Could 2024 bring about a surge in moderately budgeted big-screen action movies?
It’s been a talking point for some years now. The big studios, particularly Disney and their innumerable arms, have been preoccupied with huge blockbusters as well as gargantuan budget shows. The low-budget indie films up to about ten million bucks make up a big chunk of the films that come out (of which a HUGE number are below a few million). Then you have the $100 million level films and in between not so much. Between $10 and $100 million a large proportion are films made purely for streaming, or mainstream indie studio films from the likes of A24, or a handful of theatrically released movies.
Something threatens to break this system. Aside from the rising popularity of the aforementioned A24 for example, you also have the dwindling box office appeal of the $100 million plus films, most of which are failing to hit the numbers expected. There have been a mass of films costing upwards of 200 million buckeroos and with marketing costs on top, it’s often said that your average MCU release needs to comfortably top a billion dollars at the box office to be deemed successful.
Will studios be more hesitant to overspend? Perhaps, but that once-dead zone known as the moderate budget level, might just see a comeback. Horror is experiencing a boon and the genre has always been budget-friendly. It’s been a long time since we consistently saw action films pumped out for theatrical release that cost between $20 and $50 million. Enough cash to give the audiences a decent amount of action and not quite costly enough that producers will want to wring every creative fibre out of the cloth.
It’s always the returns which matter of course. If studios had begun thinking that modestly budget action films were best made straight for streaming, then the recent success of Jason Statham’s The Beekeeper could suggest otherwise. Having had almost no faith shown in his previous headlining action films of recent times, Wrath of Man and Operation Fortune, the Stath’s collaboration with David Ayer was given an unexpected theatrical boost and a dash of optimism from the studio having initially been considered as a potential streaming premiere.
They had faith, they gave it a reasonably wide release and it has made a decent return on its 40 million dollar budget. Best of all, it didn’t require a gross of a billion quid just to break even. Turns out that Statham still carries enough weight, with the right concept, to make a tidy return on a sensibly budgeted film.
Coming out on April 26th in the US there’s another moderate-budget action film that looks like a cross between Kickboxer and The Running Man with a dash of the irreverence of Deadpool or Bullet Train. Bill Skarsgård leads an eclectic cast in Boy Kills World which includes a more than welcome big-screen return for Famke Janssen. For the genre, it’s had good reviews too and looks a lot of fun. It certainly looks like there’s plenty of scope and bang for your buck but a production well under 100 mill. That being said I don’t want it to do too well as one of my films (Cinderella’s Revenge) is released in theatres the same day. Hell, see both.
As good as Boy Kills World looks, one film looks like a potential cult classic of the action genre and it’s written, directed by and stars Dev Patel. Monkey Man looks like John Wick with a dash of Desi and a hefty visual sprinkle of Bollywood flavour. The classic revenge story won’t unearth too many new caveats but the style with which the story is told just might.
Whether the excellent trailer turns out to be a cruel oversell remains to be seen but if the film delivers the visual splendour and kick-ass action its trailer suggests, then John Wick might just have to step aside. Patel burst onto the scene pretty impressively but has since shown a great range and matured into a dashing leading man. A new transition into a kickass action hero didn’t seem plausible back in the era of Slumdog Millionaire, but it seems almost inevitable now.
In addition, Patel’s skill as a storyteller will be up for rating once Monkey Man does arrive. This is also another benefit of being a modestly budgeted genre film too, it allows Patel a platform to show his skills behind the camera, to launch himself as an action hero and you would imagine have a good deal of creative freedom.
With the rights being sold to Netflix for around $30 million, it’s probably safe to assume the production budget would have been recouped at least. It’s a freedom of expression someone like Patel could be afforded on a modest budget film but undoubtedly wouldn’t on a tentpole-level budget. Impressively though, the visual pizzazz in the film looks way beyond anything released by the MCU for about 5 years.
Who knows whether we’ll see a moderate-budget action renaissance akin to what the horror genre has had in recent times but a big reason fans have flocked to the big screen to watch a slew of creatively ambitious horror films, is partly because there has been an eclectic range to choose from whilst for the most part big screen action has been monopolised by awful tentpole selections with needlessly excessive budgets. Even more ironic is the fact that many of them, so laden with rushed CGI, look cheap despite having hundreds of millions spent on them.
Audiences certainly won’t be turned off by fewer technical bells and whistles that a mega-budget affords you. Success in recent years with some inventive and genuinely engaging moderate-budget action films, such as Upgrade and Nobody, along with Statham’s The Beekeeper, should inspire studios to make more and not merely confine them to a streaming premiere.
Do you want to see more moderate-budget action films on the big screen? Drop us a comment on our social channels @FlickeringMyth or hit me up @jolliffeproductions…
