Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/9-music-videos-that-cost-more-than-hollywood-films/
There’s a strange irony buried in music video history. While studios have churned out entire feature films on shoestring budgets, a handful of pop stars spent more money on a four-minute clip than it took to make some of cinema’s most celebrated movies. Paranormal Activity was shot for around fifteen thousand dollars. Robert Rodriguez made El Mariachi for about seven thousand. Meanwhile, a handful of music videos quietly blew past millions, treating the format less like a promotional tool and more like a miniature blockbuster.
What follows is a look at nine videos where the budget numbers still raise eyebrows decades later, and in one recent case, just a couple of years ago.
1. “Scream” by Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson (1995)
No list like this one starts anywhere else. Directed by Mark Romanek, the video for Michael and Janet Jackson’s hit single Scream cost $7 million to make. That figure earned it a permanent place in the record books, and it still tops most rankings three decades on. The astronomical budget was driven by the construction of 11 different custom-built sets on seven soundstages.
A huge chunk of that money never even touched the screen. Roughly $2 million of the budget was spent on Michael and Janet’s assistants, trailers, campers, and security guards alone. For comparison, that single line item alone would have comfortably funded most of the…
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Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-08-14 13:48:00
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