• Knives Out Budget
• Knives Out Movie Budget
• Knives Out Budget
• Knives Out 2 Budget
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• Knives Out 2019 Movie Budget

Knives Out (Movie, 2019): Box Office Collection, Budget, First Look Posters, Movies Picture, Release Date, All Songs / Music Videos, Audio / Video Jukebox, Screen Count, Predictions, Star Cast & Crew, Story /Plot, Trailer, Hit / Flop, Wiki And Others: Knives Out is an American English language mystery film. You don't need to be a detective to pick up the clue that Netflix loved Knives Out. News broke last week that Netflix had purchased the rights to the Knives Out sequels, but today we got the numbers behind the whole operation, and they are staggering. We learned via the Hollywood Reporter that Johnson 'doesn’t have to take notes from the.

Knives Out Budget

We don’t typically write about Hollywood paydays at /Film unless they’re especially huge, but a new report brings word of three new instances which absolutely fit that description. Writer/director Rian Johnson, producer Ram Bergman, and star Daniel Craig are all poised to make $100 million each thanks to the surprising Knives Out sequels deal that Netflix made last week. The deal itself was worth $469 million, but the fact that these three players will receive $100 million each puts them in rarified air in Hollywood history. That’s Robert-Downey-Jr-Avengers-level money.

According to a new piece in THR, “The pact gave Johnson immense creative control, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. He doesn’t have to take notes from the streamer. The only contingencies were that Craig must star in the sequels and that each must have at least the budget of the 2019 movie, which was in the $40 million range. Sources say that Johnson, Bergman and Craig stand to walk away with upwards of $100 million each.”

Again, that is a lot of money. Downey is the only person I can think of who’s in in the same stratosphere. For Avengers: Endgame, he’s rumored to have made around $75 million when you factor in his lucrative back-end profit participation deal.

If you’ll allow me to concern-troll for a moment: when you make that much money, you run the risk of becoming disconnected with reality to a degree and either being unwilling, unable, or uninterested in taking notes and advice from anyone when it comes to creative decision-making on future projects. That may sound great on paper, but it’s also probably how things like Dolittle end up happening. There is something to be said for the idea of compromises and restrictions being essential to creating the most interesting version of a film. But Johnson knows this, and he’s one of the most humble and hardworking people in the industry. I fully trust his creative instincts and have no doubt that these sequels will end up being great.

The THR piece mentions that in January, “with the pandemic in full swing,” Johnson and Bergman (who own the rights to Knives Out) “questioned the near-term viability of theatrical releasing” and decided to go out to streamers for the sequels, and a bidding war erupted, with Netflix coming out victorious. There may be some grumbling about this deal being a big blow to theatrical moviegoing, but considering the circumstances around which this decision was made (remember, it was long before the vaccine rollout was as effective as it has since become), it’s tough to blame Johnson and Bergman for doing what they had to do in order to guarantee that these sequels could get made.

Entertainment reporter

Knives Out, the new film directed by Rian Johnson, is the last of a dying breed—the rare “mid-budget,” story-driven movie from a Hollywood studio that’s not tied to an existing franchise. It’s neither a low-budget indie nor a big-budget blockbuster.

Knives Out Movie Budget

Goldilocks might have found Johnson’s flick to be just right, but the American film industry increasingly prefers its movies at one of the two extremes.

Produced on a $40 million budget, Knives Out—released in US theaters by Lionsgate tomorrow—is a throwback whodunit about a dysfunctional family that gathers after the mysterious death of its wealthy patriarch, a famous crime novelist. While they’re all together, a private detective is called in to assist the police investigate the novelist’s demise.

Knives Out Budget

Unlike the majority of Hollywood films that boast one or two big stars, Knives Out is a true ensemble movie. (Marvel’s Avengers movies, of course, are an exception.) Actors like Chris Evans and Jamie Lee Curtis have relatively equal screen time, along with their nine co-stars. It most likely won’t have a sequel. There’s no merchandise to be sold and no extra content to consume. It’s just a movie.

Knives Out 2 Budget

“I said to my producer, ‘We want an all-star cast. We want that old-school, entertaining, we’re-putting-on a-big-show type feel,'” Johnson, who previously directed Star Wars: The Last Jedi, told GQ. The film succeeds in that endeavor despite its modest budget and lack of franchise underpinnings. Johnson has said it was inspired by classic Hollywood murder mysteries like 1978’s Death On the Nile, which also featured an A-list ensemble cast sharing the spotlight.

Hollywood used to make this type of movie all the time. In 1990, the average production budget of the 20 highest-grossing films in the US was $32 million, or about $63 million adjusted for inflation. This year, that average was an almost unfathomable $141 million. In 1990, Knives Out would have been a garden-variety movie; today, it’s an outlier.

That Knives Out exists at all is a minor miracle, but Johnson earned a lot of leeway after his successful Star Wars movie, and star Daniel Craig had already agreed to appear in the film before studios bid on the script last year. Lionsgate, considered a “mini-major” Hollywood distributor (smaller than Disney and Warner Bros., but bigger than an independent studio), is one of the few companies left still spending on mid-budget movies in an attempt to counter program the blockbusters.

According to film researcher Stephen Follows, the percentage of films with budgets over $100 million has increased from just 4% in 2000 to more than 12% today. That big-budget explosion has come at the expense of mid-budget movies in the $20-60 million range, which have declined quicker than any other type of film.

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Studios no longer view these kinds of movies as smart investments. They’re not cheap like most independent movies and still carry substantial financial risk. But they also don’t have the huge ceiling as blockbuster movies. The bigger the budget, the bigger the risk, and also the bigger the potential returns.

Films like Knives Out rarely become cash cows: This year, only three Hollywood films made for less than $60 million made the year’s top 20 highest-grossing list. Two of them were horror movies (Us and Glass), which can be made on the cheap, and the other was Joker, a film based on the infamous DC Comics character.

Knives Out 2019 Movie Budget

It doesn’t help that there literally aren’t enough movie screens to show these mid-budget movies amidst the deluge of blockbusters. “These huge franchise pictures are elbowing out midrange and lower-budget movies,” Jason E. Squire, a film professor at the University of Southern California, told the New York Times. “It’s harder for midsize movies to get theaters in the first place, much less hold onto them long enough to build an audience.”

Some mid-budget movies, like the Disney holiday comedy Noelle (Disney+) and Steven Soderbergh’s Let Them All Talk (HBO Max), are starting to find homes on streaming services while Hollywood struggles to attract audiences to theaters for anything that isn’t a franchise blockbuster. If it made more movies like Knives Out, maybe it would be more successful. Deadline reported Knives Out is on track for a solid $30 million debut at the box office.