Play Spielberg in a film directed by Spielberg? No pressure, huh?
“Jurassic World” has no chance of becoming the first film to gross $1 billion.
I don’t know about you, but my first gut reaction to the latest “Jurassic World” news was to wonder if the first movie was somehow going to get its budget cut to make it a “blockbuster” – a $1 billion production. That would have made it the first film ever to gross over $1 billion, right? The budget probably wouldn’t have gone as high, but with production over-budget and only $250 million, $250 million of which was actually borrowed, it could have been enough to make it a blockbuster.
The truth is that, once again, “Jurassic World” just had too much money.
Let me explain.
In the end, the “Jurassic World” budget went over budget because the filmmakers had too few movie stars, or just didn’t know how to use them. You see, “Jurassic World” was one of the most expensive films of all time. It cost an estimated $250 million to make, and at one point had over a dozen top-tier actors attached to it. But at the last minute, the filmmakers realized they needed a new group to star as the “dinosaurs.” So they got Drew Barrymore to play the female Dr. Ian Malcolm, but then they decided to give all the remaining leads to Chris Pratt as the male Dr. Alan Grant and Bryce Dallas Howard as Dr. Ellie Sattler. The filmmakers still had the star power, and they used their star power to raise the film’s budget to $275 million, a number that would have made it a hit. But, as we learned in The Big Short, the Big Short, that number did not include the amount investors paid to put the film into production. This means that, even with the $27 million-plus in the bank, the filmmakers would have had to wait until next year to get