How to Make a (Good!) Science Fiction Movie (for Cheap!)
A question for you: In terms of production cost to box office gross, what is the most successful science fiction/fantasy film of 2008 so far? (Hint: not Speed Racer.) If you guessed Iron Man, that would be a good guess: It cost about $150 million to make and so far has taken about $435 million worldwide, or about almost three times what it cost to make. But the real return on investment heavyweight for the year is already out on DVD: Cloverfield. Worldwide, it raked in $170 million, but it only cost $25 million to make -- which means in brought in almost seven times production costs. That's the sort of return that makes movie executives tingle.
What Cloverfield shows us is that in this age of nine-digit film budgets, it's still possible to make a science fiction film that looks great, has all the bells and whistles that fans expect -- and still costs less than what Will Smith gets paid. How do you do it? Here are three options, which can work singly, or in combination.
1. Ditch the Stars
So how much does Will Smith get paid to make a movie these days? Well, $28 million for I, Robot -- or a quarter of that film's $105 million production budget (or $3 million more than all of Cloverfield). I'm a big fan of Will Smith, personally, but that's a hell of a lot of money. Cloverfield has a bunch of actors most folks have never heard, and got them for probably what the craft service budget was on Iron Man. It banked on making its monster its star -- a smart move, since they didn't have to pay the monster anything aside from letting it make a virtual Manhattan its buffet.
If you can't get away with no stars, the next best thing is to get genre-friendly TV stars and/or B-movie actors (see: Serenity, $40 million to make, and Pitch Black, $23 million). Or if you must have someone recognizable, make them British (see: Star Wars, whose "big names" were Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing). Another strategy: Downsloping A-listers, which is how 1998's Dark City got both Kiefer Sutherland and Oscar-winner William Hurt on a $27 million budget. Just don't take it too far: As a Gen-Xer it hurts me to say it, but Christian Slater at his very peak couldn't have saved Alone in the Dark. Of course, at his peak he wouldn't have been in it.
Occasionally a genuine A-list star might take a huge pay cut to make a science fiction movie, but it helps if your script is by Charlie Kaufman (see: Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).
2. Don't Make It in Hollywood
Or if you do make
it in Hollywood, don't make it for the major studio, make it for its
"indie" arm. The major studio will insist on the A-list star and will
give you the wherewithal to do crazy expensive stunts, like, say,
shutting down Times Square to have your expensive A-list star run
through it while it's deserted -- as Tom Cruise did in 1999's Vanilla Sky ($70 million production cost). In contrast, when Cillian Murphy walked through a similarly deserted London at the beginning of 28 Days Later,
they didn't shut down London; they just shot in the early morning and
just asked people stumbling out of all-night clubs if they wouldn't
mind not wandering into the shot. Production cost of 28 Days Later: $8 million.
28 Days Later is the perfect example of an excellent science fiction film made cheaply because it wasn't made in Hollywood: It was made in Britain and funded in part by the UK Film Council, which didn't have huge sums to toss about; it was only distributed by Fox. But it had a top-flight director (Danny Boyle) and a pack of impressive British stars (Brendan Gleeson, Christopher Eccleston), and a kickin' story. And it certainly doesn't look worse than films that cost nine or ten times as much. At the very least, I'd rather watch 28 Days Later than Vanilla Sky.
3. Hire the Screenwriter to Direct
The
screenwriter is used to having his work brutally slaughtered by other
filmmakers, so when he gets a chance to step up to the director's
chair, he's going to do everything he can to make it work, no
matter what. Warning, however: This is highly contingent on the two
other factors. Case in point: David Twohy. When all Twohy had was $23
million, no big stars and a distribution deal with mini-studio USA
Films, he made Pitch Black. When he had $120 million, big stars and Universal Studios backing him, he made The Chronicles of Riddick. Lesson: There's something to be said about keeping your screenwriter/director pinching pennies.
Now go! And make good, cheap science fiction films!
Winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, John Scalzi is the author of The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies as well as the novels Old Man's War and the upcoming Zoe's Tale. His column appears every Thursday.
These are all good points; but really, are the percentages as important to the big guys as the real numbers? Sure, Cloverfield got a huge return on the investment, but it still doesn't pad bank accounts with all those pretty zeros.
Maybe I'm just too cynical, though.
Well, if you have a $150 million film that grosses $400 million worldwide, you'll just about break even in theatrical (after marketing and distribution costs and splitting with the exhibitors), whereas (in the case of Cloverfield), $170 million on a $25 million makes more money for the studio, etc. So a modestly-budgeted film can very easily net more than a blockbuster -- at the end of the day, there are more than enough pretty zeros.
