The future of indies isn’t in theaters
After weeks of research and anecdotal experience navigating local multiplexes, it’s painfully clear that small movies have largely disappeared from theaters. If you enjoy original, small, or otherwise offbeat movies that don’t follow the franchise IP or horror templates, you’ll likely be watching them at home.
The clearest evidence of this phenomenon comes from analyzing global box office returns against budget, for which the traditional industry rule is to aim for a worldwide box office of two to 2.5 times budget to ensure profitability. I focused my research on small to medium budget movies ranging from under 10 to 50 million.
The success stories are almost always horror movies that open wide and easily recoup their budget by opening weekend. MaXXXine took a 1 million budget and lukewarm critical reviews yet still made 22 million in theaters. Longlegs was made for under 10 million and generated an astonishing 109 million at the box office. A 2024 remake of Speak No Evil has made 76 million worldwide against a budget of 15 million.
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