The black hole numbers surrounding Captain America: Brave New World are alarming. After another failed test screening, re-edits or re-shoots have been ordered up bringing the price tag close to $400M with an estimated marketing budget off $100M (With all the bad press from YouTube critics, you don't have to spend anymore money. Everyone knows it's coming.) If the movie clocks in at 2.5 hours, that means this production cost $3.3M per minute and it'll have to bring in $1.25B just to break even. Of course this movie was sold to investors with "bankable" talent and international "pre-sales" whatever mystical numbers those turned out to be and even all the tax rebates in the world won't come close to recouping crap. This has to make independent filmmakers livid. It sure grinds my gears.
Now let's say that you, like me, have a film project that has world recognized talent waiting for a budget to sign on and your budget, like mine, is only $1.5M for the whole movie. At a 90 minute runtime, that comes out to $12K/minute. On top of that, marketing these days is not that tough especially if your smart, you can cut the cost of promotion down to literally 10's of thousands of dollars. The less distribution has to do to make the public aware of your film, the less areas they can apply creative Hollywood accounting to overinflate the costs of P&A.
Now, of course, none of this matters if you can't make a film that is destined to be a classic and know that composition, framing and lighting can be the difference between Oscar worthy images and a student project, but if you have the artistic eye and a great story, like I feel that I have both in abundance, you can always begin negotiations with investors with the basic logistics of the project first. Granted, they should know these numbers, but given the track record of the films of 2024, I'm not so sure they are getting it. As business men, they seem to be getting the business instead of making any.
The main goal of filmmaking is making the best use of your resources to create universally entertaining content that will last throughout the life of a majority of movie lovers. It's a delicate balance but it's a test to see if you possess the skills to walk the high wire of artistic expression. Step lively but carefully. It's not a fall you can quickly recover from and there are a lot of people cheering you on while flicking the wire at the same time.
You got to love the business logic of filmmaking!
Mr. Spock would have a brain aneurysm.
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Thanks for sharing, Maurice Vaughan - it was amazing to see all of the places in the world where film & TV production is growing thriving and to meet with so many of the film commissions that Stage 32...
Expand commentThanks for sharing, Maurice Vaughan - it was amazing to see all of the places in the world where film & TV production is growing thriving and to meet with so many of the film commissions that Stage 32 Certification is working with. There will be more announcements to come so stay tuned :)
You're welcome, Sam Sokolow. Looking forward to the announcements!