Mind you, that's using real world money, not Hollywood accounting, in which films that make a billion dollars at the box office can still not have made a profit.
Excellent column. FWIW, I think that one reason why we're getting so many remakes is that is that Suits in Hollywood get very conservative when so much money is involved. Maybe they'd get more daring if the financial risk wasn't so great. Or maybe I'm being overly optimistic.
I'll throw out another option for "if you can't get away with no stars"; use a leading woman instead of a leading man. Since Sigourney Weaver demonstrated her ability to carry the Alien franchise, and Kate Beckinsale seems to be doing the same with Underworld (not to mention Milla Jovovich with Resident Evil(), if I were looking to save some dough I would certainly consider casting a woman instead of a man.
My assumption here, obviously, is that I can get a female lead for a fraction of what I would have to pay a male star of similar renown (I was going to use the word "stature" there, but then I remembered that this is the movie business and that everyone is under 5"7"). For instance, my guess is that if I were remaking Tomb Raider with Brad Pitt as Larry Croft, I would have to pay him $25 million, whereas I could probably get his wife to be Lara Croft again for $10 to $15 million.
Not to mention that the chicks look wayyyyy better in latex, spandex and other futuristic fabrics.
while I believe in the points you make about making a good movie cheaper, I must point out that a few of the movies you mention are more horror with a touch of sci fi then true science fiction.
I loved Serenity. I don't see how you can diss The Chronicles of Riddick so hard. I consider that one of the best sci-fi movies in 5 years. It was very original it may of had a bigger budget then Pitch Black but it was more of a Sci-Fi movie and less of a horror film.
That being said I thought that was a very good article and hopefully we'll get some great films and soon. PLEASE!!
All good points. It also doesn't hurt to use concepts that people don't even think of as science fiction. How many people considered 'Children of Men' to be an SF film? "The Quiet Earth" was made for a million dollars back in 1985. Almost no effects, of course, and no stars to speak of...but still a very effective film. Of course, neither of those films made a huge profit, though these days you have to figure in the DVD market, as well.
For that matter, those same rules apply to most films, really. "The Full Monty" cost $3.5 million to make, but grossed $45 in the US and 51 Million pounds in the UK, making is hugely profitable, moreso than even Cloverfield.
Another idea is to use a single soundstage and unknown actors, such as Cube. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_%28film%29
Not quite Sci-Fi, but sort of.
I don't know about the rest of you, but the monster in my mind is often much scarier than than the computer-generated one squashing people on the big screen. The alien in signs was only a few fingers beneath the door and some creepy shadows, but it still scared the crap out of me.
woollove:
"I don't see how you can diss The Chronicles of Riddick so hard. I consider that one of the best sci-fi movies in 5 years."
Well, I'm glad you liked it. I thought it was pretty awful, not in the least because it was so incredibly bloated; after the lean, no-BS story of Pitch Black, Twohy had to go all midichlorian on us and spew a bunch of flummery about the Underverse and feature what amounted to Borgs in baroque hats. Someone at Universal should have Just Said No, or at the least pointed out to him that all the things that made Pitch Black so good weren't actually in the CoR script.
Another excellent sci-fi flick: Primer
Cost: $7,000
Revenue: $424,760
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_%28film%29
well said mr scalzi well said
The budget for The Road (based on Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzter Prize-winning novel) is rumored to be about $20 million. Granted, that sounds like a lot of money, but in the movie world, it's not so much.
How did they do it?
The cast was small (Viggo Mortensen is a good actor but typically not a huge box office draw; bit parts by Charlize Theron and Robert Duvall. The kid is Kodi Smit-McPhee, a young and pretty-much unknown Australian actor.)
Mostly filmed in Western Pennsylvania (which currently offers generous tax-incentives for movie makers) and eastern Oregon.
The crew said they're doing relatively few special effects; they filmed mostly in the winter/spring of this year during bad weather.
While I haven't seen the script, everything I've heard about the shooting says they stuck very close to the book. The book focused on the long-odds survival of a father and son as they walk south, looking for warmer weather after an uncertain apocalypse that killed almost everyone.
So the focus is on two characters and their journey, and not on a massive tapestry of special effects.
garykemble, thanks for your point on Primer. I had no idea it was so low-budget.
And yay for Dark City getting a mention. ;)
I love films without big-name stars (though they've got to be lacking incredibly hot stars as well, even if they're not big names!!!)... their familiarity (or incredible hotness) can really distract from the essence of the film!!! (I know, as I sat next to my sister during Prince Caspian and got elbowed every time Ben Barnes or William Moseley came onto the screen!!!)