This isn't exactly the new phenomenon. In the past there were Hollywood films with ridiculously high budgets that weren't justified with what the audience could have seen on the screen. In 1998 you had Meet Joe Black, with 90 million US$ spent on what originated as 1930s stage play. It had Brad Pitt in starring role, but even with stars being more important than they are today, it was quite excessive.

I would say that the multitude of ultra-expensive films these days probably has a lot to do with variety of factors - runaway inflation, concentration of capital in smaller number of studios, greed, megalomania and general incompetence of people that run the studios.

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