Neither The Lion King nor Frozen: This film is the most expensive of all Disney

Neither The Lion King nor Frozen, find out which animated film cost Disney the most. We were pretty surprised when we heard about it, and chances are you will be too.

With an estimated budget of $260 million, Tangled is officially the 3D Disney classic that cost the big studio the most money ever. It’s a surprising figure, since the feature film does not contain any spectacular sequences, but the costs still exploded. Fortunately for Disney, Tangled was also a huge success, grossing $200 million in the US alone and nearly $600 million worldwide.

Tangled 10: How the Movie Marked the Rebirth of Disney Studios

This box office success brought Disney back to the fold after its move to 3D with very mixed results: The Princess and the Frog (267 million), The Walt Disney Company (309.9), Chicken Little (314.4) and Welcome to the Robinsons (169.3).

That’s why it cost so much

Tangled still holds the record for the most expensive 3D animated film in Disney history. In comparison, it benefited from the budget of the live-action version of The Lion King released in 2019.

Reasons for this prohibitive cost? Disney was in the process of merging with the teams at Pixar, the initial and developed adaptation along the way changed the film as we know it, throwing away what had been done and the animation of Rapunzel’s hair called for a completely new one. 3D technology. All this has come at a high cost in terms of delays and development.

And the most expensive movie in 2D?

If we’re interested in 2D, the most expensive Disney film in history is Ron Clements and John Musker’s (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin) Treasure Planet: A New Universe. With an estimated budget of $140 million, this feature film preview Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson’s sci-fi adaptation did not achieve the same success as Rapunzel and failed to collect 110 million at the box office internationally.