10 Movies You Won't Believe Cost So Much Money

10. Sahara - $160 Million

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This Matthew McConaughey movie about an explorer searching for a lost battleship grossed $120 million worldwide, a somewhat respectable amount for a simple action-comedy. But it still ended up being a huge flop because of some incredibly reckless spending during the film's production.

The initial budget for Sahara was $80 million, but that number quickly went up and up during filming. The entire detailed budget was later revealed via the LA Times, and it included over $200,000 in bribes to the local government. And though the final movie only credits four, the studio hired ten screenwriters to take passes at the script, costing $3.8 million.  

But there's another reason the movie doesn't look like it cost so much: some really expensive sequences that drove up the budget were just cut out entirely. At one point, the crew worked on a massive vintage airplane crash scene which cost them $2 million to execute. That scene was deleted from the film, so this $2 million was totally wasted. Not exactly the most economical production, huh?