10 Upcoming Trends That Will Change Movies Forever

6. The First $300m+ Movie Is Made

It's only natural that, with inflation, movie budgets are going to continue to sky-rocket. To date, the most expensive movie ever made is Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which cost a massive $300 million, while second place is considerably lower, with Tangled's still insane $260 million. Though 2014's most expensive movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction, "only" cost $210 million (placing it at merely #16), there's an undeniable trend of movie budgets climbing higher and higher, which is all the more surprising given that physical sets and props are being replaced with the more practical and apparently cost-effective CGI imagery. Furthermore, budgets of classic blockbusters from decades past simply don't match up to the budgets of blockbusters today, even when inflation is calculated. A $300+ million movie, even were it given to James Cameron for an Avatar sequel, would still feel wildly excessive, and give Fox massive expectations for the director to deliver another stonking box office success (admittedly likely though that would be). It's not exactly a trend viewers should expect to see die down anytime soon: at present a regular blockbuster costs around $150 million to make on average, with the lower end running at around $100 million and the higher end at, yes, $250-300 million. If 1991's Terminator 2 was the first movie to cost $100 million, and less than 20 years later there's movies already costing up to $300 million, will the half-billion dollar movie exist in another 20 or 30 years? Still, it's part of the economy and if there's a market to absorb that cost, then fair play, but these sky-rocketing costs are suspiciously not quite in line with what should be expected from the mere nature of inflation. Shameless Hollywood accounting knows no bounds, it seems, and it's probably only going to get worse.