The Budget For The Dinosaur Movie Primitive War Is Shockingly Low [Exclusive]

The world is slowly discovering director Luke Sparke's outlandish dinosaur movie "Primitive War." Following its limited theatrical run, the Vietnam War film/prehistoric creature feature has been gaining a following, mostly because it's as ridiculous as it sounds. It's also easily one of the best dinosaur movies ever made without "Jurassic" in the title. Amazingly, Sparke and his team managed to accomplish all of this on a remarkably tiny budget.

I had the good fortune of speaking with Sparke ahead of the U.S. digital release of "Primitive War" on October 3, 2025. During our conversation, I asked him about the film's budget, which had yet to be confirmed. The movie itself was a completely independent production made outside of the Hollywood studio system, which he highlighted. Here's what he had to say about it:

"I haven't really talked too much about what we made it for. Obviously, it's a completely independent film. There's no government money from Australia. There's no studio. There's no pre-sales. There's literally nothing. It was literally just us making this movie. 'Godzilla Minus One' was around the $20 million mark, it's less than that. There's people online talking numbers here and there."

For the record, the official budget for "Godzilla Minus One" was pegged closer to $15 million. Sparke added that his budget was definitely on the "lower side." I asked specifically about the unverified $7 million figure that had been floating around online, to which he replied, "Not far off." I then told him I had said to people previously, "If they made this movie for $7 million, I will eat my shoe. He simply responded, "You can probably go start eating."

While I won't get into spoilers for those who haven't seen the film, that's a staggering figure. "Primitive War" is overflowing with dinosaurs and is well over two hours long. For context, the "Jurassic Park"/"Jurassic World" movies all cost well over $100 million to make, accounting for inflation. Sparke managed to make a gigantic, blockbuster-sized film for a fraction of that.

"I thought about it early on when I was writing it, going, 'Do we just make it this guy's getting picked off one by one in the dark and hide the things and make it cheap or what Hollywood would make cheap?'" Sparke explained. "I really didn't want to do that. I wanted to start off that way, and it just keeps going on this trajectory, up and up and up. By the end you're like, 'What are we doing?'"

For further context, reshoots on "Zack Snyder's Justice League" alone reportedly cost 10 times what "Primitive War" did. Sparke made the most of his budget, as his dinosaur movie just gets wilder and wilder as it goes along. So, how exactly did he pull the project off on a shoestring budget? As the director noted, it came down to doing everything in-house at Sparke Films and finding the right people:

"It's all really in house. We have our own studio. I've got a team that I have weeded out the Bad Eggs because when you're making films, sometimes you don't gel with people, and that's fine, and you have to do a few films to get to that. It's my sixth or seventh film that I've made, and each one is almost like I teach myself something that I'm going to use for the next one. One film was like, 'Hey, let's do practical.' Another film was 'Let's do CGI' and 'Let's do this.' This is kind of the culmination of my last 10 years of working out the kinks and being able to implement this across this film, which was a huge task to take on."

"In the background to make all the amazing effects, I just have to do a shout out to all my artists, which again, wasn't like a visual effects house like Weta or ILM," Sparke added.

While the "Jurassic World" movies have been seen by far more people, "Primitive War" has been wholly embraced by those who've experienced it, boasting a better Rotten Tomatoes audience rating than most of the "Jurassic" titles. That's no small thing. Speaking further, Sparke revealed that he reached out directly to talented visual effects artists who were willing to work freelance:

"I went around and pounded the pavement and really found these artists who have worked on big shows, but they were willing to come on and worked with me for freelance. We all jus worked at our computers and we all just worked off [really] low, not high end stuff, but making it look high end, all just really movie magic and tricks of the trade. Also, just the gumption and the willingness that the team brought on. I found guys who worked on 'Jurassic' and who worked on 'Godzilla.'"

"Eventually, I had a team of a hundred artists that were just really, really passionate to make it the best it can be, and that's the best sort of people you want around you," Sparke added.

Even though they weren't working for much money, there was a lot of passion on the team. Sparke revealed that the dedicated crew he assembled with the relatively minimal resources at hand fully committed themselves to the project:

"I've worked in the industry for a long time, and I'm surprised at the amount of people out there just kind of like, well, near enough is good enough. It is what it is. I'll move on to the next film. This film never had from day one, never had a crew or cast that had that attitude. We were like, 'We're going to make something that's good. We're going to make something that people are going to like and people have fun with.'"

You can wishlist "Primitive War" on Amazon Prime Video.