[mitthrowaway2]

Actually, I picked the first CGI movie from the 90s, and it just happened to be good and very cheap.

But more importantly, the other half of my point was that $250 million ought to be enough to pay for a high effort production. It's not like "well Blender is free now so of course theatres are flooded with amateur CG films since their production has been commoditized".

[physicsguy]

It was the first full CGI movie but others had been using it before that, Jurassic Park used a mix of CGI and puppets for e.g.

[ekianjo]

30 millions was nowhere cheap in the 90s. I guess inflation makes things look this way.

In the same timeframe Jurassic Park cost twice more to make and it was a very expensive movie at the time.

[KvanteKat]

Correcting for inflation (I used this tool by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm), 30M USD in nov. 1995 would have a purchasing power equivalent to roughly 62M USD in feb. 2025. This is below half the budget of Moana 2 (150M USD, released in nov. 2024) for instance.

[ekianjo]

I would never use the official inflation numbers (they underestimate the actual inflation). It's easy to see that the most expensive movie ever made back in the day has a much lower budget that the most expensive movie made now, even adjusted for the official inflation rate.

[milesrout]

But it wasn't very good. It was good for the time but if something of that quality came out today it would be a joke.