Financing / Crowdfunding : Where are the 5-10 million dollar movies? by Amber Greenlee

The old model is broken and now with AI, no one knows what will happen. But some will make money. With so many streaming platforms and a limited number of movie theaters, maybe it is too much content chasing too few viewers?

You've hit on one of the most frustrating paradoxes in modern Hollywood! The disappearance of the $5-10 million sweet spot is a real phenomenon that's left both audiences and creators scratching their heads.

The Economic Reality is those low/mid-budget films actually do get made, but they're largely invisible because of distribution challenges. Studios have essentially bifurcated into two strategies:

- Tentpole films ($100M+) that can generate massive global returns

- Ultra-low budget (under $5M) that minimize risk (typically acquisitions)

Where Did the Low-Middle Go?

The $5-10M range got squeezed out by several factors:

- Theatrical economics - these films can't compete with spectacle movies for screens

- Streaming algorithms - platforms prioritize either massive hits or ultra-cheap content

- Marketing costs - a $10M movie still needs $20-30M in marketing to break through

- International sales - many low/mid-budget films struggle in overseas markets that drive profitability

They Still Exist, But...

Those films are being made, but through:

- Independent financiers rather than major studios

- Streaming platforms as direct-to-platform content

- International co-productions that you might not see in US theaters

- Genre specialists (horror, thriller) who understand those markets

The Writer's Perspective:

This is actually great news for screenwriters! There's huge demand for mid-budget scripts from independent producers, international buyers, and streaming platforms. The key is targeting the right buyers rather than hoping for studio pickup.

Films like "Barbarian," "X," "Anora," "A Real Pain" - all low/mid-budget successes that found audiences through strategic distribution.

The content is there - it's just distributed differently than the old studio system model. It comes more in the way of producer/distributor driven Direct to Streaming type movies, instead of more prestigious faire most commonly.

Pat Alexander Great write-up. This year, there has been a nice uptake in mid- to low-budget releases. It's a lot compared to the mid-2010s, when big budget ruled. Every two weeks of the month, there has been at least one solid movie worth seeing. So the new strategy is working.

The answer: There is no real film strategy in the industry today — not in Hollywood, and not in Europe either.

Saying “Okay, today we’ll make a 5-million-dollar movie” or “Okay, let’s make a 100-million-dollar one” — that’s not a strategy. Budget is not a strategy. Films should never be made this way. It’s a complete insult to the audience.

You either have 100 pages of paper with the story of Casablanca written on them and the deep understanding that this must be made —> or you don’t. And if you don’t, it doesn’t matter whether you have $100 million or $5 million — nobody will care.

It’s a fatal misconception to think that audiences don’t watch a film because it wasn’t marketed to them with enough money. Today, a film can reach audiences worldwide in 3 days, for free, with a great trailer and word-of-mouth — but only if it surprises them or it’s something they’ve genuinely been waiting for.

Accountants can’t make those kinds of films — at best, they stumble into one by accident. Even with $100 million, all they’re really selling is the illusion. And let’s be honest — small studios aren’t doing any better:

“We do not accept unsolicited materials.”

It’s like we’re in a madhouse. You don’t accept unsolicited materials?

Well, I have bad news — the solution is among them.

You cannot build a successful film industry based on luck.

"Maybe something will come through an insider... maybe it’ll work..."

"Sure, I have no idea what kind of film the world needs, but maybe, just maybe..."

It's all about advertising. Several corporations have monopolized the advertising market and restricted people from showing ads. therefore, only blockbusters with huge advertising budgets have access to the advertising market, and therefore to the audience. Films with small budgets have no chance of being advertised, which means the viewer won't find out about them and won't buy movie tickets.

Amber Greenlee It is certainly possible to deliver a project within that budget range. For instance, both "Locked In" and "Deadly Evidence" (see loglines) were written with budget in mind and could likely be produced on a budget of $3–5 million. This doesn't include what it would cost to attach major talent like a Rosamund Pike/Kate Winslet and/or Adrien Brody/Jake Gyllenhaal).

It takes a lot of intention and discipline during the writing process to ensure a story stays producible on a lower budget — from limited locations to cast size and effects — without compromising on delivering tension and suspense.

To answer your broader question: most studios now focus on big franchises like Marvel, Star Wars, or Fast & Furious because they’re seen as safe bets that reliably attract global audiences. These films come with built-in fanbases and international appeal, making them much more attractive investments for studios looking to minimize financial risk and maximize returns. But you need a lot of intent at the writing stage to keep the budget under control.

Kenneth George You're absolutely right about writing having to be tight to keep the budget down, that's true of any script. It's why haunted house movies work so well as a first time director's foray because it's usually a 1-location shoot. But your answer about franchise focus doesn't sit well with me. I feel like that's the tent-pole thinking.

The tentpole cracks and the whole tent falls. I'm not sure that focusing on "a proven IP" to ensure international recognition from the outside market or the big name is the right thing to do for large studios.

