Blockbusters are caught in an endless cycle of bigger-is-better clichs. Budgets have swollen so much over the past few decades that moderation is now a foreign concept for Hollywoods major studios. This phenomenon manifests most obviously in the special-effects arena, but dont for one second assume it doesnt also mean first-class snacks.One Pirates of the Caribbean movie alone allotted a whopping estimate of $2 million for craft services, the department that provides meals and goodies for everyone on the set throughout production.Jack Davenport, who played Commodore James Norrington in the first three Pirates films, told The Hollywood Reporterin an interview published Sunday that a chef once informed him the food budget was essentially unlimited.I was like, What does that mean', Davenport said. He was like, I dont know, $2 million. I was like, For snacks' And he was like, Yeah' That sounds frivolous, but it wasnt. He obviously had to keep people fed.Another Pirates alum,Lee Arenberg, who played Pintel, recounted the legendary speech a producer delivered at the end of a shoot, in which he said caterers had prepared 170,000 meals.For added context: The entire price tag of this years Best Picture winner, Moonlight, totaled a mere $1.5 million.Of course, $2 million is chump change given the Pirates movies ballooning budgets. The 2003 original cost Disney $140 million, while its 2006 and 2007 sequels climbed to a mind-boggling $225 million and $300 million, respectively. But contextualized within Hollywood history, $2 million is a wild sum: In the early days, actors and crew members brought their own lunches to work, brown-bag style. Now,studios will drop$2 million on food, but theyll rarely greenlight the mid-budget original storiesthat drove the movie industry as recently as the 1990s.The newest Pirates installment, Dead Men Tell No Tales, opened this weekend with a $230 million budget, drawing at least $62 million in ticket sales. Its predecessor, 2011s On Stranger Tides, was the franchises weakest grosser domestically, but it saw the heftiest overseas revenue, exemplifying Hollywoods reliance on foreign ticket sales. Many sequels, reboots and spin-offs have under-performed among American audiences over the past few years, but their foreign profits make that a non-issue.The Pirates sequels scathing reviews arent enough to keep them down, though box-office analysts expect Dead Men could become the seriesweakest stateside moneymaker to date.But hey, at least everyone on the set ate well. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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