10 Upcoming Movies With INSANE Budgets

Budget: $310 million

There's no reality where a sequel to Ridley Scott's Gladiator is cheap - between the location shooting, epic set-pieces, and massive ensemble cast, it was always going to carry a blockbuster budget.

Gladiator II was initially budgeted at a fair $165 million - not an unreasonable increase on the 2000 original's $103 million - but recent reports have indicated that the production ran wildly over-budget, and has ended up costing around an eye-watering $310 million.

This would rank it among the most expensive films ever made, sitting a smidge below the likes of Avengers: Infinity War, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Avatar: The Way of Water.

This is majorly problematic as it massively reduces Gladiator II's chances of being a financial success - it now needs to gross almost $800 million to be a hit by Hollywood standards, a figure which seems improbable.

Even accepting that some of the costs are due to production being on pause during last year's industry strike action, that's an obscene figure for an historical epic - a genre which hasn't exactly been setting the box office alight in recent times.