Here's a list of all the movies with production budgets of $170 million and over, for the past ten years. (We chose the threshold of $170 million because there were a ton of movies clustered around the $150 million-$160 million mark.) Movies that failed to make back their budget at the U.S. box office are underlined.

2009:

Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince: $250 million

Avatar: $237 million (according to AP)

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen: $225 million (according to NY Post)

Terminator Salvation: $200 million

G.I. Joe: The Rise Of COBRA: $175 million

Up: $175 million

2008:

Quantum Of Solace: $230.6 million

Prince Caspian: $225.6 million

Iron Man: 186.5 million

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull: $185.5 million

The Dark Knight: $185.5 million

Wall-E: $180.5 million

2007:

Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End: $317.4 million

Spider-Man 3: $272.9 million

The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials: $213.4 million

Rush Hour 3: $187.4 million

2006:

Superman Returns: $295.3 million

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: $223.1 million

X-Men: The Last Stand: $209.3 million

Poseidon: $171.3 million

2005:

King Kong: $232.5 million

Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe: $197.6 million

Sahara: $176.8 million

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire: $150 million (2005 dollars)

2004:

Spider-Man 2: $232.2 million

Troy: $199.9 million

Van Helsing: $182.8 million

The Polar Express: $186.6 million

Alexander: $175.4 million

2003:

Terminator 3: $238.4 million

The Matrix: Reloaded: $176.7 million

Master And Commander: $175.6 million

The Matrix: Revolutions: $175.6 million

2000:

The Perfect Storm: $175.6 million

1999:

Wild Wild West: $221 million

The World Is Not Enough: $173.3 million

The 13th Warrior: $206.8 million

Notes: All figures are in 2009 dollars, adjusted for inflation. These figures are just production budgets, and are based on the most accurate figures we could find. They don't include marketing budgets. And of course, many of the films which failed to break even at the U.S. box office did make a profit when you factor in international box office.

Conclusions:

There hasn't been a movie as expensive as Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End since 2007, so you could argue that, over all, movies are not getting more expensive. However, after a few years where there were four mega-budgeted movies per year, the last two years have each seen six movies with budgets over $170 million (in inflation-adjusted dollars.) And as we mentioned above, this year had the most movies costing $200 million or more of any year, with next year likely to see even more films over $200 million.

And the listing above doesn't reflect this fact, but we also found a steep rise in the number of movies costing around $150 million every year — this seems to be the safe point for a film that is expected to do well, but may not be a blockbuster. Films like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Batman Begins, Star Trek and many others all have production budgets in the magic $150 million zone.

At the same time, Hollywood seems slightly better at picking winners lately. We haven't had a year where most of the hugely expensive movies failed to make back their budget at the U.S. box office since 2004, when two historical epics, The Polar Expressand Van Helsing all bombed. Or 2003, when one of two Matrix sequels underperformed, along with Terminator 3 and Master And Commander.

One thing jumps out at me: There were apparently no budget busting movies in 2000, 2001 or 2002. Apparently the first X-Men movie, which came out in 2000, had a budget of only about $75 million. And the Star Wars prequels, hideous though they were, were apparently on the cheap side, costing around $120 million each (in non-adjusted dollars.)

Why would this be? Well, look at the three big-budget movies from 1999. Notice anything the three of them have in common? Hmmm... Other mega-expensive bombs in the late 1990s include Speed 2: Cruise Control, Lethal Weapon 4 and, of course, Waterworld. The only mega-budget movies to make money in the latter half of the 1990s were Armageddon and Titanic.

Sources: Know Your Money, Forbes.com, Listphobia, The Numbers, IMDB, Box Office Mojo, Wikipedia, and other sources as cited.

Box office tracking site Box Office Mojo wasn't alone in comparing Twilight's midnight haul to that of Sex and The City, earlier this year. That movie, which earned $2.5 million during its midnight premiere, was chosen as a comparison because both movies are "event movies for women" - but Twilight is also a genre movie, albeit a flawed one, so how does it stack up against recent much-hyped genre movies?

