I had the most illuminating lunch yesterday with a literary manager who represents some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Between bites of overpriced salad, they dropped some serious knowledge bombs that completely shifted how I think about the current film landscape. I couldn't wait to share these insights with you.
The New Budget Reality: Go Big or Go Home
Here's the wake-up call I wasn't expecting: the middle ground has disappeared. According to my lunch companion, scripts are either selling in the $2 million range or jumping straight to $15 million and above. Those comfortable $5 million budgets that used to be the sweet spot for indie films? They're becoming extinct.
Even companies that built their reputation on mid-budget filmmaking are now hunting for theater-worthy spectacles. The rep dropped this bombshell: "Even Blumhouse doesn't chase the $3 million movies anymore. They're looking for $15-20 million horror films with real spectacle."
This shift is reshaping the entire industry. Studios want projects that can command premium ticket prices and generate significant cultural buzz. The era of "good enough for streaming" is over. Everything needs to feel event-worthy.
The Rise of Poppy Horror
Speaking of horror, there's a fascinating new subgenre emerging that the manager called "poppy" or "splashy" horror. Think less grimy psychological terror, more visually stunning, Instagram-worthy scares. These films blend horror elements with high production values, vibrant cinematography, and scenarios that practically beg to be shared on social media.
The A-Lister Strategy: Write for Categories, Not Names
Here's where the conversation got really interesting. The manager suggested something that would have been considered taboo just a few years ago: write your scripts with A-list talent in mind.
"More and more films getting greenlit are completely cast-dependent," they explained. "But don't write for specific names: write for specific categories of actors."
Instead of thinking "This role is perfect for Ryan Gosling," think "This needs a charismatic leading man in his 30s-40s who can handle both drama and action." This approach gives you the star power appeal without limiting your options or dating your script.
The shift makes perfect sense when you consider how risk-averse the industry has become. Attaching the right caliber of talent isn't just helpful, it's often essential for getting financing.
Know Your Numbers
The final piece of advice was perhaps the most practical: understand your project's budget range and pitch accordingly. Too many writers, the manager noted, waste time pitching intimate character studies to producers who only finance tent-pole blockbusters, or vice versa.
"If you don't know whether your script is a $2 million indie or a $20 million studio film, you're going to waste everyone's time, including your own."
This means doing your homework. Research comparable films, understand production costs, and most importantly, target the right producers and financiers for your budget range.
The Bottom Line
The film industry is experiencing a dramatic polarization. Projects are either scrappy, ultra-low-budget affairs or major studio investments designed for maximum cultural impact.
But here's the silver lining: this clarity creates opportunity. Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, writers can focus on crafting projects that fit squarely into one of these categories and pursue them with laser focus.
Questions for Fellow Writers
As I left that lunch, my mind was racing with possibilities and questions:
Do you know where your current project fits budget-wise? Is it a scrappy $2 million indie or a spectacular $15+ million studio film?
Have you considered what category of A-list talent would be perfect for your lead roles?
Are you targeting the right producers and financiers for your project's scale?
The landscape is changing rapidly, but for writers who adapt to these new realities, the opportunities have never been more exciting. Sometimes the best career advice comes disguised as casual conversation over lunch.
What's your take on these industry shifts? Have you noticed similar trends in your own pitching experiences? Let me know in the comments below.
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Thanks for the info, Geoffroy Faugerolas. I'm glad to hear it! I write Poppy Horror, but I didn't know it had a name. And I scaled back some of my bigger-budget Horror scripts so I could pitch them as lower-budget scripts. I can go back and make them bigger now.
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Thank you for sharing this!
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This sure explains a lot. I still am wondering how long this will continue, especially if these big budget movies bomb
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WOW! Geoff, this is incredible information. Thank you!
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Love your article! It's truly informative and loaded with a lot of tools to add to my screenwriting arsenal. How extraordinary to be empowered with such invaluable nuggets and to know that the industry is searching for new voices, compelling stories and passionate artist. The landscape in Entertainment is finally turning in our favor and especially for those of us who have spent years developing our craft. You are truly a blessing to this platform, just like so many other staff, you all rock! As screenwriters we can use what you have given us as a steppingstone to become more skilled, intentional and focused in our writing and our careers. Thank you!
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My pleasure! I've got many more of these tips in the pipeline which I'll share shortly.
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I cant wait to read them all!
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Geoffroy Faugerolas I wouldn't put too much faith into what a top Literary Manager says. They get paid on a percentage so the bigger the budget, the bigger their client's paycheck, the bigger their percentage. Yes low budget movies come with a stigma attached but that is pretty much due to the skill of the director and the writer. Anyone can point and shoot a camera. You have to know how to do it right and what to capture. These aren't vacation photos you're taking. There's a thousand ways to film two people talking. Use the frame to find new ways.
