It's no secret that over the years the budgets on the Pirates of the Caribbean movies have been rather high, with the first movie being made for quite a bit less than the subsequent entries in the franchise. And while it's nice to know that that Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was made on a $140 million budget and that the most expensive in the franchise to date was At World's End, which came in at well over $300 million, nothing really gives you a gauge for how expensive these movies truly are and how many moving parts have to come together to make a set work, well, except maybe the snack budget. In the past, Pirates of the Caribbean films have shelled out upwards of $2 million, just on the snack budget.
While we'd wish we had gotten a look at what craft food services looked like on the set of the latest Pirates film, aka Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, THR recently spoke to previous Pirates of the Caribbean cast members, learning some secrets. Jack Davenport, who famously played Commodore Norrington in a slew of Pirates of the Caribbean films--including the original--recently said that on Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 the crew was so much more sizable than on the first film that the craft services chef told him the budget was "essentially unlimited," which apparently translated to $2 million bucks. Here's what the craft services chef told our Commodore:
I remember saying to him one day 'What is your budget for all this?' He looked me square in the eye and said 'essentially unlimited.' I was like 'what does that mean?' He was like 'I don't know, $2 million.' I was like 'For snacks?' And he was like 'yeah?' That sounds frivolous but it wasn't. He obviously had to keep people fed. The point is that was just a snack line item.
To give you more of the scope of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, Jack Davenport also said that during filming for the original film, catering had to fly in 750 lunches every day, simply because the cast was shooting in the middle of nowhere. And while presumably The Curse of the Black Pearl's smaller budget meant less catering--or at least less nice catering--flying in stuff costs quite a bit of moolah. Davenport said,
We used to work on the first film and I remember looking at the call sheet and it would say just catering alone it was 750 lunches and we were in the middle of nowhere. They had to fly in everything, all the food. It was like being in an invading army.
Jack Davenport hasn't been back to the world of Pirates of the Caribbean since 2007's At World's End, so it's hard to tell how the craft budgets have fared since then, although we would guess the answer is still pretty high. Both Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and the latest entry Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales have had budgets over the $200 million mark. Disney may be shelling out a lot for snacks, but it looks like a bet that has paid off, as the new movie did quite well at the box office this weekend. Tallies estimate the movie made nearly $77 million in the U.S. alone. If you didn't catch the flick this weekend, tomorrow's still a holiday in the States. Here's what else is currently in theaters.
