The level of deception and deceit in Hollywood accounting makes Saddam green with unabashed envy. For a lot of different reasons, there is no real final cost of a movie that can be really determined. Mostly its a way to avoid paying people who have a share of the profit and/or now its also a way of quieting shareholders. Whenever you see a movies budget leaked to a news report theres probably some angle being worked. The figures Im hearing are from the Hollywood grapevine (the real one, not websites or chat rooms) and Ive found it to be fairly accurate.
And I further tend to believe the numbers Im hearing because of what I see happening. A custom built ship, extensive location shooting in the Caribbean, massive sets all over Southern California, extensive special effects, underwater shooting, a massive crew and Michael Bay near a camera all of those has always indicate a massive budget.
Given the box office performance of Disneys recent high-budget films (Reign of Fire, Treasure Planet, Gangs of New York) there is no way they would ever publicly acknowledge theyre risking another huge chunk of cash. The ride movies already have a poor reputation based on the clunker of The Country Bears (yes, its unfair but thats Hollywood). Added is that the ride movies were supposed to be a series of low cost/high return wonder flicks that would dump tons of cash to Eisners promised 25% growth this year.
And even in the recent past Disney has been publicly cagey about film budgets. They were given out low numbers for Pearl Harbor even while Eisner was calling it as close to a sure thing as there is in Hollywood. He found out that it wasnt but by shaving $40 million off the announced cost he avoided many embarrassing questions. They are much less confident about Pirates and so have even more reason to be creative with the budget.