Writers have to really push their imaginations to find some way to express the same old ideas with an original flair. Saying "Life isn't fair," isn't going to move an audience. They've all heard it and have all compared it with their lives. It's in one ear and out the other. Find a way to shape synaptic pathways instead of going over the same potholed road.
$15M-$20M budgets still need to sell about 5 million tickets domestically at an average ticket price of $10.78 when distribution companies are spending an average of $16.00/person to tell them about your film. Everybody making a film wants to make sure they get paid and because for some, it's not year round employment, everyone wants their chunk of cash so they can live through until the next project. It's easier to cook the books on a bigger budget film then it is on a smaller budget film and it's mostly the investors that take it in the rectum. Investor's have to wait to get paid and if some loud mouth actor opens his trap and enrages the audience with their "opinions" they shouldn't be making in the first place, hey he/she already got paid. They obviously don't care if anyone goes and sees the film.
If studios and Hollywood want to keep crapping out the same fecal matter that has proven not to move an audience to want to see a movie multiple times, it doesn't matter how much money you dump into a dumpster fire. The flames of failure will still engulf your successes and one can't dine on ashes.
Fact of the matter is that any film project has the means to make money. The real stunning part is when a film loses money and that's mainly because all the parties involved are corrupt, greedy, or both. So while an "insider" may have an inside track to certain information, the logic of a sound business plan can't be disputed. Trouble is film business plans aren't made to be sound. Any business undergrad can see that.
I heard Scarlet Johansson was paid $25M for Jurassic World: Rebirth. I could've found another actress that would have done a great job and saved $20M on that budget alone. You know it as well as I do. Meanwhile investors are acting like victims at a Diddy party like they have no other choice as long as there is plenty of lube available. Give me a freaking break.
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Very insightful and helpful information Geoffroy Faugerolas - Thanks for interrupting your overpriced salad to recall the key pointers.
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I love ambitious, high-stakes studio films — the $15M+ kind that aim big and deliver spectacle. I've had my share of shorts and low-budget projects, but I'm ready to play with a full deck.
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Geoffroy Faugerolas This shift in the industry is not only exciting — it’s absolutely needed.
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Thanks for the insight, Geoffroy Faugerolas, that's great to hear!
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Interesting insights. But trying to wrap my mind around "poppy horror": should you write with visuals in mind that people would like to see printed on their coffee mug or shirt? Write one liners that stick and have the potential to become memes, etc.?
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Hi Geoffroy, this is definitely a shift for the film industry. Reading your words, I'm assumming you're sharing 'over priced lunch' feedback about features not series, yes?
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This confirms other information from recent reports from Cannes and is important to know.
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I'm always a bit disappointed when I read that the investors are looking for big-budget action types of films because I'm a huge fan of the Nora Ephron style of rom-coms. In fact, that's primarily what I write too. There just aren't enough (in my opinion) family friendly movies that aren't animated or super hero centered. Isn't there a market anymore for the Field of Dreams kind of movies?
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Lynn Garthwaite, I don't believe this means there is no market for those films, just that the industry demand is shifting. As long as there is a market for the kind of films you like, it will be possible to get them made.
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There's always high demand for a great story, no matter what the genre. Old words to be sure, but true!
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Philip David Lee There will always be space in a market for products made at different price points. The audience and business plan for a $2m horror movie is not the same for a splashy $20m action thriller; it's just getting harder to get the $2m film distributed with recognizable names attached. With that said, the big question is: do filmmakers need to rely on the traditional studio system to release their smaller movies?
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Geoffroy Faugerolas If you make a small film ($2M or under) and the average turnaround time for a film between taking the first shot and your release date is 18 months, (You can probably reduce that by half) that's 540 days. If you drop a 2 minute video on YouTube talking about your movie every day, that's 1080 minutes of getting the word out about your film. That's about 18 hours of promotional material literally for free. The entire world should know about your film and hopefully, you have made the videos compelling enough to bring them along with you. You only have to sell 5 million tickets to have a gross of over $50M. Domestically, that's 1.47% of the entire population of the United States. The Thunderbolts* couldn't even sell 20 million tickets or 5.8% of the population of the U.S. Did the sales projections compute that? The worldwide gross wasn't that much improved and that's from a audience of 7 billion people.
No one cares about "recognizable names" these days when all they hear is these names insulting an audience because they didn't like the message their film was trying to make or they're upset with politics or they want males competing against females in sports or the current President is a Nazi... need I go on? The traditional studio system is and always has been flawed AND they keep making the same mistakes. Filmmakers with little or no budget make flawed movies that look horrible and wind up being unwatchable as entertainment. Focus on the craft, consider a Moneyball approach with talent be entertaining by creating something that audience members want to watch again and again. That's your system!
