Big-budget screenplay vs. low-budget screenplay
From PopEater.com:
Director Jonathan Demme is a pretty big deal in Hollywood. In the 1990s he was an even bigger deal when he consistently pumped out awards bait like ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ ‘Philadelphia’ and ‘Beloved.’ These days he prefers to focus on independent flicks and self-financed documentaries about such high-minded fare as Hurricane Katrina, Haiti and Neil Young. His move away from the big screen smash has been due mainly to the outrageous costs of producing a Hollywood blockbuster today.
“Film making exists now in is revenue void. To do these high style films now it costs so much to make them and I am not comfortable spending a lot of money on a movie any more,” Demme said.
— —
The straw (or check rather) that broke the camel’s back for the director was 2004’s $80 million ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ starring Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber and Meryl Streep which brought in only $65 million at the domestic box office.
“I made a version of ‘Manchurian Candidate’ that cost a fortune. It was just so much money and you think something like ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ made for under $100,000 and you’re like f — k, I want to do that,” Demme said. “The effort going into making these huge budget Hollywood movies wasn’t for me. After ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ I had to rest up and get re-acquainted with myself.”
And then something else interesting:
Demme’s current project is an animated adaption of Dave Eggers ‘Zeitoun’ which he is trying to develop without an outsized budget.
“We tried getting development financing and we came to understand we need a much richer idea on paper about what it will look like so I am back into writing the script and hope to have it finished by the end of the summer,” the director said [emphasis added].
A young woman who has been in and out from rehab for the past 10 years returns home for the weekend for her sister’s wedding.
An array of well-drawn characters and a really interesting cinéma vérité feel to the production style, even to the point of using a band of musicians, present for the weekend festivities to provide the musical soundtrack within the context of actual events in the story.
The movie didn’t do huge box office — $16M worldwide — and I can’t find a production budget number on it, but setting aside talent deals, it’s a movie that could have been made for $2–4M. With that B.O figure and ancillary revenues, that represents a decent ROI.
But the movie is hugely dependent upon the quality of the writing and the story as crafted by Jenny Lumet.
So again: Is it fair to say there’s a higher premium on the quality of writing in low-budget movies than in big-budget movies?
While we’re here, if you have any other recommendations for great low-budget movies with strong scripts, please post in comments.