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!
You ask a good question about why I analysed different years between the original post and this post, looking at production budgets.
The reason is that the original post was based on a dataset from Deadline that examined the 10 most profitable movies for each year over a ten-year period. It might be interesting to look at how the budgets for those 100 movies changed over the ten years (and maybe I should do that analysis), but I thought that as this was a self-selecting dataset of *profitable* movies, it might not be that illuminating about overall budget trends, because by definition these were profitable movies, so probably excluded any movies with runaway budgets.
I wanted to look at a bigger dataset covering all movies in a year, not just the profitable ones. So for my second post, I used my own dataset, which covers all movies with a wide US release (>1000 theatres) - but unfortunately, my database only starts in 2021. I'd love to go back further, but haven't had the time/opportunity to source and crunch the data.
I thought 4 years was still worth looking at to highlight recent trends. I had a perceived narrative that budgets had ballooned in recent years, but this analysis did not bear that out.
PS. I agree with your points about the middle-budget movies falling away (the streamers have picked up some of this slack) and the flight to IP.
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
Are you taking into account P&A (Marketing) in these budgets? P&A can easily match or double the actual production budget; therefore hurdle rate for the studio on each movie can be daunting.
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!
Thank you, David, for the thoughtful comments.
You ask a good question about why I analysed different years between the original post and this post, looking at production budgets.
The reason is that the original post was based on a dataset from Deadline that examined the 10 most profitable movies for each year over a ten-year period. It might be interesting to look at how the budgets for those 100 movies changed over the ten years (and maybe I should do that analysis), but I thought that as this was a self-selecting dataset of *profitable* movies, it might not be that illuminating about overall budget trends, because by definition these were profitable movies, so probably excluded any movies with runaway budgets.
I wanted to look at a bigger dataset covering all movies in a year, not just the profitable ones. So for my second post, I used my own dataset, which covers all movies with a wide US release (>1000 theatres) - but unfortunately, my database only starts in 2021. I'd love to go back further, but haven't had the time/opportunity to source and crunch the data.
I thought 4 years was still worth looking at to highlight recent trends. I had a perceived narrative that budgets had ballooned in recent years, but this analysis did not bear that out.
PS. I agree with your points about the middle-budget movies falling away (the streamers have picked up some of this slack) and the flight to IP.
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
Thanks - that makes sense 👍
Are you taking into account P&A (Marketing) in these budgets? P&A can easily match or double the actual production budget; therefore hurdle rate for the studio on each movie can be daunting.
Thanks, agreed. These are reported production budgets, before P&A.