‘Pirates Of The Caribbean’ Crew Eat $2 Million In Snacks

Budgets have grown so much over the past few decades that balance is now a foreign concept for Hollywood’s big studios. This phenomenon manifests most obviously in the special-effects arena, but don’t think it doesn’t also mean first-class snacks.

One “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie alone allotted a whopping estimate of $2 million for craft services, the department that provides meals and goodies for everyone on the set throughout production. Jack Davenport, who played Commodore James Norrington in the first three “Pirates” films, told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Sunday that a chef once told him the food budget was “essentially unlimited.”

“I was like, ‘What does that mean?,” Davenport said. “He was like, ‘I don’t know, $2 million.’ I was like, ‘For snacks?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah?’ That sounds silly, but it wasn’t. He obviously had to keep people fed.”

One more “Pirates” alum, Lee Arenberg, who played Pintel, recounted the “legendary speech” a producer delivered at the end of a shoot, in which he said caterers had prepared 170,000 meals. That is a lot of meals to prepare and to serve over the course of the shooting of the movie.