The most expensive film of all time is Star Wars 7: The Force Awakens, with a budget of $447 million (via Forbes). The most expensive single film scene However, that is a different matter. The D-Day attack from Saving Private Ryan, the freeway chase from The Matrix Reloaded and the air bombing from Pearl Harbor are among the favorites for obvious reasons.
A short scene from a psychological sci-fi thriller, which also cost a lot of money, is more likely to raise eyebrows. she is not even for a minute and comes from a film with a budget of only 70 million dollars, as The Numbers writes. What was expensive was not a huge prop, a special effect, an elaborate stunt or a specially built backdrop, but something completely different.
One of the busiest places in the world was cleared out for one of the most expensive film scenes
The first scene of the film Vanilla Sky begins with Tom Cruise, his playboy film character David Aames one morning in Times Square in New York gets out of his sleek sports car. To his surprise, there is no one there except him. He looks for other people, runs across the otherwise busy square and panics more and more.
Paramount
Tom Cruise in empty Times Square in Vanilla Sky
Filmmaker Cameron Crowe had this short dream sequence a whopping million dollars cost, which today, adjusted for inflation, would be the equivalent of around 1.7 million euros. As Screenrant writes, the NYPD cordoned off the American metropolis’s tourism hotspot for three hours on a Sunday morning in 2000 so that Cruise could act out the scene. Of course, with a green screen in the studio it would have been a lot cheaper, but also not as impressive. During the Corona pandemic, he could probably have had the empty space almost for free.
The Spanish film Open the Eyes by Alejandro Amenábar (in which Penélope Cruz plays the same role as in the remake) begins with a very similar scene in Madrid. And horror fans will probably be reminded of the empty London in 28 Days Later or the more expensive (but used for more than one scene) New York in I Am Legend.
Where to stream psychological sci-fi thriller Vanilla Sky?
If you want to see the escalating story about a wealthy playboy, his obsessive girlfriend (Cameron Diaz) and the supposed love of his life (Cruz) for yourself and find out how futuristic sci-fi concepts play into the love triangle, you can stream the film on Paramount+ . The Spanish original can be seen on the Chili streaming service.
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