Thread by @TrungTPhan

Been looking at the most expensive real-life film stunts ever.

Here are 9 wild ones.

1. MATRIX RELOADED (2003)

For this chase sequence, a fake highway was built at a dis-used naval base in California. The 1.3 mile loop highway cost $2.5m and was fenced by a 19ft wall.

2. CLIFFHANGER (1993)

Stuntman Simon Crane used a zip-wire to cross between two planes while 15,000 feet in the air (and both planes had to travel at exactly 150mph).

He wore two concealed parachutes and was paid $1m for this insane stunt.

3. DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012)

The scene was filmed in Scottish Highlands and got government sign-off to drop a plane fuselage into the mountains.

The plane was bought from a bankrupt airline and the film’s crew of 200 spent 2 months on the stunt (generating >$1m for the region).

4. BEN-HUR (1959)

The 10-min chariot race scene is reported to cost $1m ($10m inflation adjusted).

It took 1000 people a year to carve the arena out of a rock quarry. There were 10k+ extra, 80 horses and 200 miles of racing. Miraculously, there were no serious injuries.

5. SPEED II (1997)

The Speed sequel is awful. Somehow, the filmmakers convinced the studio to pay $25m to build a seaside town (~1/4th if the budget)

The town is destroyed by a runaway cruise ship (Why didn’t Keanu Reeves do the sequel? He said the script sucked. Genius).

6. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998)

The 23-minute long D-Day landing scene cost $12m to recreate (~1/5th of the film’s entire budget).

It took a month to film the scene and included 1,500 actors and 400 crew.

7. MI: GHOST PROTOCOL (2011)

Tom Cruise famously climbed the outside of the world’s largest building: the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (2,722 feet high)

The stunt take place around 80% of that height. And it’s among Cruise’s most expensive stunts because of the cost to insure him.

8. IRON-MAN (2013)

Iron-Man saves the President and passengers after Air Force One takes a hit.

The scene includes special FX, but real-life stunts cost 7-figures. Why? The falling passengers are 13 members of Red Bull parachuting team (they did 580 jumps over one month).

9. INTERSTELLAR (2014)

While this isn’t actually that expensive, it’s my favorite film expenditure ever.

Christopher Nolan spent $100k to plant 500 real acres of corn in Alberta. After filming, he sold the crop for profit.

If you enjoyed that, follow me for interesting threads and check out my Saturday newsletter on business and media.

Tomorrow’s email is about Ted Lasso:

trungphan.substack.com

FYI: If you’re like me and consume a ton of content, check out my AI-powered research app Bearly.AI with:

• Text-to-image tools
• Notebooks + Prompt Library
• ChatGPT integrated with Web Search

For a very long time, I thought this was how The Matrix did bullet time (but is a parody from music video):

One more: Cameron Crowe and Tom Cruise spent $1 million to empty out Times Square for 3 hours to film a dream sequence in 2001’s “Vanilla Sky”.

Awesome explainer vid on Matrix Reloaded highway (via Nerdstalgic)