20 Major Movies That Spent Wayyyy Too Much On Advertising

Did these mighty marketing campaigns help or hurt at the box office?

In the wake of Barbie’s mammoth opening weekend box office, Variety revealed that the film’s success is due in part to the film’s massive $150 million marketing campaign.

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Of course, this isn’t necessarily new in the entertainment business, as major film studios have long been accustomed to dropping dozens of millions to promote their biggest blockbusters, hoping that any and all attention they can grasp will translate into a lucrative return on their investment.

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With this in mind, I’ve assembled 20 different examples of movies with astronomically expensive marketing campaigns, for better or for worse, but it would be in bad form if we didn’t start with the lady of the hour…

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1. Barbie (2023)

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As previously mentioned, it's been reported that Barbie, on top of its $145 million production budget, was given a $150 million marketing budget, ensuring that everyone who loved (or hated) the Barbie toys while growing up would know that the property was coming to the big screen. While dropping nearly $300 million on a subversive comedy starring Margot Robbie (who was on a bit of a cold streak following the box office disappointments of Babylon, Amsterdam, Birds of Prey, and The Suicide Squad) in the middle of summer would be otherwise considered to be an unthinkable move, people flocked out in their pinkest gear to usher Barbie to record-breaking numbers.

2. Mortal Engines (2018)

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Outside of the involvement of cowriter and producer, Peter Jackson, nothing much made sense about the production and release of Mortal Engines, a largely star-less, post-apocalyptic sci-fi epic about mobilized cities that attempt to battle and consume one another that came with a jaw-dropping production budget between $100 and $150 million. Even more inexplicable is the fact that another $120 million was spent to market the film, which helped cement Mortal Engines as one of the biggest bombs of all time with a worldwide gross of less than $85 million.

3. Avengers: Endgame (2019)

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Of course, the final film of Marvel's Infinity Saga would be going out with the biggest bang possible, with Disney sinking more than $200 million to market Avengers: Endgame and aim for Avatar's crown as the highest-grossing film of all time. Of course, it did so for nearly two years, raking in nearly $2.8 billion at the global box office and giving fans the conclusion to one of the most ambitious and unprecedented cinematic experiments of all time.

4. The Mummy (2017)

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Speaking of cinematic universes, let's check out an example of what happens when a franchise-launching reboot doesn't connect with audiences, despite a reported $150 million marketing commitment: The Mummy, Alex Kurtzman's updated take on the classic Universal Monster that hoped to have Tom Cruise help introduce the world to their "Dark Universe." Despite some massive star power (with the ensemble including Sofia Boutella, Courtney B. Vance, Jake Johnson, and Russell Crowe), there was no amount of money that could convince people that horror movies should be more like superhero movies, with the worldwide gross of $410 million being a rare L for Tom Cruise (even if this writer insists the movie really isn't all that bad).

5. Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

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Audiences around the world love the Jurassic World films, helping these Jurassic Park sequels reach new heights even if critics would rather see the property go extinct. Nevertheless, it's not a cheap endeavor to ensure people know that these dinosaur adventure films are back on the big screen, with Universal happily investing more than $100 million into Jurassic World: Dominion in the hopes that it will make yet another $1 billion like its predecessors (spoiler alert: it did).

6. Black Adam (2022)

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We've all seen the video of Dwayne Johnson moving mental mountains to tell the world that Black Adam was profitable, but the film came and went with little fanfare and ultimately helped inform DC's decision to pass their properties onto James Gunn and Peter Safran. The spectacle-laden superhero film's disappointing box office results are made all-the-more bitter by Warner Bros. decision to sink at least $80 million in its global marketing campaign.

7. Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

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Though Top Gun: Maverick was always going to carry a hefty marketing price tag, Paramount Pictures ended up having to really double-down on selling the film thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, launching an entire second campaign after the pandemic sent theaters into closure well into their first advertising blitz. As such, the studio ended up spending more than $125 million to sell this legacy sequel to the world, but their gamble paid off big time as the film earned nearly $1.5 billion when all was said and done.

8. Battleship (2012)

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For every Barbie-esque success story for an unlikely IP, there's a Battleship failure, with the Peter Berg-directed sci-fi film failing to land with audiences despite a $100 million-plus marketing effort. However, the studio may have realized that the star-studded board game adaptation was dead in the water based on the anemic responses to their previews. This writer even remembers the trailer playing in front of the first Avengers film to a chorus of loud jeers.

9. Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

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Any die-hard film fan knows better than to bet against James Cameron at the box office, with the filmmaker annihilating it time and time again. Yet, with over a decade separating the Avatar films, Disney unleashed more than $200 million to fuel an advertising campaign to welcome back audiences to the world of Pandora, which helped elevate the film to a $2.32 billion global gross.

