The first two qualify as big budget for me, but I tend to watch more comedies, period pieces and indie flicks. So I might be biased. Certainly they are no Waterworld or Titanic (thank God).
People talk about YouTube like you can catch any show in the world posted, but they've done a good job recently of cracking down on a lot of the shows I used to watch online. It is a lot harder to find clips for the Office for example.
The record companies controlled the airwaves through "the Network", a sort of middle man cutout of promoters who handled payola. It got out of the record companies control though, and payola prices to get songs played spiralled upwards. Ironically, this raises barrier to entry costs for indie labels who want a big act and protects the oligopoly of the big labels. Read Hit Men by Fred Dannen for more details
I thought The Passion and 300 were much less expensive.
I stand corrected, although the recent hillary "Big Brother" ad shows the power of new distribution channels.