One of the most The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies has already run up a $745 million price tag when you take into account the production budget on all three movies. Make no mistake, that’s a lot of money, and it really calls into question the so-called $281 million budget for the first three Lord of the Rings movies, but that’s what’s been reported, though I have seen it as high as $310 million.
Taking all this into account I decided to start doing a little research so I hit up Box Office Mojo (and Wikipedia when necessary) in an attempt to find out just what exactly are the most expensive movie trilogies of all-time and I have a list of 50 of them directly below.
The order is based on the reported budget without taking inflation into account, though on 13 of them I did include some adjusted for inflation numbers for comparison sake.
What do we learn? Well, while The Hobbit trilogy may have the overall largest reported price tag for an trilogy in history, you adjust for inflation and the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies beat it by almost $50 million and Sam Raimi‘s Spider-Man movies come up just $11 million shy. It’s also interesting to see The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 and 2 cost almost 1.5 times the first three movies combined.
It’s also amazing to look at the adjusted for inflation number for the original Star Wars trilogy and having it come out to $175.6 million. That’s an adjusted number, which means you could make at least 12 films on par with the original Star Wars movies for the price of three Hobbit movies. Now, granted, that’s very much a simplification of matters, but it does add quite a bit of perspective.
With all that said, here are the numbers as I’ve collected them. I will try and add a few more adjusted for inflation numbers and perhaps an entire list adjusted for inflation, but that will take some time. I’ve also added the fourth movie in some franchises under the trilogy totals for a little perspective and broken out some film franchises into two separate trilogies.
- $745m – The Hobbit trilogy
- $665m – Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy (first three) [$793.1m adjusted for inflation]
- $250m – Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
- $597m – Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy [$734.1m adjusted for inflation]
- $585m – The Dark Knight trilogy
- $560m – The Chronicles of Narnia trilogy
- $560m – Transformers trilogy
- $210m – Transformers: Age of Extinction
- $550m – Harry Potter trilogy (second three)
- $250m – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 & 2
- $540m – Iron Man trilogy
- $458m – The Hunger Games trilogy (estimated)
- $445m – Men in Black trilogy
- $395m – X-Men trilogy (first three)
- $370m – Fast and Furious trilogy (second three)
- $370m – Madagascar trilogy
- $370m – Shrek trilogy (first three)
- $165m – Shrek Forever After
- $363m – The Matrix trilogy
- $355m – Harry Potter trilogy (first three)
- $343m – Star Wars (prequel trilogy) [$452m adjusted for inflation]
- $323m – The Mummy trilogy
- $320m – Toy Story trilogy
- $308.4m – Terminator trilogy (first three) [$450m adjusted for inflation]
- $200m – Terminator Salvation
- $281m – Lord of the Rings trilogy
- $280m – Ocean’s trilogy
- $270m – The Expendables trilogy
- $263m – Rush Hour trilogy [$47m adjusted for inflation]
- $245m – Bourne trilogy (first three)
- $125m – The Bourne Legacy
- $218m – The Hangover trilogy
- $215m – Batman (Burton and Schumacher first three)
- $125m – Batman & Robin
- $199m – Fast and Furious (first three)
- $166m – Riddick trilogy
- $159m – Blade trilogy
- $155m – Twilight (first three)
- $230m – The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 & 2
- $112.5m – Austin Powers trilogy
- $102m – Big Momma’s House trilogy
- $99m – Back to the Future trilogy
- $94m – Indiana Jones (first three) [$205.8m adjusted for inflation]
- $185m – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
- $85m – Beverly Hills Cop trilogy
- $81m – Star Trek (next three) [$155.5m adjusted for inflation]
- $73.2m – Star Trek (first three) [$184.9m adjusted for inflation]
- $73m – The Godfather trilogy [$199.2m adjusted for inflation]
- $70m – RoboCop trilogy [$128.1m adjusted for inflation]
- $61.5m – Star Wars (original trilogy) [$175.6m adjusted for inflation]
- $59.5m – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trilogy [$100.5m adjusted for inflation]
- $43.95m – Crocodile Dundee trilogy
- $38m – Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy
- $36.5m – Jackass trilogy
- $31.8m – Saw (next three)
- $15.2m – Saw (first three)
- $14.9m – Evil Dead trilogy
- $8.2m – Before Sunrise, Sunset and Midnight
- $2m – The Dollars Trilogy [$15m adjusted for inflation]
