Forbes on the real cost of the Ray-trilogy of Star Wars films

Nov 05, 2025

Forbes published the cost of Star Wars sequel films.

An analysis of documents filed by Disney revealed which "Star Wars" film made the most money at the box office, and, notably, it was the film with the highest costs.

To calculate the profit from a film, you need to know how much income it brought in to the studio and how much it cost to produce. The former information is publicly available thanks to Amazon Box Office Mojo, while the latter is typically a closely guarded secret. This is because when producing films in the US, studios include their cost in the total costs and do not disclose how much was spent on each of them.

With films shot in the UK, the situation is different. Studios filming in the UK receive a refund of up to 25.5% of the amount spent in the country, provided that at least 10% of the main production costs were incurred there. To demonstrate this to the UK authorities, studios are setting up separate production companies there to produce each film they make in the country.

These companies are required to file financial statements that shed light on the arcane world of film finance, revealing everything from total production costs and reimbursement rates to the number of crew members and even their social security payments.

It helps that all of Disney's Star Wars films were filmed in the UK, so their financial statements can be analyzed to see what they were worth and the amount of compensation received. Subtracting the latter from the former gives Disney's net expenses, but that's only half the story.