Smaller investments into smaller budgets spread out the risk. You drop a basket, you still have baskets full of eggs to carry to the end of the line to please investors, pay your employees and contractors, and put away investment into the company for a rainy day. Throwing all of your eggs into one huge basket creates that slow-motion stomach drop -"NO"- when that basket falls and takes the whole of your crop of eggs along with it.

Only it's not eggs; It's SFX studios and stuntmen and carpenters and DPs and musicians, actors, grips, craft services, and the guy who tapes the wires. When a tentpole falls, it ripples through the industry. When Cutthroat Island flopped, it killed pirate pictures until Pirates of the Caribbean decades later (though it was shopped around for years before that before being attached to the property) proved pirates could make money again.

Not that pirate films are the cheapest to make, I'm just using it as an example of how fickle the industry can be when one film can tank an entire genre. The same can be said about Blazing Saddles and the Cowboy Picture.

Attached is a meme that's been going around the internet and I think is brilliant.

I'm curious if the bigger players even know how to carry tiny baskets any more. I'd love to see the competition of who could make the best movie with the smallest budget. Throw in others. I'd love to see Jordan Peele or Joel Cohn tackle this.

My 2 cents. That, and 5 more dollars gets me a cup of coffee.

I completely understand this concern, and I often ask myself the same question. It feels like today’s Hollywood has locked itself into two extremes: either micro-budget indies that end up stuck in the festival circuit, or massive $200–300M blockbusters that need to “recoup” worldwide.

The middle ground, those $5–15M films, has almost vanished, even though it was once the birthplace of great filmmakers and unexpected hits. Many legendary directors built their careers on that scale: affordable enough to take risks, but ambitious enough to reach audiences.

Now, studios hide behind “proven IP” and algorithms, but that strips away creative risk. It’s ironic: they see a $10M bet on an original story as riskier than losing $200M on a soulless sequel. Yet the math says otherwise, a $10M film that performs decently can multiply returns far more proportionally than a lukewarm tentpole.

Maybe the solution will rise elsewhere, through streamers, international co-productions, or new direct-to-audience models. But sooner or later, Hollywood will have to relearn the old lesson: it’s the mid-budget space where cinema truly renews itself.

Maybe the real issue is that we’re expecting too much from Hollywood.

Their business model is locked: blockbusters, franchises, “proven IP.” As long as those films bring in billions, they have no incentive to seriously invest again in the mid-budget space.

So the real question is: why not build elsewhere what Hollywood no longer wants to make?

Look at A24, Neon, Annapurna… or even certain European and Asian co-productions. They prove it’s possible to make films in the $5–15M range — original, daring, and culturally resonant.

These films thrive at festivals, then find their way onto platforms or smart distribution channels. This used to be the role of mid-tier Hollywood studios.

I believe we need a true cinema ecology:

Hollywood keeps its giant machines and tentpoles.

Independents reclaim the mid-budget space, where innovation and risk-taking truly happen.

Festivals + platforms become the bridges that connect those films to international audiences.

That may be the only way to avoid a two-speed cinema: mega-blockbusters on one side, invisible micro-indies on the other.

So yes, I think it’s time to stop relying only on Hollywood.

We need to build our own studios, our own networks, and alternative models.

Not against them — but alongside them.

Because a $10M film, honest and original, can sometimes define a generation far more than a $300M blockbuster forgotten by the end of summer.

That’s actually where platforms like Stage 32 can play a key role.

It’s not a studio in itself, but it acts as a permanent marketplace — a space where writers, directors, producers, and investors connect.

Hollywood may not be interested in rebuilding the mid-budget space, but independent filmmakers and producers can. And Stage 32 is one of the few places that brings those people together globally.

If enough of us use this network to build partnerships and support each other’s projects, we can strengthen an ecosystem outside of Hollywood’s logic — one where $5–15M films can exist, thrive, and reach audiences through festivals, streamers, and alternative distribution models.

In other words: Stage 32 is not the solution by itself, but it can definitely be one of the tools to create the alternative we’re all looking for.

Amber Greenlee The issue is that you probably don't have access to the industry and market data they have collected over the years to inform their decisions. A few weeks ago, I mentioned a film that featured top stars, a Bond girl, and a Clint Eastwood protege as the director. It had a production budget of $20 million but only generated about $700,000 in revenue that we know of. When you have several such failures in a given year, it highlights the value of established franchises, which can go on to gross nearly a billion dollars.

Kenneth George I don't have all the metrics, no. I don't have all the numbers, no. But I do have case studies. What I do have is an ear for what people are saying and and eye on box office numbers now and the tentpoles aren't delivering what's promised any more. Maybe Hollywood is metric-ed out. Maybe they just need to... make art again?

Remember that? Making art? Telling a story to say something or comment on something or just to entertain people? I think @Minh Koby Nguyen up there has a pretty good instinct about where the new media is going to come from.

