As the media landscape changes, one thing that is already underway is the rise of the microbudget films. No, I don’t mean the ones that are funded on Indiegogo or Patreon or whatever (though those certainly exist as well, and are filling up platforms like Tubi). I mean bigger budget than the $30,000 raises through crowdsourcing, but far, far under the $100 million range small-scale blockbusters put to work.
Specifically, we should expect to see the return of the $10-$50 million dollar films. So when I say “microbudget” I really mean that from the perspective of the studios with deep pockets, not from, you know, my perspective. We’re already seeing some of this with the return of the RomCom, and of course the Hallmark Channel has always been with us. But as bigger budgets continue to fail to make money for studios, they’re going to have to turn to alternative budget models (and I know that “alternative budget models” isn’t the sexiest line in the world, but it’s true nonetheless).
I suspect the studios have known all along that they couldn’t just keep shoveling larger and larger piles of cash at films, even if they were making money. Now that they’re not, this approach simply doesn’t work. Once people stopped watching Rings of Power (very quickly, as it happened) it became much less likely that Amazon is going to spend another billion dollars on another TV show–however large the fan base. So what will they do instead? Spend less money on product that (hopefully) is still okay.
Smaller budget means one thing for sure: the focus will have to shift from action and special effects (notoriously expensive in film and TV) and onto quality writing and acting. This is good news for us as viewers, because it’s been a while since we’ve had those things in any meaningful quantities.
Don’t get me wrong, there will always be someone willing to spend a billion dollars on something–and we’ll never get away from attempts by studios to recapture the success of the MCU or the James Bond franchise. But studios also have to be realistic, and between large rolls of the dice I think we’ll see more and more these kinds of microbudget films forming the meat and potatoes of the visual media industry.
Dr. Coyle Neal is co-host of the City of Man Podcast an Amazon Associate (which is linked in this blog), and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO