Jurassic World promotional dinosaurs actually cost €37,000, not €17,000

The government spent €36,900 to build three dinosaur statues to promote the Jurassic World: Dominion film over the summer.

The dinosaurs were originally thought to have cost just over €17,000, but a reply to a parliamentary question on Monday revealed the statues actually cost more than double that amount.

€17,000 is the cost of just one of the statues, temporarily installed in Valletta’s St George’s Square.

The other two, full-scale Velociraptors were installed near the Freedom monument in Vittoriosa and just outside the Mellieħa police station. All three sites featured in the blockbuster that was partially shot in Malta in 2020.

In a parliamentary question last week, PN MP Julie Zahra had asked Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo how much the Valletta dinosaur display cost. Bartolo had said the display cost €17,100, leading some to believe that that was the price for all three displays.

Later, Zahra asked him for "the final sum of the cost of the dinosaur models that were exhibited around Malta". And on Monday, Bartolo replied: "the dinosaur models around Malta cost €36,900".

Movie premier cost €9,100

Replying to a separate parliamentary question last week, Bartolo said the movie...