Full $71M breakdown for The Village by M. Night Shyamalan (2003) [pdf]

https://wlmager.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Budget-The-Village-Shyamalan-copy.pdf

by cocacola1 • 2 years ago

232 162 2 years ago

wyldfire• 2 years ago

Wow - Howard's character is arguably more important to the story than Phoenix's. Was he that big of a draw back then to be able to demand so much more pay? Well - he had probably been in "Gladiator" just prior, so I guess he was a hot commodity. It looks like William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Adrien Brody, Brendan Gleeson all got paid pretty well. The movie made money despite not finding favor with critics.

Ebert named the film the tenth worst film of 2004 and subsequently put it on his "Most Hated" list.

I dunno, I enjoyed it. I'm a simple man.

i80and2• 2 years ago

Ebert's critique isn't wrong IMO, but I think misses the bigger picture about what did work well in the film

devin• 2 years ago

I recently learned that Ebert gave a positive review to Con Air.

bigmattystyles• 2 years ago

And for what con air was, he was right.

wozniacki• 2 years ago

From what I have learned about this whole show business / movie business / music business game as played at least in N. America and U.K. (?), the whole thing is pretty rigged and works on a "handshake" basis for the lack of a more loftier term. Hollywood , for the sheer amount of global power it wields, is amazing when you think about how its run like a company town & how little scrutiny it gets overall.

I highly recommend watching the HBO series, Vinyl (2016) about a record executive from the 1970s & the music business then. All those radio hits - that were hit and the ones that werent - you've always scratched your head about make a lot more sense when you understand the inner workings.

[1] Vinyl (2016)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3186130/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_(TV_series)

verticalscaler2• 2 years ago

Stop this shade throwing at a great work of cinema or the bunny gets it. Con Air is a timeless classic and he was totally right.

xsmasher• 2 years ago

He judged high art by the standards of high art, and schlock by the standards of schlock.

unsupp0rted• 2 years ago

If a movie isn't entertaining, then it's bad. If a movie is at least entertaining, then it's good.

yuppiepuppie• 2 years ago

The pay gap in the star cast is huge for Howard. Was she just starting her career at this point?

wmf5• 2 years ago

Yes, it looks like this was her first or second notable role.

huytersd3• 2 years ago

I’m a simple man too. Ebert is like Punxsutawney Phil to me. He’s right about 30% of the time.

rvbissell• 2 years ago

Same. Maybe I was a naive young adult, but I totally did not anticipate the twist in that plot. So in that regard I felt like I got my money's worth.

echelon• 2 years ago

"Signs" was one of my favorite films of the 2000s, if you don't nitpick about the water. Suspenseful, well acted, leaves you guessing, eager for more.

Suffice to say, I eagerly anticipated "The Village" from the moment the first trailer dropped. The costumes looked cool. The colors, the creatures, the mood and the mystery.

I don't think I've ever left a theater quite so disappointed. The twist ruined what had been a magical experience for the better half of the film. I wanted the magic to endure, but I got slapped with a bad episode of "The Outer Limits".

Shyamalan remains a fantastic filmmaker for his hits, but this one hurt me. I don't wait for films anymore.

vidarh3• 2 years ago

It was ruined for me because we arrived just as it was about to start, were pointed to the wrong screen, and ended up walking in to a viewing in progress just in time to see enough to make the twist obvious...

As much as I've enjoyed many of Shyamalan's movies, the big problem with them is how much hinges on the twist. To this day I feel very little interest in rewatching them because of that.

cm21872• 2 years ago

I used a lot that movie as an analogy during covid, when we were told that all borders were closed and it was impossible to travel, but the few friends who actually showed up at airports were surprised to see the whole thing functioning normally and be a rather nice experience (no lines). That was 2020 of course. 2021 was a different story.

zeroonetwothree4• 2 years ago

For me it’s the kind of movie where if you know there is a twist you can immediately guess what it is.

But I’ve read and watched a lot of thrillers so they tend to become obvious after a while.

bazoom423• 2 years ago

Actors get paid for their ability to draw an audience, which largely depends on the success of their previous work. Howard was a nobody, but probaly got paid a lot better for her next movie, since this movie was a success.

karma_fountain• 2 years ago

This was Bryce Dallas Howard's first film so it was her big break, before that she had only done theater. Hopefully she got a percentage of the profit and some extra money for promoting the film.

