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 premier cost some €9,100.

Bartolo said the replicas served as an attraction to tourists visiting the capital, saying they had received international publicity and appeared in many pictures on social media.

The decision to set them up was part of an important publicity campaign at the height of the film's success, he said, with the film being the first blockbuster to specifically mention Malta as part of its storyline.

While many major films have been shot in Malta, the country normally features as a stand-in for other locations.

In the movie, Malta features as a hub for the dinosaur black market, where they are imported and exported, leading to chaotic chase scenes on the streets of the capital city.