The Dark Knight, of course, blows it away; their midnight opening grossed $18.5 million, with an opening day of around $65 million. Twilight's opening day is estimated around $30 million, which will also make it less successful than Iron Man, all three Spider-Man movies and the last Lord of The Rings. Most interestingly, perhaps, it also makes it less popular than four of the five Harry Potter movies (Only Chamber of Secrets was eclipsed by Twilight's bow).

All is by no means lost, however; it's a stronger start than Quantum of Solace, Wall-E and - much to the relief of Twilight's studio, Summit Entertainment, I'm sure - The Golden Compass, the last movie to be adapted from a best-selling and much-beloved series of YA novels touted as "the next Harry Potter." It's also the third most-popular advance-ticket-sales movie in Fandago's history (Again, The Dark Knight and - curiously, Revenge Of The Sith, are ahead), and - much to Kaila's amusement, I'm sure - the movie's biggest business is coming from Utah, ground zero of Twilight author Stephenie Meyer's mormon religion.

Ultimately, how successful will the movie be? A lot depends on this weekend - not just the box office haul, but also the word of mouth. The Golden Compass last year showed how quickly a fan-favorite can be killed in the marketplace by bad buzz, and Twilight's core audience's excitement over the movie was already a cautious one. What'll happen if Robert Pattinson's wooden performance is judged unworthy? We should know by Monday.

(Update: Twilight rakes in $35.7 million in its first day, which makes it the 14th most successful opening ever - and the most successful by a movie directed by a woman.)

'Twilight' shining bright at box office [Variety]

If you were one of the many unsatisfied with last year's movie version of Philip Pullman's parallel universe parable The Golden Compass, here's some cold comfort - At least you're unlikely to face similar disappointment from movies based upon the later two books in the His Dark Materials trilogy, given that it's looking like they'll never be made.

British newspaper The Independent is reporting that The Golden Compass prompting a combination of disappointing box office and outcries from Christian fundamentalists have resulted in all plans to produce movies based on The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass to be put on indefinite hold. Talking to Pullman as well as Compass director Chris Weitz, the Independent revealed the awkward status quo of the project:

Pullman told The Independent that he had not yet been contacted by Shepperton Studios and was not aware of any imminent plans to film the sequel, The Subtle Knife. When the first film was in production last year, he was regularly contacted by Chris Weitz, its writer and director.

"I know everyone would like to see a sequel and I know I'd like to see it. When the first film was in production, I was talking to the studio and to Chris Weitz and producers quite frequently. I'm sure I would be now if the sequel was in production," he said.

Weitz said yesterday he did not want talk about the project while the studio responsible for the first film was refusing to discuss the future of the trilogy.

While I don't doubt that upset from Christian fundamentalists did hurt the success of the movie, isn't there also the possibility that the real reason The Golden Compass the movie wasn't a bigger success because it just wasn't very good?

Christian protests may leave Philip Pullman's trilogy as one of a kind [The Independent]

OK, so there are witches, but most of the coolness in The Golden Compass comes from fantastical scientific machines rather than pure fantasy. Even the golden compass is a machine that Lyra just happens to be miraculously adept at reading. The whole story is set in a parallel universe, with its own set of scientific laws, which is a story setup well-known in the annals of science fiction. Parallel Earths are de rigeur in time travel stories as well as scifi TV like Sliders.

So the talking bears and other creatures aren't magical, but simply a variation on how life might have evolved on Earth. Maybe the daemons (the animal familiars that everyone has in Lyra's dimension) seem magical to you, but at least in the books they are portrayed as a part of each person's anatomy. They are essentially organs, parts of each person's brain that exist outside their bodies. They are not "souls." And the mythical "Dust" that Lyra's dad is trying to track down isn't magical either. It's a controllable particle that helps make up the fabric of the universe.

Maybe the reason why Christians have been protesting the movie is that they don't like seeing science seep into a story that also tries to deal with ethics and religion. And make no mistake, there is religion in this flick. It's just that the so-called gods and angels are more like the powerful alien New Gods and superheroes from comic books — they aren't magic, just have cooler powers and better technology than the humans and other creatures. Offering a scientific explanation for religion, even if it's a scientific explanation right out of pseudo-science TV show Heroes, may be the sneakiest trick of all for this stealth steampunk classic.