10 Expensive Movies With Budgets That Spiralled Out Of Control

4. Titanic (1997)

After James Cameron's epic went on to become the highest-grossing movie in history and win eleven Academy Awards from fourteen nominations, people overlooked the fact that many in the industry felt that Titanic was going to be a financial disaster. With a budget that had massively escalated from the original estimate and a director earning his reputation as a hard taskmaster, they had every right to do so. However, people in Hollywood should no better than to doubt James Cameron. A three-hour romantic epic that required massive practical sets and cutting-edge CGI unsurprisingly had the studio executives nervous, especially when the budget rose to $200m, making Titanic the most expensive movie ever made. So confident was the director in his vision, that he refused to take a salary for the movie, instead opting to take a percentage of the gross. The shoot required a 17 million gallon water tank, a full-scale replica of the titular ship, and a 160 day schedule that stretched tensions to breaking point as the cast and crew suffered for their art but when the movie finally hit theaters in December 1997, it became a phenomenon. Holding the top spot at the domestic box office for a record fifteen weeks, Titanic earned over $600m in the States and over $1.8bn worldwide, becoming the biggest movie ever by quite some distance. The movie has retained its popularity in the years since, with the 2012 3D re-release pushing it over the $2bn mark, making it only the second movie to do so. Not bad for a project that had studio executives fearing the worst for what many had dubbed as 'Cameron's Folly'.