Am I just getting old, thinking about modern cinema budgets?

Posted by middlepathways@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 27 comments

Just saw a coming popular TV show, with a budget of 480 million dollars... does this bother anyone else? Am i just at the onset of being curmudgeonly? I grew up with playing outside, nintento, and low budget TV and movies, and it was fantastic, mindblowing even. Does a good movie need more than a couple million at most?

I miss the scripts, dialogue, acticing, and story focus of the 80s and 90s, even the 2000s. With this now, almost half a billion dollars for one season of a TV show... seems upsetting, when considering how that money could help the less fortune and struggling people.

Am I just turning into an old person? Is this an equivalent to shouting at the neighbors to keep the noise down in the middle of the day?

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ShadowJak@reddit

That's not how money works. If it did, they could just print money and make everyone rich. Obviously that isn't the case.

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middlepathways@reddit (OP)

gif

Billionaires and international companies reading your comment. Haha I can't go down that rabbit hole too much anymore, but how the extremely wealthy create money out of thin air is fascinating

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apt_get@reddit

It does seem like an obscene amount of money, but I'm not to the point where it upsets me. Let's be honest, nobody was ever going to use it to help the less fortunate. A show like Stranger Things existing isn't making more people homeless, hungry, etc. The opposite actually. It's creating jobs for people and letting them take care of their families. Spending half a billion dollars on something that provides work and entertainment seems pretty benign compared to other things money gets used for - buying political influence for some shitty billionaire or company for example.

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middlepathways@reddit (OP)

Great point. Definitely what I see us all fall into, especially around politics, forgetting about the biggest and most obscene budgets and "lobbying," and focusing on the more benign stuff instead.

Random memory of one movie production, iirc it was with Robin Williams, who went around outside the set and found a bunch of homeless people to come be extras for the movie. They earned good money, were warm and fed, and it even helped the realism of the movie. Seems most of the jobs end up being the thousands of people editing and creating things at computers. I guess you're right, not too bad a thing

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Money_Magnet24@reddit

Ironic because that TV show is .Stranger Things, the show about Gen X kids and their adventures riding bikes and getting in trouble.

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middlepathways@reddit (OP)

That picture captures the feeling perfectly 😅

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Money_Magnet24@reddit

lol

Ya, I love Niles

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OrangeAugust@reddit

I’ve just noticed that most TV shows don’t have a lot of “heart” anymore, and if it only has 6-10 episodes, character development is sacrificed for plot. It’s why I mostly watch old TV shows, with a few exceptions

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middlepathways@reddit (OP)

Totally agree. Sacrificed for plot, or just for shock and spectacle. And with changing writers, or too many writers, for multiple seasons, half the time if there is character development, they end up changing personalities in different seasons

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No-Double-8933@reddit

To be fair, its not as far off as we may think.

Terminator 2 was $100M

Adjusted for inflation is $238M

...for 2 and a half hours of film.

Stranger Things season 5 is quoted at around 10.5 hours total length.

T2 = $95M per hour
Stranger Things S5 = $46M per hour

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middlepathways@reddit (OP)

Nice breakdown. That definitely puts it in perspective. So, curmudgeonly misunderstanding then, lol... the inflation numbers always seem strangely suspect to me, with how wildly some markets have changed, but still you make a good point

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No-Double-8933@reddit

I think the major difference is that tv shows seem to be held above movies at this point. I remember being shocked at the game of thrones budgets until somebody pointed out that the whole series is over 70 hours... which would be 35 movies at 2 hours each. I can even imagine a 35 film series lol

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middlepathways@reddit (OP)

Yeah, that really changes perspective considering the runtime in total. I guess that's the thing I gotta wrap my head around, the shift to long series productions. Even famous actors have been moving towards TV, for a while, probably because the most opportunity is there now. Blows my mind to see even a small amount of how many TV shows there are now

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AdjacentPrepper@reddit

You're not wrong.

Keep in mind the primary audience for movies these days isn't the US though. US ticket sales have been flat for more than a decade. The main audience for Hollywood movies is China, which is why the shift from drama and stories (that US audiences liked) to more fantastic action (that Chinese audiences enjoy).

We also get movies "whitewashed" for a Chinese audience. The best example being the Red Dawn remake; in the original movie it was about a Chinese invasion of the US. When the remake was shot, it was originally planned to be about a Chinese invasion again, but at the last minute (in post-production, after filming was done) they decided to change the invaders to North Korea so the movie could get past Chinese censors. If you watch it, all the badges and flags on the invaders were CGI'ed to change them from PRC to NK flags, and even the dialog was changed from Chinese to Korean...which is kind of wild because the two actors are speaking in Chinese, the voices (which don't match the actors mouths) are in Korean, and the subtitles are in English. Wild.

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emptybeetoo@reddit

The Chinese market for American movies has collapsed in recent years. Zootopia 2 is the only American movie that’s done well in China this year.

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YourGuyK@reddit

That money is paying salaries for a lot of people who also need to eat and have a roof over their heads.

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Sumeriandawn@reddit

Low budget movies back then?

Filmsite" average film budget was almost 53 million by 1998....Pressures on conventional studio executives to make end meets and deliver big hit movies increased during the decade"

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slademccoy47@reddit

Yeah it's crazy. They spend hundreds of millions on a single 8 episode season and then raise the subscription price, and then we have to wait 2 years for the next season.

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SavingsInformation10@reddit

AI may change a lot of this.

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OrangeAugust@reddit

Yes and not in a good way

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Significant_Dog412@reddit

It also means there's a lot less variety in what comes to the cinema and what hits big. I get that they've got more of an eye on the global market and not everything travels well, but not everything has to.

Comedy has really suffered with this and the loss of the home video/DVD market. Big money doesn't make for a funnier joke. Clerks was made for pittance and with today's cameras in our pockets, could probably be done on 30 bucks and a six pack, and it's still hilarious. I guess this is why younger audiences have gone to YouTube/Tiktok for their laughs.

I actually liked the time after COVID when cinemas opened but had nothing new to show, so had to dig through their back catalogues and make an event of it. Black Panther in tribute to Chadwick Boseman after he passed away, an all nighter for the Cornetto trilogy...

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BigPoppaStrahd@reddit

I found it absurd back when the cast of Seinfeld and Friends were getting paid 1 million dollars per episode. ~23 million dollars a year for a few months worth of work

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wosmo@reddit

It's crazy to think how this all adds up.

In inflation terms, 1997 to 2025 has seen 100%. So $1 in 1997 is $2 today. So all else being equal, $23 million in 1997 is $46 million today. For 6 principle actors, $276 million.

Just on cast alone, Friends is past half of Stranger Things' budget. Assume ST has a much higher special effects budget than Friends needed, and the wild numbers start looking pretty realistic.

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