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David Thomson's avatar

Not sure if I missed something, but why specifically look at the pandemic era in this post vs the original which was a decade? It seems a short and abnormal time for movies.

The way I'd heard people talk as the issue was less budgets spiraling out of control, and more about the collapse of the middle, and minimum costs at the bottom becoming untenable due to agent/actors/other above the line costs that made things unprofitable unless you essentially win the lottery.

I'd be interested in the longer term trends in budgets and profitability (as a return on budget multiple, not absolute) of all studio films including p+a from the wide release era (80s) to now (or even all time!) - not just the last few years. I'm not sure where I'd find that info!

I had thought that the fear was that studios find it easier to make fewer bigger bets rather than lots of smaller ones so mid budget films stuff drop out completely (I think you can see this trend with the big publishers in books too).

I'm not sure how true this is based on the actual number of wide release films put out by the studios. I tried to look but it's hard to parse what are acquisitions and what are home grown. Absolute numbers doesn't seem to have changed a lot in the past 15 years, and even before.

For home grown bigger budgets, it would seem to me that a big external driver for this is the busier media environment. I would think it pushes you to make fewer bigger specific bets because in terms of marketing, the branding on a franchise film is done already, and in terms of content spectacle has always been a driver. This is just as the movie star or, before that, the studio itself was the brand. In the late 2000s as movie star influence was fading, studios were effectively putting out a new product line 25 times a year, and now they money is focused on 4 product lines with multiple releases.

Like a lot of these things, I suspect it comes from the discovery problem. How do you get people to notice a film in a competitive landscape? However, all of this logic kills the mid budget and crushes smaller films - unless you can get viral organic growth somehow or do an A24/Tyler Perry.

Availability bias is maybe the problem both in perception of budgets and the attendance of movies!

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jgh's avatar

I think you’d expect costs to fall due to 2022/2023 films fully factoring covid specific upcharges. They’re not completely gone for 2024 films but you’re also not seeing as high cost spirals. That being said I’m not sure they’re even fully factored unto public budgets reported in trades).

Eg eggers’ nosferatu (2024) genuinely cheaper than northman (2022) but the budget gap increased from $10M to $20M due to covid shutdowns

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