From Shane Conto

To tell a little more about myself, I have a Master’s of Accountancy and I teach/tutor statistics and other quantitative areas in business. I spend a lot of time thinking about and working with money. Where that intersects with my passion for film includes the box office and budgets. Money has certainly taken a big center stage in the film world recently because of the lagging box office post pandemic and the influx of box office bombs. What is causing so many films that seem like hits in the making to flop? Look at the budgets! 

There is one important question that we all need to start asking… where did the budget go? One film has lit this fire ablaze and that is Godzilla Minus One. This is a Japanese produced entry into the decades old franchise and what is crazy is we have something to directly compare it to. Toho is not the only studio making active entries with Warner Bros Discovery/Legendary creating their Monsterverse. A trailer just released for Godzilla X Kong and it looks like it has a massive budget with obvious CGI landscapes. Generally the effects are strong for these films but when you look at Godzilla Minus One… you have to wonder where the money goes? This current entry has some impressive visual effects and it at most had a $15 million budget. Most American studios today cannot make basic dramas and comedies for that little money. Toho certainly made sure that every dollar they spent looks like it was worth it. 

But there are a range of issues plaguing modern Hollywood cinema that is causing budgets to skyrocket. Let’s start with the obvious. Why does every major studio film have to have a budget over $100 million? This is becoming outrageous. Now the actors getting paid does go into this and there were no big stars in Godzilla Minus One when Robert Downey Jr. can get paid upwards of $75 million for something like Infinity War and Endgame. But it feels like every comic book adaptation is just given $150 million plus and too many of them are soaring into the $200 million+ range. This escalation is absurd and dangerous for the future of the film industry. Films are being set up to be flops even before they release because the numbers are just too lopsided. 

What are the creative issues causing this? Too many studios are too focused on creating centralized productions that everything from backgrounds to costumes are being done with visual effects. But what that creates is a fake looking world that is harder to connect with. Quantumania introduced the Quantum Realm as a viable setting but it just felt like an artificial canvas with some random people thrown in. Why does a compound for the Avengers have to be all fake? Or an airport to fight on? Or even an open field like in Endgame? All of those decisions are made for flexibility to change things on demand and it just feels so artificial. Look at Thor: Ragnarok. Hela was introduced in a fake looking alley way… or at least that is what the trailers told us. But then they made the choice to change to an equally fake looking green cliff side. That is like a conveyor belt production that takes the art out of the art of film. AND it costs a ton of money and still didn’t look right. 

What about some of the specific decisions that have set Hollywood into the wrong direction? Outside of artificial settings or costumes, there are some decisions made by filmmakers or studios that have helped create budget inflation. Look at Martin Scorsese. Could you have created new Italian American stars by casting younger actors for his characters earlier in The Irishman? He sure should have and maybe the budget wouldn’t have been so insanely high from deaging a bunch of 70 to 80 year old men. AND we could have been spared that one “beat down” by a “young” De Niro. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny did the same thing which contributed to its insane $275 million budget. But Lucasfilm is taking the cake here because they are convinced that you cannot possibly recast older characters so let's just horrifically bring back actors from the dead which look terrible and cost way too much money. 

But what are the most egregious decisions being made by studios? Giving insane budgets to projects that no one is going to see in the volume they need to be in order to make a profit. Case in point? Blade Runner 2049. Selfishly, I am so glad it exists and it is one of my top films of recent memory. The issue? It is a decades later sequel to a film that FLOPPED. Why would you give $175 million to make it? Similarly, Mad Max: Fury Road. That is one of my favorite films of all time! But it barely made money at a budget of $150 million. It was hard R, weird as anything, and was decades late. That is not a recipe for success. Top Gun: Maverick is the outlier, not the norm. How about Killers of the Flower Moon? Scorsese gets these insane budgets because he is him but none of his films have justified him getting $200 million and especially for a dark and somber three and a half hour western like Flower Moon.

What needs to happen moving forward? Audiences have become much pickier on what they spend their money on and when they go to the theater post pandemic. Studios need to realize this and make more money conscious decisions. That is the film world. It is a business and that is how funds make it into the films to begin with. Spend less, force filmmakers to be more creative, and set up your films for success. If something like Godzilla Minus One can look that good with $15 million…you can make your films for less as well.

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