By Filmmaker Brady Corbet has confirmed that his new 3.5-hour epic biographical drama “The Brutalist” was shot for just $10 million – around 1/10th of what a major studio film costs.
“The Childhood of a Leader” and “Vox Lux” director’s new film has been hailed as a masterpiece during the Fall Film Festival circuit and with 56 reviews counted it currently sits at 96% (8.9/10) on Rotten Tomatoes.
A24 bought the over three hour film which was shot on VistaVision 35mm film stock before being finished on 70mm. The plan is said to be for a major Oscar push.
Earlier reports suggested the budget was as low as $6 million, but the $10M figure has seemingly been confirmed by Corbet himself whilst speaking about keeping the budget tight with Variety. He tells the trade:
“We cut every corner we could to make sure that every single cent was on screen. It was a Herculean effort, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, because it was just years and years of essentially working for free.”
That makes it one of the most cost-effective but impressive-looking films of this type since “Godzilla: Minus One,” which was made for only $15 million.
Corbet spent seven years struggling to cobble together financing with the project collapsing multiple times before finally being made in Hungary. He adds he never dreamed of doing the film on a bigger budget as there’d be too much compromise:
I never thought, ‘I wish I had $30 million more’. There’s a lot of strings that come with that kind of money. It invites lots of opinions. You have all these executives who don’t trust the director and bury them in notes. What you get is something antiseptic that lacks a signature. It’s the difference between a bowl from Crate & Barrel and a wabisabi ceramic.”
Adrien Brody stars as a Hungarian Holocaust survivor struggling to revive his career as an architect in the United States. It traces his life over nearly four decades as he immigrates to the U.S. and begins working for a rich but hot-headed man (Guy Pearce) who wants to build an ambitious community center.
He helps the survivor reunite with his ailing wife (Felicity Jones) and begin to construct the brutalist building of his dreams, but a fateful incident changes all of their lives forever. Joe Alwyn, Alessandro Nivola, Jonathan Hyde and Isaach De Bankolé co-star.
“The Brutalist” will open in cinemas on December 20th.
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