Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/9-blockbuster-movies-that-blew-half-their-budget-on-music-royalties-alone/
Few stories about film budgets get repeated as often as the one about a movie that spent half its money on songs. I couldn’t find a documented case that reaches that mark. The reported figures are usually much smaller.
Even so, the real numbers are striking. The music budget of a major motion picture is typically about two percent of the total. The nine films below went well past that, some of them spending a tenth or more of their budgets on songs.
Almost Famous
Cameron Crowe’s rock journalism story needed classic rock to feel real. The film landed tracks by Bob Dylan, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Aerosmith for just over $1 million of its $6.9 million budget. That works out to roughly one sixth of the total.
A film about a young Rolling Stone writer in the 1970s was always going to need an intense music budget, because classic rock is notoriously expensive to license. One other outlet lists a higher figure of $3.5 million, so the exact number depends on the source. Neither figure comes close to half.
Cruel Intentions
This one rested on a single song. The ending uses “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by The Verve, which samples an orchestral cover of a Rolling Stones song, so licensing it meant paying Rolling Stones money.
The producer said the rights cost close to a million dollars, which was probably ten percent of the budget. The team also tried more than 200 other songs to cut costs,…
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Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-11-12 10:14:00
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