10 Movies That Cost Twice As Much As They Needed To
6. Evan Almighty
Bruce Almighty became the biggest hit of Jim Carrey's career after storming to almost half a billion dollars at the box office, but after the rubber-faced funnyman opted not to return for the sequel, Universal inexplicably decided to make it twice as expensive without the cushion of their former leading man's star power and commercial appeal.
By design, comedy isn't supposed to be a hugely expensive genre given that it relies more on the strength of the material than lavish budgets and visual effects but the studio clearly didn't get the memo, and the $175m Evan Almighty still reigns as the most expensive movie in the genre's history.
Sure, putting a modern spin on the Noah's Ark tale was certain to incur some costs, but Evan Almighty still cost $50m more than Darren Aronofsky's spin on the material that arrived seven years later, and only earned half as much in theaters.
With the still-unproven Steve Carrell in the lead and no Jim Carrey in sight, you could have shaved $100m off the budget and still had enough in the coffers to get the job done.