Hollywood has spent decades throwing inordinate amounts of money at movies for what feels like very little in return. It's a gamble at the best of times and sometimes those odds do pay off, but even by those standards, spending nearly $700 million on a single film is pretty mad. That's enough money to make several major blockbusters, and considerably more than most movies will ever earn at the box office. Well now, thanks to new financial documents being made available, it seems that the most expensive movie ever made actually cost even more than previously reported.
Four years after its 2022 release, it has now been confirmed that Jurassic World Dominion officially cost $683.7 million, according to newly published financial statements obtained by Forbes. The figures have confirmed that the studio spent another $24.9 million during 2025, pushing the total well beyond its original budget, and that is more than enough to make it the most expensive individual movie ever made based on publicly disclosed production costs.
Jurassic World Dominion takes place four years after Isla Nublar’s destruction when dinosaurs roam the Earth again. Facing the cataclysmic consequences of a planet once again dominated by prehistoric predators, two generations of Jurassic heroes unite as doctors Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and Alan Grant (Sam Neill) return to join Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) for an incredible adventure that will determine the destiny of humans and dinosaurs once and for all. It made just over $1 billion worldwide, which sounds like an enormous success until you look at how much Universal spent making it.
How Did 'Jurassic World Dominion' Cost Almost $700 Million?
Probably down to one word. COVID. Filming took place all through 2020, so you can imagine what that entailed, social distancing and isolation and all. Actors spent months quarantining at The Langley, a luxury hotel near Pinewood Studios in England, where rooms typically cost more than $600 per night.
The figures come from financial statements filed by Arcadia Pictures, the Universal subsidiary responsible for producing the movie in the United Kingdom. The latest accounts cover the year ending December 31, 2025, and acknowledge that the production exceeded its budget. That's one hell of an understatement.
“Although the budget has been exceeded, the overage on budget is not deemed to be a risk.”
The $683.7 million figure puts Dominion ahead of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which previously held the record with publicly disclosed costs of $644.7 million. The two Avengers movies, Infinity War and Endgame, reportedly cost around $1.3 billion combined, but their shared production accounts make it impossible to establish how much each movie cost individually. However, it's worth pointing out that all three of those movies made double what Dominion did, so that's a lot more palatable.
There is some good news for Universal, though. The studio received $131.4 million in UK production reimbursements, alongside another $3.7 million in pandemic-related government support, reducing the movie's net production cost to approximately $548.6 million.
Jurassic World Dominion was released in theaters on June 10, 2022, and earned approximately $1 billion worldwide.
Comments 0
No comments yet. Start the conversation.
Leave a comment