The critic Mark Kermode has written at length about the phenomenon of the "motion picture event" - a movie so expensive that it is newsworthy regardless of creative merit. People will go and watch lousy-but-expensive films, just to see what all the fuss is about. The canonical example is the 2001 film "Pearl Harbour", which was an absolute stinker but made a profit of $60m on a $140m budget.
We're currently in the era of the mega-blockbuster - vastly expensive superhero and fantasy films that are a relatively safe bet financially, because they very effectively capture the casual market that might only see one or two movies a year. Even adjusting for inflation, nearly all of the most expensive films of all time were shot in the last decade.
At the other end of the spectrum, it's possible to make a genre movie for a niche audience on a tiny budget, knowing that even without a theatrical release you can promote it virally and turn a good profit on DVD sales.
You can spend $150m on Call of Warfighter XVII, knowing that it'll sell a gazillion copies in every superstore in the developed world. You can also spend a tiny fraction of that on Garbage Truck Simulator, in the knowledge that 100% of your potential customers will be able to find it on Steam with no real promotional spend necessary.