What is the cheapest movie ever made?

D

David W. Richardson

Chapelgrove Films
Okay, let me qualify that topic a bit...

First, I'm only interested in feature-length movies, not shorts.

Second, it has to be a movie that got wide distribution -- direct-to-video is okay.

Lastly, if it's an old, old movie, then the budget needs to be adjusted to 2007 dollars.

Based on those criteria, who knows what the cheapest movie ever made was? And what was their budget?
 
The fastest movie ever written was Weird Science! I believe it was written in 48 hours. Cheapest movie.... Probably the Wendigo... I think the actors were paid in chewing gum and it shows.... Painfully.
 
arges03 said:
Many believe that Robert Rodriguez's "El Mariachi" was made for $7000.
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A myth... the final product... the studio put in $1m to fix it... now maybe the original cost that much... now I've never seen it... but there was a difference of course between the festival copy and the studio copy according to a friend... besides the $1m... like things were reshot, etc... but that doesn't take away that RR has talent...
 
People always pick on the 'Mariachi wasn't really made for $7000' thing.

At the end of the day, regardless of what we saw in the theater, regardless of what was released on DVD, the movie HE made cost him $7000 - and it is THAT movie that got him attention, it's THAT movie that got sold, and it's THAT movie that launched his career.

So I've never seen the big deal in the studio putting more money into the movie to clean it up.

This happens all the time - I remember 'Tarnation' was being marketed as being made for a few hundred dollars (which it was)...but then the studio put hundreds of thousands into it to clean up audio, get rights to stuff, etc etc. It's not at all uncommon when it comes to indie movies for the studio to put alot of money into a movie to get it up to snuff.

The thing to remember is that none of those movies were bought because of their technical merit, they were all bought because of the story being told and the style in which it was told (ie. Mariachi, Clerks, Slacker, Tarnation, Open Water, etc etc).
 
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yeah i completely agree with Luis.

in RR's book he also mentioned that he actually made el mariachi for $500 to $600 and the extra $6,500 was for printing to film, etc.
 
Seems like 'cheapest' alone shouldn't be much of a benchmark - some consideration should be given to quality, in which case I'd have to say David Gordon Green's "George Washington" gets my vote - shot on 35mm anamorphic for (I think) around 28K

Impressive.
 
Capt Quirk said:
I think Open Water has to be in there somewhere.
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For some reason the figures $10,000 and $90,000 come to my mind in regard to OPEN WATER. I can't recall which (if either, even) is correct. They talk about it in the special features on the DVD. Of course, that's the initial production cost. I believe a lot more was spent on it after it was picked up for distribution.

I saw a great little picture called THE RECEPTION that was shot with a DVX. In the commentary, the director said it cost $5,000.
 
Okay, this is good.

I looked all those movies up on BoxOfficeMojo.com to find out their production budgets. "The Last Broadcast" didn't give its budget. I'm ruling out "Tarnation" because it's listed as a documentary. (Whew! Budget was $200!)

So of the rest, "The Reception" does look like the cheapest at this point, at $5,000.

Anybody else?

Oh....and anyone know where I can find out the budget of "The Last Broadcast"? Still looking.

Thanks!
 
$130,000? For Open Water? They spent close to an hour just sitting in the water! They didn't even have any cool animatronic sharks, did they? Sounds like somebody was supporting a serious coke habit.
 
Much of the budget was supposedly spent on the shark wrangler and his sharks...along with whatever paraphernalia was needed to keep the sharks from munching on the cast.
 
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