The Sandman spent some cash on the Happy Gilmore sequel.
PublishedAugust 21, 2025 4:15 PM EDT•UpdatedAugust 21, 2025 2:43 PM EDT
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If you thought that skipping the big screen and filming a movie to go straight to streaming would be a money-saver, think again.
Adam Sandler’s ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ broke a spending record for filming in New Jersey as it spent a stunning $152.5 million during just 64 days of shooting across the state, according to the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission.
For emphasis, the film spent an average of $2.38 million per day while shooting. With the movie being 1 hour and 58 minutes long, that’s an average of $1.29 million spent per minute on the final product.
It’s worth mentioning that the $152.5 million did include $1.2 million spent on lodging and another $6.4 million on hiring extras for scenes, but that doesn’t exactly soften the blow.
‘Happy Gilmore 2’ spent A LOT of money. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)
The original ‘Happy Gilmore’ had a budget of just $12 million. While the first film was released in 1996, even if you account for inflation, that $12 million would have ‘only’ been worth about $24.7 million in today’s world.
According to North Jersey, the straight-to-Netflix flick was filmed in 31 New Jersey municipalities across nine different counties, with the golf venues being Hackettstown and Closter Golf Center, Alpine Country Club, and Farmview Golf Center.
As mind-blowing as the film’s budget is, so too are the viewership numbers.
After being released on July 25, ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ generated 46.7 million viewers over three days, with views defined as total hours watched divided by the total runtime. This makes Sandler’s film the biggest U.S. opening weekend of all time for a Netflix film.
According to Nielsen streaming data, the film was the most-streamed movie for the week of July 21-27 with 2.9 billion viewing minutes.
As for quick personal thoughts on the movie, it was fine. Anyone who went into it thinking it would come close to matching the original was going into the experience all wrong, given that the first film is a cult classic. The biggest gripe I had with it is that it felt like it was about 20 minutes or so too long.