Question for cheese, Chaplin...

[Renz]

...or anyone else in the movie business; How does an animated film like The Polar Express cost $165 million to produce? That is mind boggling to me. You could build half of the new Cardinals stadium for what it cost to make one movie!

That seems looney. Even if they grossed $200 million dollars, their profit would only be $35 million. It hardly seems worth the risk, and that $165 million figure doesn't even include advertising costs.

I guess they hope to clean up at the foreign box office.

 

[Dback Jon]

...or anyone else in the movie business; How does an animated film like The Polar Express cost $165 million to produce? That is mind boggling to me. You could build half of the new Cardinals stadium for what it cost to make one movie!

That seems looney. Even if they grossed $200 million dollars, their profit would only be $35 million. It hardly seems worth the risk, and that $165 million figure doesn't even include advertising costs.

I guess they hope to clean up at the foreign box office.

Tom Hanks is expensive??

I think they hope to sell millions of DVDs..

 

[CaptTurbo]

Tom Hanks is expensive??

I think they hope to sell millions of DVDs..

You sir are no cheese.

 

[Dback Jon]

You sir are no cheese.

Gouda answer!

 

[Chaz]

I imagine these advanced animated films have to employ an army of animators to complete.
Not to mention the equipment and software purchase/development costs on a movie like this.

And yes I am sure Tom Hanks is expensive. Especially in this movie if he charges by the character.


I am not in the movie industry but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express.

 

[WaywardFan]

...or anyone else in the movie business; How does an animated film like The Polar Express cost $165 million to produce?

The ping pong balls used for the motion capture were unionized.

 

[Brian in Mesa]

I am not in the movie industry but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express.

 

[azdad1978]

Tom Hanks is expensive??

Well his asking price for a movie is in the 20-30 million range.

 

[Cheesebeef]

Actually - I think Hanks and Zemeckis took substantial pay cuts and instead choose to make their deal to get points off the overall gross of the picture. As far as the cost - just think about how much those special effects extravaganzas are - like Star Wars, or the Matrix movies - and realize that at least some of those movies take plkace in practical locations. Those movies don't cost as much as they do because of the actors - their costs are mostly loaded into the special effects. Now you throw in the fact that the animation(or better put - special effects) in Polar Express were "groundbreaking" it's gonna mean they are gonna cost even more than just conventional special effects and it'snot a matter of just part of the movie using them - IT'S THE WHOLE MOVIE.

It actually rebounded incredibly well this last week - having something like a 30 percent increase from last weekend - which is pretty much unheard of and now that it's getting on to Christmas time, it may have legs. They will make a TON off DVD and video distribution as well, but I can tell you there were probably a lot of people at Warner Brothers crapping in their pants when they saw it landed with a relative thud at the box office when it opened.

 

[Chaplin]

Cheese pretty much has it down. Also, the movie was probably made over a time period of 2 years, maybe more, so they have to pay all these animators and other personnel for that long also. Computer animated films are incredibly expensive movies to make. And like Cheese said, it's mostly because the entire movie is nothing but special effects--most people think it's simply a cartoon, and that isn't the case at all.