So no big deal or anything, but Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the director behind the Oscar-winning Birdman and the upcoming Leonardo DiCaprio-starring The Revenant, has just admitted that his new film is over-budget, possibly by as much as $US 40 million.
Iñárritu himself did not reveal any numbers, but earlier this year, an investigative piece in The Hollywood Reporter estimated that the budget had ballooned from the planned $US 95 million to at least $US 135 million.
A number of factors led to the budget increase, including the director’s reported insistence on shooting every part of the film in order, in natural lighting conditions, as well as using a Birdman-like seamless tracking shot technique.
The film has also employed more than the expected number of extras, with one shot that was to include 30 ultimately bringing in over 200. Additionally, the shoot moved from Canada to Argentina because Canada’s snow apparently wasn’t snowy enough.
Over the weekend, the director, still flush with Oscar glory and caring not for straight-edge, mainline, cashmere sweater-wearing things like money and schedules, spoke about the blown-out budget at a film producers’ panel in New York.
He said:
“We all knew what we wanted, we knew how to get it, but every obstacle was in the way [of what] we needed, and we knew what we needed … No scene was added, everything was written, but we were just trying to accomplish what we had from the beginning.”
The Revenant, it must be said, still looks fairly kick-arse.
The film, which stars Tom Hardy alongside Leo, tells the story of a 19th-century fur trapper who is mauled by a bear, robbed and left to die in the wilderness, then sets out for revenge on the men who betrayed him and murdered his son.
via The Hollywood Reporter
Photo: Justin Sullivan via Getty Images
Photo: Justin Sullivan via Getty Images