I have a $1.5M budget action thriller with a recognizable name interested in playing the lead role and I'm sure I can coax another name talent into the mix. The rest of the cast is made up of mostly unknowns, but they are all "capable of guaranteeing a big box office draw" which is the definition of "bankable talent." That's not much of a risk to investors, now is it?
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Philip David Lee I had a meeting 2 hours ago with a director/producer who's done 4 indie movies for less than $2m, 2 of them ended up premiering at top film festivals (Cannes, Berlin...) and with recognizable names in the lead roles. Even they acknowledged the difficulty of being distributed domestically. P&A is expensive, and it's no so easy to get audiences out of their living room. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the distributors, financiers and filmmakers working in this space are telling me first-hand: audience habits are changing and with that, filmmakers need to adapt.
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Geoffroy Faugerolas You have to understand that I'm not trying to pick a fight with anyone and to be honest, I have no idea what director you're talking about and what genres the films were which plays into all of that. Why is P&A so expensive? When you had to make film reels for projectors, they used to cost $2,500 apiece. Now everything is on a $50 flashdrive. You have your actors give interviews while on set filming. If they give you a half hour of footage, that's 15 2 minute videos per actor. If you interview the unsung crew, now your shining a light on the thankless jobs of making a film. How much is a website to show these videos? How much does it cost to post these videos on social media sites? Why don't we hear about a movie until 3 months before it's released? Who do red carpet events serve? Not the audience. Why does Superman need 9 posters? You only needed 1. Superman! (Maybe Krypto. I love dogs.) Why did more people know about the "Hawk Tau" girl than Jack Quaid's new film Novocaine? How come I didn't hear about Aaron Eckhart's last 10 films and only stumbled across them on Hulu?
Distribution marketing is a scam because no one holds them to any standards or data as to how successful their marketing schemes are. With more cost effective ways coming up to tell people about your projects, distribution advertising is going to be extinct and they know it.
I respect your experience and your circle of influential friends. I have none. I'm fighting a front on my own so my eyes have to be adaptable to pathways others might not see. Somethings I see, are not logical when you think of film industry. I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing and see what happens, and maybe I do see the BS or maybe my jaded paranoia fill in my blanks with fantasy rules that don't exist, but for an industry that is so focused on day to day budgets, they seem to let a lot of things slide that have nothing to do with making a film in the first place.
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Of course. You should be doing what works for you. There's no secret recipe for making it in Hollywood.
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Interesting. It's becoming clear that the film industry is split in two more so now than ever. A couple of years back, I heard it described as making condos vs mansions, with the latter being the most viable way forward.
Every low-budget producer I know is looking at the current situation and sucking in their teeth. Streaming income is horrific. Festival trade is getting worse. Exposure is harder to find.
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Jason Blum was on Smartless actually talking about that budget range, so that tracks! Interesting tidbits Geoff, thank you!
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Geoffroy Faugerolas I wonder how this tracks internationally, Geoff and whether this is a Hollywood phenomenon? In the UK, I think Indie producers would be happy with a ‘scrappy’ £3m budget. There a places in the UK that are cheaper to produce in, where a £3-5m budget would create a ‘spectacular’ film.
This is the budget range for our feature, to be filmed in Bristol, UK. Yes it’s written for a certain ‘category’ of actor, yes we are targeting the right kind of investors/sponsors.
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Great insight, thanks Geoffroy. I love big, imaginative, bold world building :))
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Well Mr. Cynical Philip David Lee I doubt Geoff's lunch partner manager has so much influence in Hollywood to have them make bigger budget movies so he ultimately gets a bigger pay check! Is your $1.5m project with a well known actor in production and attracting distribution? And as, @Geoff Hall says, in the UK, films in the £3-5m budget range are not uncommon, but are hard to finance and hard to get distribution except maybe on streamers. This is probably a Hollywood phenomenon, I don't know about Europe, but clearly Geoffroy's great insights reveal Hollywood is becoming hugely risk averse and while there's no guarantees of success, big budget spectacle and well known cast seems to be a well proven formula. If studios want to make minimum $20m+ movies that's fine by me, my pitches are on their way! (Looks like all the Geoff's on this post!)
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Thank you, Geoffroy Faugerolas, for sharing with us your tasty lunch. :) It's always good to know about industry tendencies. For Studios, the budget range is a perfect fit, but for indie films, it isn't because, like Geoff Hall said, we can produce in Europe for €3-5M a great film that probably in the USA will cost much more. I have the UK camera branch rate card, and budgets are very affordable. In my vision, the gap between studios and indie will grow larger over time. Yes, when I write my scripts, I think about A-list talents and their categories. This also helps me give my protagonists more life. Thank you for sharing.
