Hollywood’s Two-Tier Economy: A-List Pay, Mid-Budget Extinction & How to Fix It
Awards buzz for ‘One Battle’ can't hide budget bloat — but dealmakers from Blumhouse to Weil Gotshal & Manges say performance-based comp is the cure
I cover top dealmakers for paid subscribers. I wrote about the new foreign presales playbook for indie films and the return of film crowdfunding, analyzed animation’s box office boom and looked at who’s scoring big feature film deals now.
Throughout this past year, as I talked with dealmakers about everything from indie markets to overall deals, they often described the same pattern: Studios will pay top-tier prices for must-have titles — and more importantly, talent — without so much as blinking, but everything else needs to be as cheap as possible.
An A-list actor can still command a $20 million fee, but talent further down the call sheet is getting squeezed. Studio slates aren’t being slashed, exactly, but mid-range features in the $50-$100 million range have all but gone extinct in favor of IP-driven tentpoles or movies that can be made for $30 million or less.
All the while, dealmakers are screaming from the rooftops — metaphorically, of course — that for Hollywood to survive, budgets need to drop. Those movies in the middle? We need more of them, they beg, not fewer.
These cinema Cassandras generally use stodgy adjectives like “disciplined” and “responsible” when talking about what a budget should be — and thanks to one of this year’s Oscar frontrunners, they’ve all got a shiny example of what not to do (and separately, a new entry that can perhaps help make the case for the return to mid-budget entries).
The cautionary tale, despite its acclaim and Oscar frontrunner status: One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson’s prestige thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio that cost somewhere in the ballpark of $150 million to produce.
One Battle After Another made more than $200 million at the global box office — a career high for Anderson, whose runner-up There Will Be Blood made $76 million on a $25 million budget. But the film doesn’t crack DiCaprio’s top 10, which range from $290 million worldwide for The Departed all the way up to more than $2.2 billion for Titanic (including anniversary re-releases).
It’s not a bad outing for an R-rated original feature — which outside of the horror genre there haven’t been many of in recent years — until you factor in the budget. Then it’s fortunate for Warners that it was released in the same fiscal year as A Minecraft Movie.
One Battle became available on HBO (cable) and HBO Max just a few days ago, and so far there’s no word on its viewership, but it’s currently the No. 1 movie on the streamer. Whatever the bottom line on the film, one top agent described it as “the success story of the year” before clarifying that it’s “a win for the studio — as art.”
Let’s be clear: I’m not picking on this particular movie — and neither were the multiple dealmakers who privately ranted to me about its budget. If anything, they’re frustrated that this “exceptional” movie could also have been a profitable one if the budget had been reigned in.
“If it cost $80 million, $60 million, then that movie would be a huge success — and it wouldn’t have looked differently [on screen],” says the agent.
Meanwhile, a movie that did fall in that price range — A24’s Marty Supreme — made $875,000 on just six screens over the weekend, which, as my colleague Sean McNulty noted in The Wakeup, gives it the highest per screen average since La La Land in 2016. It remains to be seen if that momentum will hold as the film goes wide this weekend, but word of mouth on the Timothée Chalamet comedy-drama table tennis biopic (yes, you read that right) has been strong — and a big box office win (and awards showing) could change the conversation on the viability of mid-budget projects.
I spoke with dealmakers including Blumhouse CFO Josh Small, Integrated Media CEO Jonathan Miller, Weil Gotshal & Manges partner Tom Ara and more about the industrywide challenges that have been driving budgets skywards and what they see as potential solutions to keep original filmmaking in Hollywood sustainable.
Here’s what paid subscribers will learn behind the paywall:
The deal point that can bring all budgets back down to earth
The exact amount Blumhouse spent in 2025 to cross $1 billion in global box office as part of its model
What Warner Bros.’ new label led by former Neon execs means for deals at the studio
How risk aversion can actually drive budgets up
The film industry’s hangover from the Netflix-led streaming growth years: “It was like every slot machine you pulled was a winner”
How AI tools will accelerate the demise of film’s current cost structure
How talent reps are “reverse-engineering” their clients into jobs by meeting studios mandates
Why artists, platforms and financiers benefit from lean budgets — not endless cuts to bloated ones
