The Death of DVDs
What happened to all of the medium and small budget movies?
Now I can already feel the nay sayers in the comments or in our DM’s saying, ‘But there are plenty of Medium and Small Budget Movies?! Look at A24! And yes! A24 is a perfect example of a company that does make small and medium budget movies, with successful films like Moonlight ($1.5 Million USD), The Lighthouse ($11 Million USD), Ex Machina ($15 Million USD), Uncut Gems ($19 Million USD), and Midsommar ($9 Million USD), and as fantastic as A24 is, one studio does not make an industry. (Much to Disney’s Dismay)
When I talk about mid budget movies, and small budget ones, I often talk about movies that don’t have the budget to be a huge epic like Marvel Movies, or the Star Wars Franchise, but I am talking about movies that have modest budgets, and are often character driven. Current movies that fall in this category are Everywhere, Everything, All at Once ($14–$25 Million USD) and The Menu ($30 Million USD). Even past great movies like The Truman Show ($60 Million USD) and The Terminal ($60 Million USD) are great examples of a movie that is character driven, and didn’t have to have a 100 million dollar budget.
Medium Budget Movies are often things considered a relic of the past. Movies are unable to make their money back, and often don’t see the value in medium budget or low budget movies. The old school formula for Medium Budget movies was as follows, get a big name, a simple script, and go! This led to the rise of movie stars, as we know them. Actors like Matt Damon and Ben Afflect got their start famously in the Indi Small Budget movie, Good Will Hunting ($10 Million USD) and actors like Tom Hanks, and Leonardo Dicaprio became household names due to their work on Medium Budget movies. (Tom Hanks - Philadelphia, A League of Their Own, Turner and Hooch) (Leonardo Dicaprio - Marvin’s Room, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Quick and the Dead).
Some people would say that the lack of Medium Movies is why there are no new BIG movie stars, at least no one to the size and name brand that people like Tom Hanks, Leonardo Dicaprio, Denzel Washington, and other great 90s and early 2000s stars. But what brought the death of his medium movie? Maybe well, DVDs did. Well not DVDs existing, but the lack of DVDs being sold.
Streaming is a fantastic thing, and makes seeing content easier than ever, however without DVD sales, many of these medium budget movies cannot make enough money for large studios to justify making them. Usually a movie will spend its exact budget on marketing, so let's take a movie that I have already mentioned the budget for, The Truman Show. The Truman Show was made for $60 Million USD, and most likely spent another $60 Million in Marketing. It needs to make at least $120 Million to ‘Break Even’ and $240 Million to be considered a success. Now per The Numbers.com The Truman Show made $125 Million at United States Box office, and $264 Million Worldwide. Which means that it was deemed a success. As of July 9th 2023, the Truman Show made $183,229 in Blu-Ray sales. Which means that its current batch of DVDs are still making money for the movie, more than 25 years later. But many other smaller budget movies are unable to make their money back, for example Last Night in Soho only made $23 million with a budget of $43 million. Now back in the day, potentially DVDs and rental houses could help make the project break even, however today, with the death of DVD sales, The Last Night in Soho will most likely stay a failure.
Now what does this all mean, well sadly not much. DVDs and Blu-Rays, while great, are a relic of the past, only appreciated like how some music fanatics like Records and CDs. Some studios are starting to realize that just throwing more money at movies will not bring success, especially with recent failures from large Disney and Sony productions. Hopefully the industry changes, and more companies make films like A24, I know we want to be like them some day. To hear the Cats talk more about it, listen to our newest podcast episode.