10 Most Expensive Horror Movies Ever Produced
Big box office bombs from the horror world.
Throughout the history of cinema, no genre has struggled more with its budgets than the world of horror. Because of its variety of explicative content, horror has notoriously been much harder to sell to the bigger players in the industry over the years, and is typically less likely to carve out a strong mainstream audience.
A lot of horror movies exist simply to push the boundaries on what is even acceptable to show on the big screen, so gauging whether a story is even going to draw enough of an audience to make a profit can be a tough gig for producers.
On top of that, horror also has a reputation for not needing a lot of money to succeed. The 80's slasher films were all dirt cheap to produce and ridiculously easy to churn out, meaning that there's another obstacle for filmmakers to overcome when hunting down a decent budget.
With that being said, there are some instances of horror films being given the green light on a budget that seems absolutely mind-blowing from the outside. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been pumped in both successful and unsuccessful films over the years, so here's our lowdown on the top ten most expensive horror movies to have ever been released.
10. It Chapter 2 - $79 Million
2017's It became the highest grossing horror film of all time when it surpassed The Sixth Sense with a box office of $700,000,000, so naturally the hyped sequel was given all the budget it could have ever hoped for.
Picking up with Derry's original Loser's Club, It Chapter Two follows the lore of the original Stephen King novel and sees the group come together as Pennywise the Dancing Clown returns after twenty-seven years to feed on the town's fears (and children) once again.
The bulk of this improved budget went mainly on the hiring of a more experienced and expensive set of adult actors, the need to shoot for longer (It Chapter Two has a runtime of over three hours in comparison to It's two hours fifteen minutes), and the CGI needed to process all of the different forms Pennywise takes over the course of the film.
It Chapter Two made $473 million against its budget, a healthy profit for sure but nowhere near the success of the original. Reception to the film was also a lot more mixed than the original too, with plenty of people commenting on the extended runtime and noticeable drop in how scary the movie actually was.