History Main / BudgetBustingElement

* Producer Joel Silver was adamant in hiring Creator/DennisMiller for the lead of ''Film/BordelloOfBlood''. Miller, who had no interest in acting, claimed he'd do it for a million dollars. Silver accepted and thus Millier's salary became 40% of the movie's $2.5 million budget. Silver accomplished by cutting $750k from the movie's effects budget, which was a drawback in a movie about ''vampires''.

* ''Film/TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen'': Casting Sean Connery as Allan Quartermain ate up nearly a quarter of the film's entire budget, $17 million of $73 million USD. The huge payout for Connery cut back on the budget for talent in other roles, and it wound up being a partial cause of the film's [[BoxOfficeBomb anemic performance at the box office]].

* WebOriginal/AchievementHunter: The exact price for licencing whole movies for ''Theater Mode'' was never openly stated, but Geoff Ramsey has inferred that it was the most expensive show the group ever made.

* Frequent problem for Creator/FactoryRecords, as [[VeryLooselyBasedOnARealStory fictionalized]] in ''Film/TwentyFourHourPartyPeople'' (see Film section above)

* Frequent problem for Creator/FactoryRecords, as [[VeryLoselyBasedOnARealStory fictionalized]] in ''Film/TwentyFourHourPartyPeople'' (see Film section above)

* In-story example from ''Film/TropicThunder'', the Filming of the Movie "''Tropic Thunder''" goes wildly over budget because they spent millions on the opening shot that didn't have anyone filming it. The fix involves making the film more grounded to cut overhead costs and to get the picture out on time. Les Grossman even says that the death of one of the actors would be more profitable (on an insurance claim) than the film would ever make.

* The TV adaptation of ''Radio/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' had two disproportionately big spends on relatively small elements.

* The unproduced [[Franchise/TheMuppets Muppet]] movie script, ''The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made'' provides an in-universe example. In the film, Gonzo is trying to make a film based on a nonsensical script that he wrote. It's supposed to be a globetrotting mystery. Unfortunately, he blows half the budget on the opening credits forcing him to cut more and more corners until eventually a single street corner is standing in for every location.

** Based the production office in Whitefish, Montana, but chose a shooting location that was a further two-and-half hour drive away, meaning that the entire crew earned five hours pay just driving to and from the set, essentially going into overtime pay every single day

* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBros'': The season two premiere "[[Recap/TheVentureBrosS2E1PowerlessInTheFaceOfDeath Powerless in the Face of Death]]" uses the licensed song "Everybody's Free (To Feel Good)" by Rozalla in its opening montage. The creators had to fight tooth and nail with Creator/CartoonNetwork as, according to creator Creator/DocHammer, the licensing cost 1/8 of the season's ''entire budget''. They included some BitingTheHandHumor in both the episode and the DVDCommentary (which includes a voicemail from a network exec initially denying them the money) poking fun at the situation. It was only after Hammer played them the scene cut to some (intentionally) awful music he had written that they agreed to pay for the rights.

* ''Film/{{King Kong|1976}}'': Nearly $2 million of the film's $24 million budget (ballooned from an initial $16 million) was spent on a full-body, forty-foot-tall King Kong animatronic. It was intended to be used for the majority of the movie, but it proved inoperable (even breaking down once during filming) and looked unconvincing, so it only appears for about ten seconds total in the final film, while most of the rest was Creator/RickBaker in an ape suit.

* ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'' (2003): A significant chunk of the Season 3 budget was used for "Exodus Part 1" and "Exodus Part 2" right at the start of the season. Somewhat downplayed in that those two episodes are considered some of the best episodes of the season, if not the whole show, and have several iconic moments including the ''Adama Maneuvre''. However, it also meant that the rest of the season lacked action or major set pieces. As a result, the season ended up running on a much slower pace, and had a few meandering episodes that are considered the worst in the show.

* ''Film/TwentyFourHourPartyPeople'' is a VeryLooselyBasedOnARealStory account of the history of Factory Records (see the Music section below for ) that had a series of bad luck with money. We see producer Martin Hannet run up his bill by taking his sweet time recording Joy Division' debut album, New Order's first single costing more to print than its sales price and then selling a record amount of copies all at a loss, the money sink of the Hacienda night club first being empty most nights only to later be taken over by a crowd that doesn't buy drinks, the TroubledProduction of Happy Mondays' second album and Tony Wilson buying a ridiculously expensive designer conference table for their office.

* ''Film/TheBonfireOfTheVanities'' second unit director Eric Schwab spent $80,000 on a five camera shot of a Concorde landing in New York City to capture a once-a-year sunset against a runway at JFK Airport. The length of that shot? ''Ten seconds''. Julie Salamon's 1991 book ''The Devil's Candy'' about the film's production dedicates an entire chapter to the shot and Schwab won a bet that the shot ended up in the final film ''at all''. The film's opening title sequence was almost as expensive, to say nothing of the amount of money and effect spent on the nearly [[TheOner five-minute-long tracking shot]] that opens the film.

** Forced the studio to buy acres of Montana land months in advance so that he could plant grass in the early spring, because he had a vision of shooting the climactic final sequences in a field of autumn grass

* ''Film/{{King Kong|1976}}'': Nearly $2 million of the film's $24 million budget (ballooned from an initial $16 million) was spent on a full-body, forty-foot tall King Kong animatronic. It was intended to be used for the majority of the movie, but it proved inoperable (even breaking down once during filming) and looked unconvincing, so it only appears for about ten seconds total in the final film, while most of the rest was Creator/RickBaker in an ape suit.

