10 Upcoming Movies With INSANE Budgets
5. Wicked Parts 1 & 2
Budget: $310 million
Musicals have certainly had a rough time of it as of late, with numerous high-profile musical movies (Dear Evan Hansen, In the Heights, and West Side Story) flopping in recent years, enough that studios have become shy about even marketing films like Wonka and Mean Girls as musicals at all.
A major test for the genre comes this year, then, with the long-awaited big-screen adaptation of hit musical Wicked. In a peculiar move, it's being split into two parts, with Wicked Part One releasing this November and Part Two hitting cinemas almost exactly a year later.
The films are budgeted at $145 million and $165 million a-piece, making for a combined total of $310 million.
But there are so many factors working against this one - the decline of cinematic musicals, the divisive casting of Ariana Grande, the perception that Hollywood waited too long to adapt it, and also audiences shying away from showing up for Part One movies (looking at you, Mission: Impossible).
While it's unlikely that the Wicked duology will outright flop, it might've ultimately made more sense to spend $150 million on a single movie extravaganza rather than spreading the risk across two near-equally expensive productions.