Ben-Hur – the chariot race. The most expensive scenes in cinema history
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The last entry is a classic movie from the Hollywood period when producers focused on exactly this type of epic productions. We can say that in those days, hardly any film enjoyed such lush momentum and fast action. The 1959 Ben-Hur, directed by William Wyler, was a remake of the equally successful 1925 silent film of the same title. What set it apart from its predecessor was the pace – you had to be crazy to make a film like this in the late 1950s!
The chariot race stage cost as much as $4 million, which in today's money could total some $34 million (which makes this scene is one of the most expensive sequences in the entire ranking; one minute cost about 3.7 million dollars!).The race itself lasts nine minutes in the film, but it took five years of planning to set it all up.
Plus over 200 miles of tracks, 300 movie sets (148 acres), and over a thousand extras. All these numbers are impressive, but it's no wonder. Because when we watch the race scene, we realize that shooting it involved many sacrifices.
