10 Films That Cost WAY More Than They Needed To

Even though a lot of work goes into animated features, they usually cost nowhere near as much as the average blockbuster.

But there are exceptions like Tangled, which cost a whopping $260 million. Although The Lion King remake cost around the same, its budget seems justified since it used photorealistic imagery while Tangled uses a much simpler and conventional design.

If you were wondering why a film revolving around Rapunzel cost so much money, the answer is... ironically... money.

Originally, Tangled was going to be a 2D animated feature with a cel-shaded aesthetic, similar to what was used in Paperman and Feast. But after Disney believed The Princess and the Frog underperformed because it was in 2D, they turned Tangled into a three-dimensional picture. As a result, everything the animators worked on up until that point was discarded, wasting tens of millions.

Sadly, this change of plan caused Disney to hit a little snag. You see, hair is the hardest material to render in 3D. In case you didn't know, 90% of Rapunzel's body is hair. Because of her 20ft long locks, the studio had to spend a fortune on creating a program that could animate our heroine's hair correctly.

If Disney had greenlit a 3D version of Tangled from the beginning, its budget would've been cut in half.