History Main / BudgetBustingElement

* Creator/ConanOBrien invoked this during his last weeks hosting ''Series/TheTonightShow'' in an effort to spite Creator/{{NBC}} for their controversial treatment of his hosting era, making a point to introduce one-shot characters who weren't really that funny, but ''would'' cost NBC boatloads of money to put on the air. The biggest example was the "Bugatti Veyron Mouse," a very expensive car decorated like a mouse, accompanied by the original recording of Music/TheRollingStones' "Satisfaction," which O'Brien claimed would cost NBC $1.5 million. (Though [[https://abcnews.go.com/Business/conan-obrien-nbc-confirms-deal-speeds-nbc-show/story?id=9621682 it may not be that high,]] as the car was likely on loan or at least a less expensive model than presented.)

* Demanded that a period-appropriate steam train be transported to the shoot location even though its obsolete gauge meant that it would require a detour through ''five'' different states, increasing the amount spent on it from $15k to ''$150k''.

* ''Film/TheBonfireOfTheVanities'' second unit director Eric Schwab spent $80,000 on a ''10-second'' long shot of a Concorde landing in New York City involving five cameras to capture a once-a-year sunset against a runway at JFK Airport. Julie Salamon's 1991 book ''The Devil's Candy'' about the film's production dedicates an entire chapter to the shot and Schwab won a bet that the shot ended up in the final film ''at all''. The film's opening title sequence was almost as expensive, to say nothing of the amount of money and effect spent on the nearly [[TheOner five-minute-long tracking shot]] that opens the film.

->''"If they're gonna be that foolish with their money, then I guess that means we can be foolish with their money. Like spending a bunch of it on a computer-generated cartoon elephant that has nothing to do with the rest of the episode. ''[a cartoon elephant skips across the screen]'' Did you see that? Know what that cost? $58,000. I mean, what a waste. It wasn't even that funny. That's $58,000 that could've gone to curing leukemia. Or muscular dystrophy. Or...what does Michael J. Fox have? That."''

* ''Anime/FinalFantasyTheSpiritsWithin'': A large part of the budget was spent animating Aki's hair, which consisted of 60,000 individually rendered hairs.

* ''WesternAnimation/InsideOut'': The soft, bubbly texture on the emotions was ''extraordinarily'' expensive. At first, Joy was the only one who had it, but after eight months, the animators decided to scrap it because it was becoming ridiculously cost-prohibitive. Unfortunately for them, Pixar head John Lasseter saw the texture on Joy and loved it, declaring "Put that on all the characters!" Ralph Eggleston, the production designer, joked "You could hear the core technical staff just hitting the ground, the budget falling through the roof."

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheMitchellsVsTheMachines'' a five-second-long gag involving a mule struggling to stay afloat in a river during a rainstorm was called [[https://twitter.com/chrizmillr/status/1389374128801521667 "the most expensive shot in the movie"]] due to the added models and water effects. It was deemed WorthIt:
-->'''Bean Counters:''' You sure you want to spend this for just one joke?
-->'''[[Creator/PhilLordAndChrisMiller Christopher Miller]]:''' [[BluntYes Yes]].

* ''Film/KingKong1976'': Nearly $2 million of the film's $24 million budget (ballooned from an initial $16 million) was spent on a full-body, forty-foot tall King Kong animatronic. It was intended to be used for the majority of the movie, but it proved inoperable (even breaking down once during filming) and looked unconvincing, so it only appears for about ten seconds total in the final film, while most of the rest was Creator/RickBaker in an ape suit.

* About a tenth of the multimillion-dollar budget for ''Film/{{Spectre}}'' went to destroying luxury cars in action scenes, particularly several Aston Martin models specifically produced for the film.

* Although it enjoyed a modest financial return, Simon Wells' ''[[Film/TheTimeMachine2002 The Time Machine]]'' used a significant portion of its budget on the props in Alexander's laboratory, namely the Time Machine itself and his collection of pocket watches.

* In story example from Film/TropicThunder, the Filming of the Movie "Tropic Thunder" goes wildly over budget because they spent millions on the opening shot that didn't have anyone filming it. The fix involves making the film more grounded to cut overhead costs and to get the picture out on time. Les Grossman even says that the death of one of the actors would be more profitable (on an insurance claim) than the film would ever make.

* ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'': A significant chunk of the Season 3 budget was used for ''Exodus Part 1'' and ''Exodus Part 2'' right at the start of the season. Somewhat downplayed in that those two episodes are considered some of the best episodes of the season, if not the whole show, and have several iconic moments including the ''Adama Manouvre''. However, it also meant that the rest of the season lacked action or major setpieces. As a result, the season ended up running on a much slower pace, and had a few meandering episodes that are considered the worst in the show.
* ''Series/CrazyExGirlfriend'': At the end of the song "Love Kernels," Rebecca breaks the fourth wall to say that the artsy music video, with its various scene changes and costumes to symbolize Rebecca's LoveMartyr status, ate up the show's production budget, so they now have to recast Darryl with a broom. WordOfGod confirmed this song actually ''did'' use a good chunk of the production budget.
-->'''Creator/RachelBloom:''' But yes, that number was expensive -- we went out to the desert for a day in preproduction to film those sweeping desert scenes, we built another set on stage with all that lavish, beautiful furniture. The costumes alone, I mean especially that cactus costume, it's expensive.

** In the episode, "Tricia Tanaka is Dead", a random meteorite destroys Mr Cluck's Chicken Shack, killing the Episode's titular character and her cameraman. Despite the scene having not much importance to the episode or the series, it was alleged to be one of the most expensive shots in ''Lost'', according to Visual Effects Supervisor Kevin Blank.
** During Season 4, Creator/AlanDale was slated to appear in 2 separate episodes. However, Dale could not leave London, due to his stage commitments to the West End's production of Theatre/Spamalot. Instead of writing him out, production decided to film Dale's scenes ''on location'' in London. This meant flying Creator/MichaelEmerson, Creator/KimYunjin, and a crew out to London. In addition, Charles Widmore's apartment had to be built at Shepperton Studios, to be featured in "The Shape of Things to Come".

* ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000:'' During the host segments of ''[[Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000S07E04TheIncredibleMeltingMan The Incredible Melting Man]]'', Crow's screenplay for ''Earth vs. Soup'' is bought by the Mads and greenlit. They land a budget of $30 million, but between bonuses for Pearl and Clayton and several fees such as insurance and a completion bond, Crow is only given $800 to work with. And they expect him to get Creator/KevinBacon to star. This is meant as a TakeThat to how the crew was treated when shooting [[Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000TheMovie The MST3K Movie]].

* Creator/ConanOBrien invoked this during his last weeks hosting ''Series/TheTonightShow'' in an effort to spite Creator/{{NBC}} for their controversial treatment of his hosting era, making a point to introduce one-shot characters who weren't really that funny, but ''would'' cost NBC boatloads of money to put on the air. The biggest example was the "Bugatti Veyron Mouse," a very expensive car decorated like a mouse, accompanied by the original recording of Music/TheRollingStones' "Satisfaction," which O'Brien claimed would cost NBC $1.5 million. (though [[https://abcnews.go.com/Business/conan-obrien-nbc-confirms-deal-speeds-nbc-show/story?id=9621682 it may not be that high,]] as the car was likely on loan or at least a less expensive model than presented).

[[folder:Music]]

--> ''"If you ask yourself "What is the game about?" and break down a game by its core gameplay mechanics, the main component of the game, the shooting, had better be present in all major parts of the game. ''Unreal 2'' is a {{first person shooter}}. And you don't shoot on Atlantis. Instead, you do all the things that slow down the shooting action during an actual mission: exploration and talking. (...) I love the ambition and effort that we put into the level. It works. But all that effort also distracted and took resources from the other areas of the game that could have used extra help. Putting more focus on the Kai (our version of the Nali) for example. Or finishing the SP missions I had to abandon during development."''

[[folder:Web Video]]

-->'''Melissa Fahn:''' Is that right? Was it really expensive?
-->'''Vasquez:''' Well, we were gonna have the season end with a giant space battle, but they had blown the budget on the walnuts, so... it was upsetting.
* Out of the $290,000 budget for ''WesternAnimation/SitaSingsTheBlues,'' $5,000 were spent on music royalties.

* Mentioned InUniverse in ''WesternAnimation/StarWarpd'', when Captain Kwirk asks where the crew is after they emerge from a time warp over modern day Earth. Mr. Spuck replies "Not in the budget Captain". Later lampshaded when they need an engineering miracle and Captain Kwirk says that he hopes Mr. Squat was spared by the budget cuts.

** Demanded that the buildings on both sides of a western town set set be torn down and rebuilt a few feet wider apart, at a cost of $1.2 million, all the while overruling the crew's objections that it would be much cheaper and easier to tear down only one side and move it the full distance away.

* ''Film/HeavensGate'' ended up costing approximately $44 million to make. Director Creator/{{Michael Cimino|Director}} famously demanded that the buildings on both sides of a western street set be torn down and rebuilt a few feet wider apart, at a cost of $1.2 million, all the while overruling the crew's objections that it would be much cheaper to tear down only one side and move it the full distance away.

-->'''Bean Counters''': You sure you want to spend this for just one joke?
-->'''[[Creator/PhilLordAndChrisMiller Christopher Miller]]''': [[BluntYes Yes]].

