X - Formerly Twitter

Here is his full quote

I mean from the stance of giving people employment it’s a good thing sure. I think the problem is that there are so many films that don’t do well these days and have sky high budgets. The cost of a film doesn’t directly impact me but in the long run it may hurt certain types of movies from being made.

I don't typically care anymore...until I do.

I watch something like The Acolyte (which I'm trying to enjoy) and I hear that it cost about $22m per episode and then look at Game of Thrones which was typically about $10m an episode and wonder why the Acolyte looks like an early 2000's SyFy original like Sanctuary. Someone pocketed some money because it certainly wasn't spent on scripts or spent on screen. i don't really have a movie example though.

As for Phillips question, I could see people caring when it comes to blockbusters because if I'm dropping $15-20+ on a single ticket, I want to see it on screen.

I don't know why the non-entertainment media is invested in reporting movie budgets and box office results. If a movie cost $5 million to make or $100 million to make, a ticket to see it costs the same. What matters is whether it is worth seeing. I remember when the local TV stations would have movie reviews on the local news.

Couldn’t care less about the budgets because they’re meaningless numbers to me and it’s not my job to care if a studio profits on a movie or not.
I always think it’s weird when people talk about box office numbers in a way where it sounds like they hold stock in the company, but they don’t (or if they do, they should probably say so).

That said, Phillips sounds like kind of an asshole. At least he made that GG Allin movie, though.

Back when box office was reported in the papers, I always remember looking at them...I believe it was Tuesdays? It was a window into the culture at large (still is), which was my primary interest in youth - what were the biggest grossing movies domestically (worldwide was not reported on hardly at all) it was E.T., Star Wars, Raiders, etc for the longest time. Now, as someone who is working in the entertainment industry my interest is more from a business perspective. Of course it doesn't matter to me personally what the financials are of any given film, but the trends....yeah, they do have downstream effects.

I don't care about budgets. In fact, the only time I think about how much a film costs is when it's terrible - it costs THAT much to make this?

I think people like knowing the calculus of whether a film is a success or a flop and that's usually based on budget, same reason a lot of people are fixated on how much a star gets paid when their film bombs (and whether they are then a viable "leading" actor/actress)

Budgets matter because as more high budget movies bomb and lose money, producers will be less willing to fund more films. It's bad for the industry. We want movies to cost less because then they could be considered successes with the same amount of ticket sales.

Exactly my thoughts.

Exactly my thoughts

I like numbers.

Also yeah, it's nice to be able to gauge how a movie does for future prospects.

I don’t obsess over it. I haven't been in the box office thread in months.

It’s like fantasy football. It’s just fun to follow. And fun to understand how many people share your feelings about a movie. How many people are seeing it.

If I like a thing and it makes money then they are more likely to make another thing I like. And if it makes a lot of money then it is a lot more likely.

This seems simple enough.

I think it’s neat when a movie like the Creator or Godzilla Minus One looks great and makes a ton of money on a modest budget compared to giant bloated blockbusters.
The movie industry is kinda like the military where a pen costs $20 and no one gives a fuck.
Once i started making my own movies on a zero budget, I often think what i could make if I had a fraction of what Hollywood gives out. Especially when I see a real piece of garbage. Not saying mine would be better, but it sure would be fun.

My mind is stuck at the turn of the century as far as how much a blockbuster costs to make. Anytime I hear anything over say $100-$120 million dollars it seems like an insane amount of money but I don't pay it much mind. The only time I do is if it's a movie I really love and I'm interested in there being a sequel or follow up project from the same creative team and then I only care about the budget in relation to how much it made.

I don't understand tracking box office at all.

TV show ratings are tracked by viewers.
Music is by copies sold & stream/airplays.
Books by number sold
Sporting events & concerts by attendance
Newspapers by circulation
Websites by page views and unique visitors

All of the above had budgets to create them. All of them took in money that fell short or exceeded those budgets.
Yet, unless you're a financial person, the common tracker is people or units.

I'd rather hear that 10 million people attended Deadpool this weekend than Deadpool made $100 million.


(And while I'm at it, when the heck did people start rating movies on a 5-star scale instead of 4?)

It's interesting that the recording industry never dwelled on the cost of an album to produce. The only notable exceptions were Guns N Roses and Metallica who both had well publicized cost and production time overruns.

With the film industry focusing on dollars, I guess it's because the data is easier to manipulate. Money always needs to be adjusted for inflation, a film in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago are usually $20 a ticket whereas as Smallville, USA a ticket might be $9.75.

The big movie star contracts usually involved a percentage of the profits or the box office gross which can't be accurately determined by the number of tickets sold. These contracts must be very well detailed as I'm not sure by whose calculator the "profit" is defined. After advertising costs? After home video revenue? McHappy Meal tie-ins included?

Ultimately I think the public just likes to keep score.

I absolutely do think it's stupid for a Joe Blow who has $23 in his bank account to be worrying about how much a movie studio spends of ITS OWN MONEY on a film. Joe isn't getting one red cent of that film's box office.

That said, I've noticed over the years people have really started to gauge how "bad" a film may be based on it's huge budget. There is now an assumption that, Big Budget = Shit film. I'll be honest though, in many cases they may be on to something. But that feels like more like a law of averages thing than anything else. Either way, to me it does feel like they aren't giving a film a chance when they go in with that bias.

The reason to care about a film's budget is it gives you insight into whether a film can make a profit, which is needed in this day of monster franchises. I really enjoy John Carter -- but it cost a ton, didn't make much back and so I'll never see a part two.

Don't we (speaking for all Joe Blows here) own a small piece of Batgirl and who knows how many more countless films? I need at least enjoyment investment on my return.

I find budgets interesting from the sheer craziness that a movie like The Flash (2023) can have a budget of 200 million and look and play like utter shit when compared to a movie like Godzilla Minus One (2023) which had a budget of 15 million.

I don't care about a movie's budget just like I don't care if my favorite sports team spends beyond the salary cap. It doens't impact me -- unless it does. I'm not going to spend much if any more for a ticket to see the movie so I don't care if they spent $5M or $300M. Just make good movies, please.

Also, it's been widely reported that to to the years it took to make, Def Leppard's "Hysteria" needed to sell 3-5 million just to break even.

This is all I care about. However, even though I don't care about boxoffice results - the sad truth is that when a movie makes a lot of money, it just increases the chances of them pounding out sequels, prequels, spinoffs and basic formulaic carbon-copies. It's probably better that movies boxoffice results are crap - then maybe they can get back to making quality films with great storylines, acting and some orginality. There's just so much crap out there, you have to dig to find good films.