they really should have.
Even in the article, they admit that the movie, even with their bloated production cost will still end up making money. And, on this point at least, they are right. The worldwide gross of the movie is $621 million dollars--after only two weeks! So, even if it cost $500 milion, the movie made more in profit than some other movies make in their entire theatrical run. Kinda defeats the purpose of an article the evils of an inflated Hollywood budget, doesn't it?
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