One of the biggest and most enduringly popular franchises in Hollywood, the release of the original X-Men in 2000 revitalized the superhero movie as a bankable genre in Hollywood, a trend that still shows no signs of slowing down. The franchise now spans seven movies (with an eighth set for May 2016) that include sequels, prequels, spin-offs, reboots and over a billion dollars in budgets, yet eight years after its conclusion the original trilogy still ranks as one of the most expensive ever made. At $75m, Bryan Singer's original X-Men remains the cheapest entry in the whole franchise, partly due to studio hesitance on spending a huge amount of money on what was a risky project at the time. After the movie turned out to be a critical and commercial success, the sequel upped the budget to $110m and delivered one of the greatest comic book movies ever made. Brett Ratner's trilogy-closing Last Stand was the most expensive movie in history at the time of release, and the $210m blockbuster remains the most expensive X-Men movie ever made. However, with the two movies in the First Class series so far budgeted at a combined $360m, X-Men: Apocalypse will see the franchise's second trilogy become the costliest by far.
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