Not quite but it’s up there. Finally after years of development and labor problems and losing a director, the two part film version of the The Hobbit will soon begin production directed by Peter Jackson and sources are saying that it will be one of the most expensive films ever made with a total production cost approaching $500 million.

Thought that’s a staggering sum it, doesn’t make make it the most expensive film ever made. Both the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, which were shot back-to- back, cost an estimated $450 million combined for both films and Spider Man 3 cost Sony Pictures a reported $500 million to make.

But the still the king of all expensive films still is the 8 hour long Russian film version of  Tolstoy’s War and Peace directed by Sergei Bondarchuk (and which by the way is a really good film) which took 5 years to shoot released in the U.S. in 1968 and in today’s money would cost  $700 million though some estimates say it could be closer to a billion. Chump change…