Two Latest ‘Jurassic World’ Movies Cost $845 Million

Universal has revealed it spent a staggering $844.7 million (£680.2 million) on the two latest movies in its Jurassic World trilogy which is more than twice their estimated budget.

The lion’s share of the money was spent on 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom which stars A Listers Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt as activists who are sent to an island in the Pacific to rescue hordes of dinosaurs from an imminent volcano eruption.

The movie had a budget of $516.1 million (£415.6 million), easily making it one of the most expensive films in history. In fact, it is just behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens which had the biggest budget of all time with costs of $533.2 million as we recently revealed.

Fallen Kingdom cost nearly three times the movie’s estimated $170 million production budget and although its sequel was closer to the forecasts it was still a (Jurassic) world away.

Released last year, Jurassic World: Dominion saw Howard and Pratt team up with Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum – the original cast of 1993 Oscar-winner Jurassic Park. Made in the United Kingdom at the height of the pandemic in 2020, the cast of Dominion had to quarantine for five months at the opulent Langley hotel while they filmed at nearby Pinewood Studios.

The hotel is the former manor home of the third Duke of Marlborough and rooms cost more than $600 per night contributing to the film’s Covid safety measures soaring to a reported $8.7 million. As we recently revealed in the UK’s Sunday Express newspaper, the movie’s total costs came to $328.6 million (£264.6 million) which is nearly double its estimated $185 million production budget.

The monster payments are disclosed in filings for two UK production companies which are owned by Universal and have code names so that they don’t raise attention with fans when they apply for permits to film on location.

Dominion was made by Arcadia Pictures limited which is named after the rescue ship that carried the dinosaurs to safety in Fallen Kingdom. The company behind that movie is called Ancient Futures limited in a nod to the dinosaurs which were created in a futuristic cloning process. Fallen Kingdom was also filmed in the UK at Pinewood and the surroundings including a forest area called Hawley Common which doubled for the loading dock where the boatload of rescued dinosaurs arrives in the movie.

The filming locations shine a spotlight on the finances of the movies which are usually shrouded in secrecy. Studios tend to absorb the cost of individual pictures in their overall expenses and don’t itemize them in public filings. However, the costs of movies made in the UK are consolidated in single companies in order to benefit from the government’s Film Tax Relief scheme. This allows them to receive a reimbursement of up to 25% of their costs in the UK provided that at least 10% of the total is spent there.

The reimbursement is funded by taxpayers and can only be paid to UK companies which handle all aspects of the movie-making process. This stretches from pre-production to delivery of the completed film. The companies aren’t required to be responsible for marketing or distribution to theaters but they often do this and handle home entertainment which can explain why they continue to book costs and revenue long after the movie has been released.

Studios usually set up separate production companies to make each film and they all have to file financial statements showing staff numbers, salaries, costs and the level of reimbursement.

Analysis of ten sets of financial statements for the Jurassic World movies shows that one of the biggest single costs was paying the crew. They got a combined $12.3 million (£9.9 million) for Fallen Kingdom whilst the cost came to $34 million (£27.4 million) on Dominion. Its staff numbers peaked at 454 people which doesn’t even include freelancers and self-employed workers who make up the majority of the crew.

A separate set of filings reveals that during the production period of the movie, the average hourly pay of the women on the crew was 23.8% lower than that of the men. Likewise, women occupied 53.9% of the lowest paid jobs and just 12.7% of the highest paid jobs. Howard was one of them but she wasn’t paid as much as people thought.

In 2018, Variety claimed that Howard was paid $8 million for Fallen Kingdom which was $2 million less than Pratt took home. However, in an interview with Insider last year, she said that the pay gap was actually larger.

“The reports were so interesting because I was paid so much less than the reports even said, so much less,” Howard told Insider. “When I started negotiating for ‘Jurassic,’ it was 2014, and it was a different world, and I was at a great disadvantage. And, unfortunately, you have to sign up for three movies, and so your deals are set.” She added that after discussing the gap with Pratt he pushed for her to receive equal pay on other opportunities that were not already contractually binding, such as spinoff video games and the theme park rides at Universal’s parks in Hollywood and Beijing.

“He literally told me ‘You guys don’t even have to do anything. I’m gonna do all the negotiating. We’re gonna be paid the same, and you don’t have to think about this,'” said Howard. “And I love him so much for doing that. I really do, because I’ve been paid more for those kinds of things than I ever was for the movie.”

The haircut on her salary is one of the reasons why the movies managed to be profitable despite their blockbuster costs. Perhaps the biggest driving force was the reimbursement from the UK government. The financial statements reveal that Fallen Kingdom received a $84.5 million (£68 million) tax credit with a further $64.1 million (£51.6 million) handed to Dominion.

This gave Fallen Kingdom net spending of $431.6 million whilst Dominion‘s costs came to $264.5 million. According to industry analyst Box Office Mojo, Dominion had total takings of $1 billion and cinemas typically keep around 50% with the remainder going to the studio. This gave Universal $500 million from Dominion leaving it with a $235.5 million profit. The prequel’s $218.4 million profit was slightly lower as although its $1.3 billion box office haul was higher, so too were its costs.

Dominion had a magic touch in 2022 as Universal’s studios division generated $942 million of pre-tax earnings on $11.6 billion of revenue. It hasn’t been such a fairytale for theaters.

The rising popularity of streaming combined with a dearth of blockbusters and the growing the cost of living crisis have kept film fans at home. In July last year, Europe’s biggest privately owned theater operator, Vue, was taken over by its lenders and two months later the curtain came down on the US operations of the world’s second-largest chain, Cineworld.

Weighed down by $8.9 billion of debt and lease liabilities, the US arm of Cineworld filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September. Just last week it announced that it too will be taken over by its creditors after it failed to find a buyer for its US and UK operations. Stockholders will lose all their money in the restructuring deal and, ominously, Cineworld added that despite this, it may not even be able to remain in business long enough to emerge from Chapter 11. For the theater industry, happily ever after still seems to be far, far away.