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Philip Lee has made 3-6 million dollar films. Don't assume he doesn't know his stuff.
We may have confused the definition of a 'studio' picture in some of these comments. Not a lot of major Hollywood studios are interested in $15-25 million features, especially with big name talent, as those fees alone would exceed the budget. The studio overhead fees on films in that budget range would make them hardly worth the bother. For some time, there has been a sector of independent companies which made films in that budget range, sometimes getting theatrical release through major studios, sometimes selling straight to various VOD platforms. Last year, I had a project which gained serious interest at one of these and they were ready to move forward - then they went quiet. It would seem everyone is trying to figure where the market is heading from here on. The tariff threat hasn't helped either.
There seems to be some bad info here Geoffroy Faugerolas .... Could you weigh in on 2 points?
1. You state that "scripts are selling for $2M to over $15M?!" Perhaps that is the entire budget for the film, but I seriously doubt the screenwriter is not getting paid that much for a script.
2. I'd argue ANYONE who says: "The industry is not doing X anymore.", is (IMO) a pompous blowhard. One can say: "I'm not seeing a lot of X getting greenlit.", or "'My company is not seeking any X content for our mandate." But no one can predict the market, and no individual speaks for the entire industry.
Geoff Harris Bottom line is it's all about quality of the work. You have a nice resume so excuse me for being cynical. I'm doing things my way because I've listened to the so called "experts" in the industry and all of their suggestions were crap. If I have control and I fail then I have no one to blame but myself, unlike the other "elites" that like to blame the audience because they didn't "get" their vision or just flat out hated it. The term "modern audience" is a BS term because it's all the same audience that won't be told what they should like and will tell the creative minds what they do like. Is that cynical or just being realistic? I'd rather be cynical and half right than be righteous and 100% wrong or is that too cynical for your tastes as well. maybe you're too used to bending over your desk spread eagle for a paycheck. Maybe to you that's optimis. Maybe that's not you at all. I don't know you. In the same regard that you don't know me enough to conclude I'm cynical or just been swimming in the BS for so long it's up to my neck and I'm choking on it. Either way, whether I die with some recognition or a nobody, the one thing we'll have in common at the end is that we'll both be dead. Nothing will mean too much after that. It's either an afterlife where we don't care what went on before or it'll be oblivion where we won't even know everyone lied to us. Even that's not cynical. That's just the Law of Averages.
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Hi Geoffory, I finally just got around to reading it, but I think the new amended Film & TV Tax Credit Program in California just signed into law, which I feel is great! May have some to do with it all, also.
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Just Nikka I am definitely not an AI generated poster and I don’t think Geoffroy is one too! My intelligence is real and not artificial. Or maybe, by your Bio, you are an AI bot? Haha! So much for Copyleaks, eh?
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I have to say, I'm really quite shocked by the tone of some of these replies.
Geoff has gone out of his way to share some insight into the industry. He doesn't have to do that, especially given how damn hard he works for Stage 32 members anyway.
If you don't agree with it, move on. If you know better, feel free to share. If you can do better, feel free to prove it.
Some of these comments are beneath the decorum of this community and we're in danger of biting the hand that feeds us.
As RB says, "If you can enter any relationship with the idea of helping someone, your community is going to grow".
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CJ Walley - I agree. It's okay to disagree with another's opinion or a report on this industry, but some of these responses have been like accusations at a trial. I, for one, am interested in what people in this industry reflect on and report about their experiences. Thank you Geoffroy F.
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Maximum cultural impact: How much money can they make. Okay, I get it. The film industry is, unfortunately, first and foremost a business. But if the industry is going to keep pissing on us (specifically the little artist, the small-town writer) maybe they should have the courtesy to stop calling it rain. Poppy horror, to me, sounds like nothing more than "less substance and meaning, and more boom and bang for the screen. There have always been horror films that live off of spectacle and that isn't going to change, but I do not think we should encourage more gory schlock JUST SO IT can advertise well on Tiktok and Instagram. Horror can have gore, OF COURSE, I just want some meaning behind it, some substance! Nope was warning us about the hypnotic draw of "Spectacle" and how it has such a choke-hold on society. Don't even get me started with this high-budget gatekeeping shtick they're pushing. Talk about an enormous middle finger to indie creators.
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Agree. Simmer down folks.
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Really interesting. I’ve definitely noticed this budget polarization too. I’m now thinking about where exactly my own project fits. Thanks for the practical insights
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Sandra Isabel Correia indeed, Sandra. I think the conversation needs a wider context.