A movie poster collection may be anything from an extension of another hobby to a sign of serious passion for film history. One buyer may be willing to pay $10 or $20 for an original “Fellowship of the Ring” one-sheet while another pays $47,000 for one of the few remaining “Grand Hotel” posters. With the latter type of collector in mind, we turn to the world’s most expensive movie poster.
Sold by the Austrian National Library in Vienna at auction in 2005, the most expensive movie poster was acquired by a private collector for $690,000. Only three other copies of the poster are known to have survived to the current day—one in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, another in a private collection and a second copy in the Austrian National Library. The expensive poster was created to promote Fritz Lang’s 1927 science fiction masterpiece, “Metropolis.”
The German film, set in the year 2026, dealt with the schism between two societal castes in the film’s titular city—the wealthy thinkers and planners and the underground working class. The film cost roughly $200 million, in modern currency, to make and was the most expensive silent movie at the time of its release. Sadly, much of the original footage has been lost and it cannot be viewed in its intended form.
On a related note, collector and business consultant Doug Taylor will be opening the auction for his collection of original promotional posters for movies that won Best Picture at the Academy Awards during the 80th annual Oscars ceremony on February 24th, 2008. The collection, lacking only three Best Picture posters, is the most complete collection of such posters outside of the Academy itself. He hopes to make at least a million from the sale.
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