10. The Lone Ranger (2013)

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By the early 2010s, Johnny Depp was untouchable with blockbuster fare, riding high from the combined success of Alice in Wonderland and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, so it's no surprise that Disney opened up their checkbook to put $175 million toward marketing Gore Verbinski's The Lone Ranger. But all the money in the world couldn't have made audiences care about this reboot of this golden-age adventure property, as the film floundered at the box office and marred the careers of all involved, including Depp, Verbinski, and then-up-and-coming actor, Armie Hammer.

11. Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

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Despite the many troubles that plagued the film's long-gestating production, Bohemian Rhapsody was a film 20th Century Fox believed in as both an awards contender and potential box office sensation, as the studio dumped more than $120 million to market the prestige biopic. After $910 million in box office gross and four Academy Award wins, it's fair to say that the gargantuan investment was well worth the cost.

12. The Little Mermaid (2023)

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In previous years, Disney had found much success with their "live-action" adaptations of their animated classics, including The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, so the $140 million marketing campaign for their 2023 remake of The Little Mermaid could have been justifiable on any spreadsheet. Yet The Little Mermaid was far from the runaway hit the company needed, even though the film still gathered more than $560 million globally.

13. Spectre (2015)

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Riding high on the success of Skyfall, Eon Productions and Sony decided to go above and beyond to promote the second Sam Mendes-helmed Bond picture, Spectre, which was already rumored to be one of the most expensive films of all-time after the Sony email hacks revealed the film's budget to be over $300 million. As such, the companies dropped nearly as much just to advertise the flick, with the marketing budget reported anywhere between $200 million and $250 million, which seems to have paid off in its $880 million worldwide take at the box office.

14. Justice League (2017)

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At this point, Warner Bros. probably never wants to hear the phrase "Justice League" again, considering the costly turmoil behind the scenes and the dozens of millions of dollars needed to bring the "Snyder Cut" to life, so much so that the latter became a punchline in both The Bear and Barbie. Nevertheless, the film needed to be a global phenomenon to recoup its $300 million budget as well as its $150 million marketing spend, and it sadly was never that, with critics and fans rejecting the theatrical version with little reservations.

15. Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022)

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At this point, Universal Pictures doesn't really need to go hog wild to advertise a Minions or Despicable Me film, with the franchise pulling in some of the highest box office numbers of all time and cementing the Minions themselves as icons of family-friendly entertainment. However, that didn't stop the studio from implementing a $140 million advertising campaign to put The Rise of Gru in the public consciousness once again, earning more than $939 million for their trouble.

16. It (2017)

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This one is shocking, even to me, as I would have never guessed that Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema would have been willing to nearly quadruple the production budget of It to promote the R-rated film, but that's exactly what Deadline reported. The studios allegedly spent $154 million to ensure audiences would float with the chilling film. An unheard-of amount of money to spend on a horror property in general, Warner Bros. is likely happy they went with their gut, as the widely-celebrated film ended up grossing $701.8 million at the box office, let alone the wave of ancillary materials that followed.

17. Mulan (2020)

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Disney's live-action adaptation of Mulan is a sore spot for the studio, as they were incredibly proud of the film, which they spent $100 million to promote and hoped to reap the benefits of a quiet spring movie season in 2020...until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The company eventually pivoted to a Disney+ "premium VOD" release in September 2020, a move that was lambasted by theater owners and fans alike, and an international release in countries where theaters had re-opened yielded an estimated $70 million take.

18. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)

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In the wake of the success of Warner Bros.' Harry Potter series and New Line Cinema's Lord of the Rings franchise, Disney very much wanted their own hit fantasy property with The Chronicles of Narnia. The company teamed up with Walden Media to drop $175 million to advertise the second film in the series, Prince Caspian. The adventure film barely recouped its budget at the global box office, leading to an acrimonious split between Walden and Disney that eventually saw the former move to 20th Century Fox for the third Narnia film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

19. Waterworld (1995)

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For many years, Waterworld was frequently synonymous with "box office bomb," as the Kevin Costner-leading action vehicle, set in a future in which the seas have overtaken the land, was built to fail with a $175 million budget and a $60 million advertising spend, which, adjusted for inflation, comes out to over $120 million in 2023. Luckily, Waterworld became an at-home sensation through video rentals and VHS purchases, and the film has since found an audience that heralds the picture as an overly-ambitious cult classic.

20. Joker (2019)

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Audiences did not need to be Bug Mane in order to be "Jokerfied" by Todd Phillips' unique, Scorsese-esque take on the iconic Batman villain, which saw Warner Bros. spend $120 million to promote the dark and demented R-rated film. The move was ultimately the right one, as Joker's marketing campaign made the movie's imagery iconic even prior to its release, and the film would go on to a mammoth $1.074 billion box office take, firmly propelling it to become the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time.