* ''Series/{{Sense8}}'' features a globe spanning ensemble cast, with scenes set in San Francisco, Chicago, Mexico, Iceland, Germany, Kenya, India and South Korea. All shot on location, and with the effect of the telepathy being represented by characters appearing in the same space with each other, that meant filming with the full main cast at all locations.

* Frequent problem for Creator/FactoryRecords, as [[VeryLoselyBasedOnARealStory fictionalized]] in ''Film/TwentyFourHourPartyPeople'' (see Film secition above)

* The [[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2010/09/the-death-and-rebirth-of-duke-nukem-forever-a-history/ need to keep up to date with the latest engine and fanciest graphics]] doomed ''VideoGame/DukeNukemForever'' and took down Creator/GeorgeBroussard's career with him (Creator/ThreeDRealms barely survived this one). ''Forever'' began to be developed in Creator/IdSoftware's Id Tech 2 engine (the same one that powered ''VideoGame/QuakeII'' and ''VideoGame/{{SiN|1998}}''). Before development started on the game, it was decided that Creator/EpicGames's Unreal Engine 1 (''VideoGame/UnrealI'' and ''VideoGame/UnrealTournament'') was the engine of choice; the 2001 leaked version was even running under this engine. By the time they switched to Creator/ValveSoftware's Source engine, they had more or less a working game and were putting the final touches. ''Then'' they switched to the Unreal Engine 2, but by then the game just went overbudget and the morale of the team was quite low; 5 years later the game was cancelled, and Creator/GearboxSoftware (already having established a name by themselves thanks to the SleeperHit ''VideoGame/Borderlands1'') bought the franchise and [[SavedFromDevelopmentHell resumed development in the game]], finally managing to finish and release the game.

* This was the main reason why ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls1998'' episode "Deja View" was scrapped and repurposed for the DC Comics series, since the visual effects costs for when the titular girls jumped to the BizarroUniverse went way overbudget.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Parodied in "The Fight Before Christmas," where the final scene is done in puppetry and features Music/KatyPerry as a SpecialGuest. Mr. Burns is only able to release one of his trademark hounds, which is just a cheap sock puppet, because they blew the budget on Perry.

* Mentioned InUniverse in ''WesternAnimation/StarWarpd'', when Captain Kwirk asks where the crew is after they emerge from a time warp over modern day Earth. Mr. Spuck replies "Not in the budget, Captain". Later lampshaded when they need an engineering miracle and Captain Kwirk says that he hopes Mr. Squat was spared by the budget cuts.

* The first verse of OneHitWonder song "This Is Why I'm Hot" by MIMS features shout-outs to different regional hip hop scenes, paired with short samples of songs from each scene, which ended up eating up most of the song royalties.
* The sleeve for the 12" single for "Blue Monday" by Music/NewOrder required a complicated process of pressing different size holes, making the original run of the single cost more to make than it sold for. As the single became a hit, later print runs were made with a more conventional sleeve, but the story of the original sleeve mutated into an UrbanLegend that the single lost Factory Records money by becoming a hit. Label impresario Tony Wilson was more than happy to perpetuate the myth.

** [[Recap/CommunityS1E23ModernWarfare The first]] PaintballEpisode was incredibly popular with fans and agreed to be the episode where the show [[GrowingTheBeard grew its beard]], but it was ''really'' expensive because the episode's very premise demanded they TrashTheSet, so the show had to handle all future paintball episodes very carefully--from relegating it to the [[Recap/CommunityS2E23AFistfulOfPaintballs season]] [[Recap/CommunityS2E24ForAFewPaintballsMore finale]] where they could afford to go nuts to replacing it in the lower-budget seasons with pillow fights (and one snippet in a parodic ClipShow episode) and hot lava games to making the [[Recap/CommunityS6E11ModernEspionage last one]] a pastiche of SpyFiction ''about'' [[BaitAndSwitchTyrant Frankie]] banning paintball on the Greendale campus.

** [[Recap/CommunityS1E23ModernWarfare the first]] PaintballEpisode was incredibly popular with fans and agreed to be the episode where the show [[GrowingTheBeard grew its beard]], but it was ''really'' expensive because the episode's very premise demanded they TrashTheSet, so the show had to handle all future paintball episodes very carefully--from relegating it to the [[Recap/CommunityS2E23AFistfulOfPaintballs season]] [[Recap/CommunityS2E24ForAFewPaintballsMore finale]] where they could afford to go nuts to replacing it in the lower-budget seasons with pillow fights (and one snippet in a parodic ClipShow episode) and hot lava games to making the [[Recap/CommunityS6E11ModernEspionage last one]] a pastiche of SpyFiction ''about'' [[BaitAndSwitchTyrant Frankie]] banning paintball on the Greendale campus.

* Happense InUniverse in the ''WebAnimation/DeathBattle'' episode pitting [[Recap/DeathBattleS06E15DeadpoolVsMask Deadpool against the Mask]] when Deadpool takes out a seventh Infinity Gem he calls the "Continuity Gem". Attempting to use it to make Ipkiss take off the mask results in him blowing the budget and sending both combatants back to the storyboard. The Mask decides the best way to fix this is [[ArtShift for him and Deadpool to raise money in the real world (depicted by a live-action segment)]] to finish the episode.

* Happense InUniverse in the ''WebAnimation/DeathBattle'' episode pitting [[Recap/DeathBattleS06E15DeadpoolVsTheMask Deadpool against the Mask]] when Deadpool takes out a seventh Infinity Gem he calls the "Continuity Gem". Attempting to use it to make Ipkiss take off the mask results in him blowing the budget and sending both combatants back to the storyboard. The Mask decides the best way to fix this is [[ArtShift for him and Deadpool to raise money in the real world (depicted by a live-action segment)]] to finish the episode.