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2 days agoNo. It’s completely warranted.
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Cake day: August 17th, 2023
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Brady Corbet, the 36-year-old director behind Oscar season’s most acclaimed film, has said he – and many of his fellow nominees – are experiencing severe financial difficulties.
Corbet said he “made zero dollars” from his three-and-a-half hour drama about a Hungarian architect in postwar America.
“I just directed three advertisements in Portugal,” Corbet told Marc Maron on his WTF podcast. “It’s the first time that I had made any money in years.” He went on to explain that he and his wife and co-writer/producer, Mona Fastvold, “made zero dollars on the last two films that we made”.
The Brutalist, which has garnered 10 nominations at this year’s Academy Awards, has been widely praised for its relative economy, given its substantial scope and running time.
Corbet’s budget on the film was $9.6m (£7.62m), and a week after its premiere at the Venice film festival in August 2024, distribution rights were acquired by A24 for a similar sum, after a bidding war.
The Brutalist has so far taken $14.6m (£11.6m) in the US. In the UK, where it is being distributed by Focus and Universal, its current total is $3.2m (£2.5m). Rest of the world earnings to date stand at around $13.4m (£10.6m) for a global gross of $31.1m (£24.7m).
On his show, Maron pressed Corbet for clarification about payment for the film, to which he replied: “Yes. Actually, zero. We had to just sort of live off of a paycheck from three years ago.”
A number of his lauded peers were in a similar predicament, said Corbet. “I’ve spoken to many film-makers that have the films that are nominated this year that can’t pay their rent. I mean, that’s a real thing.”
Directors, he said, were not paid to promote their films, although distributors are believed to fund their expenses. “If you look at certain films that premiered in Cannes,” said Corbet, “that was almost a year ago … I mean, our film premiered in September. So I’ve been doing this for six months. And had zero income because I don’t have any time to go to work. I can’t even take a writing job at the moment.”
Anora, Sean Baker’s sex worker romance, which won best casting and the best actress award for Mikey Madison at Sunday’s Baftas, took the Palme d’Or at Cannes last May. That film, which had a $6m (£4.8m) budget, has so far made $34.6m (£27.5m) worldwide.
Corbet went on describe the press circuit as “a six-month interrogation,” and said he had taken part in 90 interviews over the past week.
“It’s seven days a week,” he said. “It’s boundless. It’s constant travel, and you’re also working Saturdays and Sundays. I haven’t had a day off since the Christmas break, and that was also only four days.”
Of the eight films other than Anora and The Brutalist nominated for the best picture Oscar this year, two have been blockbusters: Dune: Part Two, which took $714.6m (£567.1) from a $190m (£151m) budget, and Wicked, whose budget was $145m (£115m) and has so far taken $725m (£575.4m) – but is still showing at cinemas.
Three others have commanded respectable box office earnings: Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown ($99m from a $65m budget), Conclave ($95.5 from a $20m budget) and The Substance ($77m from a $17.5m budget).
Meanwhile Emilia Pérez is on $15m from a $22m budget, but enjoyed only a limited theatrical run before moving to Netflix, while Nickel Boys has charted a significant loss, making just $2.5m back of its $23.2m spend.
Brazilian drama I’m Still Here is released in the UK this week but some time ago became the highest-grossing Brazilian film since Covid, making $25.4m from its $1.5m budget.
As the heir of bank Itaú Unibanco, director Walter Salles is the second wealthiest film-maker in the world, after George Lucas, with an estimated personal fortune of $5.3bn.
I literally linked a video where an actual working director is discussing this very topic.
Are you one of those people that can’t discuss anything other than the article? Do you not understand that these topics have nuance that experts can freely add their opinions on?
Imagine if all discussions in every comment section couldn’t talk about anything unless it was covered in the article. Your perpetually moving goal posts are tiring and actually insane.
He’s going to make money from it. All he’s saying is he doesn’t get paid from the press tour. This article is dumb, and i hate seeing it pop up.
You are dumb and I hate your dumb comment that attempts to astroturf the myth that the studios aren’t actively exploiting free labor whenever possible.
Again, I was expanding upon the topics that were covered in the article because I work in that industry, studio scab. Just because you decided to cherry-pick something to refute from the article doesn’t make directors stop requiring money to survive when they aren’t a: actively directing a project or b: doing a press tour.
These are living people that require money to live all year round. I was talking about the time periods and time not covered by the article which, in fact, comprise most of a director’s time spent on earth.
I can only assume at this point that you directly benefit from the exploitation of directors and work directly for the incredibly shady studios that refuse to pay directors based on long-established labor laws.
Get a life, scab.
She said that she doesn’t get paid for anything other than being on set basically. Being on set is about 10% of the workload a director takes on.
Not sure why you feel the need to refute the things that I’m writing that are objective facts. The article talks about one thing. I’m talking about more than that one thing. I’m talking about THE FULL EXPERIENCE of being a director and where their money goes.
Even on massive tentpole franchises, up and coming directors barely get paid more than the key grip if you factor in the amount of free work they do. Couple that with the fact that they aren’t even guaranteed the job even after doing all of that free work and it is no surprise that they make shit money and only established directors can even afford to bid for multiple projects at once.
Indeed.
Further listening on this topic: https://youtu.be/c-9NWamSHao at about 45 minutes in, she talks about this little-known hardship for directors.
Bullshit. Directors barely get paid for pre-production. They have teams of creatives that they have to pay that make materials that help the director get the job. That’s a FACT.
I witnessed this Luca guy fuming to a producer about how he is “an artist” ranting about trivial things he needed but wasn’t getting. He fully embodied the quintessential cliche about pretentious, self important Italian auteurs (hand gestures and all) without the talent to back it up.
The film turned out to be a horrible sexploitation movie. Harvey Weinstein would’ve been proud to see Luca taking up the mantle to continue his pervy crusade to exploit young, beautiful people.
Oh look! A tech fetishist moron that looks at spec sheets when deciding on a movie to see. I hear Crap Furnace (2025) used a 64K camera that shoots 10,000 fps and has 40 stops of dynamic range. You should go see it. I hear it looks like absolute crap
Why aren’t you addressing any of the words in the image? Does your centrist brain not see them?
What’s funniest is that my image was there to agree with you and support your comment. I actually upvoted you despite the rest of your comments being that of a braindead centrist captive in a corporate mind-prison.
In my opinion, here’s your magnum opus of centrist cope:
Kamala won’t be perfect, and we need to keep pressure on her from the left… But at the end of the day, she’s able to beat trump where Biden likely couldn’t, and she’ll sure as shit be a better president than Biden or trump could be
Then you go on to completely contradict yourself when you say:
The most patriotic thing an American can do is say the people they voted for aren’t doing enough.
It just sucks both parties are against it these days
Your problem with my comment is that it put your hypocrisy in focus. You’re a Harris/Walz supporter to the core yet you leave comments like the one I was in support of, giving us clues that there is a conscience peaking out somewhere. Trump derangement syndrome has set in so deep that you can’t even agree with your own opinion.
4·5 months agoBut you see, it’s not a political stance because no one who even has a chance to win even remotely feels the need to offer that to their voters.
I quoted the whole article. Where is this text that you keep referring to that I haven’t fully accepted as bible that should somehow refute ANYTHING AT ALL that I have said in this long thread?