When Old Hollywood was spending huge budgets on movies like Cleopatra in 1963 and spending $1M on a movie star's salary for the first time to get Elizabeth Taylor people forget that that film flopped in theaters. That was a $57M domestic box office against a $42M budget, only a $27% profit margin. 5 years later Night of the Living Dead, a B picture from an unknown director done on a shoestring budget, had a far more impressive profit margin. It made $12M+ domestic box office with a production budget of only $114,000 which is a profit margin of 106.03%. I'm getting my #s from here: https://www.the-numbers.com/

Spielberg was still making art into the 1990s. Jurassic Park (the first one) is a piece of art as is Shindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. The first movie has dinosaurs and action and, sure it was made to make money too, but it was also to tell a story about humanity's ego and hubris; as a warning to not let our own awe blind us to our conscience. The other 2 he made because WWII is very important to him personally because of his heritage. He put his heart into those films and you feel it there on screen.

Amber Greenlee: Treating exhibitors' ticket sales as revenue available to recoup investment in production costs fails to account for all the other folks standing at the front of the line to get paid to put the film on a big screen to begin with. The exhibitors take half off the top. Distributors take their fees before then recovering P&A/marketing costs. Sales agents and Producers agents all want to get paid. Set aside the creative accounting and the producers / investors will do good to see at best 30 or 40% of box office.

Absent expensive subscriptions beyond the reach of most independent producers, we have almost no visibility into the economics of streaming.

It was the DoJ's Roosevelt/Truman era anti-trust case (United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., 334 U.S. 131) which busted up the vertical integration in the industry, leaving the production studios to then demand the transparency we now enjoy over the economic performance of theatrical exhibition. But action by the Trump DoJ in 2020 reversed those gains (https://www.justice.gov/atr/paramount-decree-review), and the Biden administration failed to live up to its rhetoric. No one has taken on the streaming services which re-integrated vertically, producing content for their own exhibition platforms.

The project I currently have in development (29 days of photography, 170 days of pay for the cast) would cost roughly $600k to pay scale under the IATSE/Teamster/SAG-AFTRA/WGA/DGA MBA low-budget. That is before I start paying for locations, sets, vehicle and production package rental fees.

My conversations with folks in distribution have so far cautioned micro-budgets, and realistic expectations for the revenue potential of streaming licenses. They caution that absent millions to spend on marketing, only four-walling provides any hope of an Academy qualifying theatrical exhibition. And failing to back such a DIY approach with ample marketing expenditures threatens to demonstrate a lack of market fit scaring off subsequent distribution opportunities.

The US lost 5.7k screens since the lockdown. Apparently theatrical exhibition in foreign territories are favoring local content alongside US made tentpole content. And it may be a couple of years before streaming begins to effectively penetrate foreign markets. Apparently 95% of streaming revenues are still in North America.

Set aside the cost of attaching marketable names and faces to a cast. The question remains, how do we reliably recoup our investors money?

Its not an encouraging picture right now.

Amber Greenlee When you say things like, “What I do have is an ear for what people are saying…,” it’s a bit like going to court and repeating what you heard from someone (hearsay) to a judge or jury. Hearsay isn’t considered reliable evidence — and in business, it’s no different.

When companies are putting billions of investor dollars on the line, with investors expecting returns, decisions aren’t based on anecdotes. They’re driven by hard data, market research, and insights from experts — PhDs in marketing, consumer psychology, behavioral economics, data science, etc. — people who dedicate decades to studying consumer behavior and the factors that shape decision-making both at a micro and macro level.

Sure, you’ll occasionally see an outlier — maybe once a year, or even once every few years — where a film made on a shoestring budget (usually in horror) breaks out with unexpected revenue. But those are deviations, not the norm. It doesn’t mean the entire industry should run on microbudgets.

Think of it like sports: teams with the largest budgets who sign the biggest stars usually dominate and almost always contend for championships. Struggling teams rarely win consistently. Yes, every once in a decade you’ll get a Cinderella story — a low-budget team that makes an improbable run. But those stories stand out precisely because they are exceptions.

As the song goes: that’s just the way it is.

I do appreciate everyone's thoughtful responses. There's so much to consider when it comes to making a movie-

I think about all of my friends in the industry that had been affected by waves of layoffs going through the industry and what it did to them financially, career-wise, emotionally. Some studios with tall pole movies that just cut all the people who had just put it together for this neat accounting trick doctors hate!

The more people involved, the more money, the higher the tentpole. When it falls, it falls hard. When you see a professional physical tent put up, there are guide wires there to help support the center pole, anchors in place to try and help it from falling. I see this as the marketing, the press tours, the interviews, trailers, the toy deals, etc. Everything to support the big pole. These are the known names, the known IPs, and the "sure bets." But the guide wires need support too. They can't hold up the one pole alone.

Big tents have more than one pole. They have lots of little, smaller, shorter poles around the sides to help hold up the tent. Each with it's little support wire, all working together to hold up the whole structure. If one is too weak, the others have the strength to compensate so the tent doesn't fold on itself.

I suppose my argument is not that the tentpoles CAN'T be there, just that we might need to lower the tallest and raise some of the lower poles near those guidewires. Or make a graduated level tent that has place enough for the acrobats at the top and floorspace for the clowns at the bottom.

When you're fortunate, you should build a longer table, not a taller fence. It feels like there's a pedestal up there on top of those tentpoles. With the ladder pulled up.