Found a stat that blew my mind about Ghibli movie budgets

Ran across a breakdown that said Princess Mononoke cost around $24 million back in 1997. That's basically pocket change compared to what Pixar spends now, has anyone else noticed how cheap the classics were?

3 comments

3 Comments

elizabeth_williams1mo ago

Can't believe that's all it cost! For a movie that looks THAT good and took years to hand draw, $24 million feels like stealing. Disney spends that much on voice actors alone these days. It's CRAZY what they pulled off with basically pocket change compared to modern animation budgets. Makes you wonder where all the money actually goes now.

eric_murphy361mo ago

@elizabeth_williams you're totally right lol my buddy Mark actually worked at a small animation studio for a while and he told me the craziest story. They had a shoestring budget for a short film and he said the director would just stand there watching them draw for hours instead of paying for extra clean up passes. Said the animators would literally reuse backgrounds from other scenes just to save a few hundred bucks. It made me realize how much of that old school magic came from pure hustle and not big piles of cash. These days I bet half the budget goes to meetings and rendering farms that sit idle half the time.

lucas4981mo ago

Hold up, 24 million is pocket change? That's wild to think about. Can't wrap my head around a voice actor costing more than an entire hand drawn movie. You hear numbers like 24 million and it sounds like a fortune, but compared to today it's basically a rounding error. Makes you wonder what the accountants are doing in those budget meetings, honestly.