Just when you thought that big Hollywood productions couldn’t get more expensive, Peter Jackson and his trilogy of movies based on JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit set the bar higher.

According to financial documents filed in New Zealand, The Hobbit movies have cost Warner Bros. over $561 million through March 31st.

Up to March 31st, The Hobbit trilogy had 266 days of principal photography. The production costs don’t include two months of pickup shoots and any post-production costs needed to complete the last two films. When you throw those additional costs into the mix, the cost of the trilogy is likely to top $600 million when all it said and done.

For comparison, The Lord of the Rings trilogy only cost $281 million to produce. The previous most expensive simultaneous production of movies was for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End which combined for an estimated expense of between $450 million and $525 million.

It’s not like this isn’t money well spent, though. The worldwide box office gross for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was just over $1 billion. That doesn’t include about $81 million ($98 million NZD) in government funding from a film production incentive program. So before the final two movies in the trilogy are released, Warner Bros. have already made their money back on the trilogy.

Source: AP