* ''Film/StreetFighter'' had a budget of $35 million, of which $8 million was spent - [[ExecutiveMeddling at Capcom's insistence]] - on hiring Creator/JeanClaudeVanDamme to play protagonist Guile. To balance out the books, a number of roles had to be filled by unknown actors, and some of the special effects ended up being quite shoddy because there wasn't enough money left for anything better. Worse still, the casting of the [[NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent conspicuously Belgian]] Van Damme as the canonically all-American Guile ended up being a notorious case of QuestionableCasting.

** In the episode, "Tricia Tanaka is Dead", a random meteorite destroys Mr Cluck's Chicken Shack, killing the Episode's Titular character and her cameraman. Despite the scene having not much importance to the episode or the series, it was alleged to be one of the most expensive shots in ''Lost'', according to Visual Effects Supervisor Kevin Blank.

* ''Film/TheBonfireOfTheVanities'' second unit director Eric Schwab spent $80,000 on a ''10-second'' long shot of a Concorde in New York City involving five cameras just to capture a once-a-year sunset against a runway at JFK Airport. Julie Salamon's 1991 book ''The Devil's Candy'' about the production of the film dedicates an entire chapter to the shot and Schwab won a bet that the shot ended up in the final film ''at all''. The film's opening title sequence was almost as expensive, to say nothing of the amount of money and effect spent on the nearly [[TheOner five-minute-long tracking shot]] that opens the film.

* ''Film/TheBonfireOfTheVanities'' second unit director Eric Schwab spent $80,000 on a five-camera ''10-second'' shot of a Concorde in New York City just to capture a once-a-year sunset against a runway at JFK Airport. Julie Salamon's 1991 book ''The Devil's Candy'' about the production of the film dedicates an entire chapter to the shot and Schwab won a bet that the shot ended up in the final film ''at all''. The film's opening title sequence was almost as expensive, to say nothing of the amount of money and effect spent on the nearly [[TheOner five-minute-long tracking shot]] that opens the film.

* ''Film/BonfireOfTheVanities'' second unit director Eric Schwab spent $80,000 on a five-camera ''10-second'' shot of a Concorde in New York City just to capture a once-a-year sunset against a runway at JFK Airport. Julie Salamon's 1991 book ''The Devil's Candy'' about the production of the film dedicates an entire chapter to the shot and Schwab won a bet that the shot ended up in the final film ''at all''.

* The TV adaptation of ''Radio/TheHitchHikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' had two disproportionately big spends on relatively small elements.

* To date, ''WesternAnimation/TreasurePlanet'' was the most expensive animated film in history, with a budget of $140 million. Because it was the first Disney film released with an Creator/{{IMAX}} release in mind, most of that budget was dedicated to integrating CGI and hand-drawn elements and creating immaculate line-work suitable for such a high-quality screen. The film was a financial failure, only grossing $109 million.

* ''WesternAnimation/FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends'': InUniverse. In "One False Movie", Mac is tasked with creating a movie to be shown at a film festival, with Bloo directing. Bloo immediately blows their budget a megaphone (said to have once belonged to Creator/CecilBDeMille) to boss everyone around with, leaving Mac to sell some of his stuff online to scrounge up more money.

* Legal fees to any other sort of expensive intellectual property, especially the rights to play a certain song. Even mere seconds of a particularly expensive pop song can send a film's budget to shambles.

->''"If they're gonna be that foolish with their money, then I guess that means we can be foolish with their money. Like spending a bunch of it on a computer-generated cartoon elephant that has nothing to do with the rest of the episode. ''[a cartoon elephant skips across the screen]'' Did you see that? Know what that cost? $58,000. I mean, what a waste. It wasn't even that funny. That's $58,000 that could've gone to curing leukemia. Or muscular dystrophy. Or... what does Michael J. Fox have? That."''

Alternatively, the cost may not be ''too'' outlandish by budgetary standards... except this element only shows up for an extremely brief amount of time (such as a scene shot on-location at a famous monument for less than a minute, or a CelebrityCameo from an expensive A-lister).

In fiction, this may be exaggerated to illustrated a PrimaDonnaDirector's SkewedPriorities. Some shows may even waste the producers' money ''deliberately'' (or at least joke about doing it) to take BitingTheHandHumor to the extreme.

* ''Anime/CarnivalPhantasm'': Parodied in the first and second episodes' Tiger Dojos. In the first one, Taiga is so excited about the Dojo finally being animated that she goes hog-wild with [[AnimationBump ultra-fluid movement]]. This blows so much of the animation budget (325,500 yen in 23 seconds) that in the second episode she's just black-and-white line art, while Ilya has no intermediate frames.

* ''Film/TheGeneral'': The film's total budget was $750,000 (in 1926), of which approximately $42,000 was spent on a fifteen second-long shot of a train crashing from a burning bridge into a river. It was the single most expensive shot in silent movie history. This was because it was a genuine train being crashed into the river and had six cameras filming at once to insure they caught it, because they could only do the stunt once (the wreckage remained submerged until it was salvaged for scrap in World War II).

* ''Film/VanillaSky'' spent $1 million of its $68 million budget renting out all of Times Square to film a short-but-symbolic scene where David dreams about the bustling city being completely empty.

** In the episode, "Tricia Tanaka is Dead", a random metorite destroys Mr Cluck's Chicken Shack, killing the Episode's Titular character and her cameraman. Despite the scene having not much importance to the episode or the series, it was alleged to be one of the most expensive shots in ''Lost'', according to Visual Effects Supervisor Kevin Blank.
** During Season 4, Creator/AlanDale was slated to appear in 2 seperate episodes. However, Dale could not leave London, due to his stage commitments to the West End's production of Theatre/Spamalot. Instead of writing him out, production decided to film Dale's scenes ''on location'' in London. This meant flying Creator/MichaelEmerson, Creator/KimYunjin and a crew out to London. In addition, Charles Widmore's apartment had to be built at Shepperton Studios, to be featured in "The Shape of Things to Come".

* ''Series/OnlyMurdersInTheBuilding'' features an in-universe example; one of the major expenses that caused Oliver's musical adaptation of ''Film/{{Splash}}'' to go over-budget was an elaborate set that was supposed to open onto an actual pool of water. Unfortunately for Oliver, the hydraulics failed during previews, and when the chorus boys all dove for the pool, they hit the stage instead, causing multiple injuries and a string of expensive insurance investigations.

* ''Series/TheSopranos'': In the episode "Proshai, Livushka", the producers had to deal with the fact Livia's actress died in between Season 2 and 3, so they hastily made a brief last scene between her and Tony using a DigitalHeadswap which cost $250,000 for about 90 seconds of altered footage (although the production company behind the effect cut the bill in half in hopes of gaining publicity). Each episode cost about $2-6 million total to make (with the budget growing larger with each season).

* The infamous ''VideoGame/ETTheExtraTerrestrial'' game cost at least $20 million to obtain the license to ''E.T.'' alone. It was developed in less than five weeks, sold less than three million copies overall, and unsold copies of it and other pieces of Creator/{{Atari}} hardware and software were buried in a landfill in the middle of New Mexico. ''E.T'' is widely blamed for the MediaNotes/TheGreatVideoGameCrashOf1983, but it was just the straw that broke the shovelware-laden camel's back.

* Parodied by ''WebVideo/SonicTheHedgehog2SpecialEdition.'' In an bonus video about the making of the game, an anonymous member of Sonic Team admits that they had a lot of money left over and decided to splurge on a bunch of computer-animated 3D segments that served no purpose [[RuleOfCool beyond looking cool]]. Then those 3D segments ended up running significantly over budget--and now Sonic Team will be in deep financial trouble if the game doesn't sell.

** In "Road to the Multiverse", the show receives an AnimationBump due to Brian and Stewie ending up in a [[{{Disneyfication}} Disney-style]] universe. WordOfGod states that the ''season's'' entire budget went towards animating that three minute segment.

* ''WesternAnimation/WanderOverYonder'': InUniverse. In "[[Recap/WanderOverYonderS2E13TheCartoonTheBot The Cartoon]]" in Hater's cartoon, when it finally becomes time The battle between Cartoon Hater and Cartoon Awesome, [[OffscreenMomentOfAwesome the camera just cuts to two Watchdogs watching the fight]]. When the real Hater complains about this, the Watchdogs reveal the blew all the animation budget on the [[HerCodeNameWasMarySue Watchdogs fight]], claiming they felt it was "[[BlatantLies more important to the narrative]]."

* ''Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail'' was made on a shoestring budget of just $400,000 - reportedly, a large chunk of that was spent just on the pyrotechnics for the Tim the Enchanter scene. Parodied during the film's opening credits, which are twice interrupted after going on bizarre tangents about moose, and are eventually finished "at the last minute and at great expense", implying that most of the film's budget went on the opening sequence.

-->'''Creator/RachelBloom''': But yes, that number was expensive -- we went out to the desert for a day in preproduction to film those sweeping desert scenes, we built another set on stage with all that lavish, beautiful furniture. The costumes alone, I mean especially that cactus costume, it's expensive.

-->'''Melissa Fahn''': Is that right? Was it really expensive?
-->'''Vasquez''': Well, we were gonna have the season end with a giant space battle, but they had blown the budget on the walnuts, so... it was upsetting.

Indexes: {{Trivia}}, MoneyTropes, ShowBusiness, DisproportionateIndex
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