Edit: Also worth noting that her father is Ron Howard so she probably didn't need the money.

cm21872• 2 years ago

On the other hand he also put Usual Suspects on that list (he argues the plot is too complicated). Can't disagree more.

getlawgdon2• 2 years ago

I enjoyed it also. Memorable and unique.

woobar2• 2 years ago

It was also one of the first movies for Jesse Eisenberg, but I cannot find his character (Jamison) in the list. I wonder if it was renamed during shooting. There is a small part for Joseph ($8K total), but there is no character with this name in the final cast.

finikytou• 2 years ago

its one of my favorite modern movies. everything is done brillantly and the cinematography is probably shyamalan's best

wmf5• 2 years ago

Interesting to see that Shyamalan was paid $300K to write, $200K to direct, and $3M to produce the movie.

danpalmer• 2 years ago

And 7.2m for the story rights, the first line item.

wmf5• 2 years ago

Whoops, somehow I misread that as $7,200. Don't tell the "idea guys" about this!

joshspankit3• 2 years ago

Am I reading this right that M. Night got over 10M (and possibly the most out of anyone) because of the 7.5M story rights/writing on top of the 3M for directing?

mrkstu• 2 years ago

I'm assuming it was as Director that he made most of his back end money.

raverbashing• 2 years ago

I wonder if those fees are based on a "fixed fees" schedule (these ones above, not the script one)

Brajeshwar2• 2 years ago

[Spoiler Alert]

I was at a "special invite." I remember this movie well because many of India's Bollywood whos-who were there. When the film ended, I came out and kept thinking, I wish the movie ended before the revelation, stayed on the cliffhanger, and didn't expose that the Village was "staged."

The ending made me feel like, "Duh! Was it all for nothing?"

siva7• 2 years ago

Thanks for spoiling the end.

ajcp• 2 years ago

The movie has been out for 21 years now. It's not a spoiler, you're just being reminded how much you've been passed by.

speed_spread• 2 years ago

You're being sarcastic but you shouldn't. The plot twist is all there is to the movie, so that reveal saved you 2 hours of your life.

febed• 2 years ago

Spoilers! Please

mkl6• 2 years ago

I don't know if that would have helped. I figured out the twist long before its revelation, and I think the movie would have made even less sense without some kind of explanation of the characters' strange behaviour. I came out of it thinking "I guess some names can get anything funded", since it seemed like an obviously bad story, but with more hindsight "obviously bad story" is not a problem for a film project if it makes money (just a problem for the audience), and in 2004 Shyamalan's name on a movie was guaranteed to make money, so the investors had no need to care about story.

dialanonymous• 2 years ago

I remember guessing the twist almost immediately because the whole plot was a blatant rip-off of a book I had just read in school.

This is the book: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_Out_of_Time_(novel)

tomcam• 2 years ago

Weird thing is that Piers Anthony wrote a children’s science fiction book called “Race against time” with a similar theme.

huytersd3• 2 years ago

No, I loved the ending and then thinking back through the whole movie and remember how I just assumed it was in the seventeenth century or whatever. The “it was all for nothing” in an isolated compound in the modern world made the movie for me.

qubex2• 2 years ago

Same. I absolutely loved how the reveal retroactively revised the whole story.

djmips• 2 years ago

Putting [spoilers alert] at the end is pointless

Brajeshwar2• 2 years ago

I'm so sorry to those pissed off about the spoilers. I was under the impression that for movies, it is like "about a week-ish" before hinting on spolers, and about "couple of days" for TV episodes!

Let me make it up to you. If you haven't seen it, there is a TV series based off George RR Martin's work, Game of Thrones[1].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones

Edit: Huh! I can't add even a subtle hint of a joke, even on the weekends? :-(

dang• 2 years ago

We've moved it to the beginning now. Thanks!

prakhar897• 2 years ago

Payments to producers of the film looks like this:

MNight - 7.2M$ + 0.3M$ + 3M$

Sam Mercer - 850k$

Scott Rudin - 3M$

Aren't producers the one investing in the movie. Why are they getting paid then, How does this work?

Edit: Other expenses like travel etc are also covered by the company which adds another 1M$ approx [ex: 41.23]

wmf5• 2 years ago

AFAIK the executive producers gather funding and the producers actually make the movie.

wizardforhire• 2 years ago

Executive producers are investors.

Line producers are managers

Producers are ceos or presidents.

cbsmith3• 2 years ago

In reality, these lines are a lot blurrier. Executive producers usually are investors, but they're not necessarily the primary investors. Definitionally, they're responsible for the financing of the film. Producers on the other hand, are, in theory responsible for managing expenditure of the investment (making the film), very much like a CEO/President as you describe.

mkl6• 2 years ago

Producers aren't usually investors. Executive producers have more to do with investing, but not all executive producers invest (some recruit investors, or do other unrelated things). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_producer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_producer

iamdbtoo• 2 years ago

I'm pretty sure the studio is putting up the money for the movie. This seems to be the production budget and does not include whatever his profit participation was.

bazoom423• 2 years ago

Producer and executive producer are completely differet roles despite similar sounding names.

Executive producer is a credit for someone who have helped secure funding. Sometimes high-profile actors may have an executive producer credit.

Producer is like project manager for the movie.

stigz• 2 years ago

This is neat. I take it these these accounting breakdowns for films are hard to come by? Would love to see more for some of my favorite films.

cfr2023• 2 years ago

You and me both!

Joeboy3• 2 years ago

This is the one people always cite when talking about big budget film breakdowns. I presume because it's the only one that's out there.

Edit: Apparently there's a leaked budget for The Interview out there. https://www.scribd.com/document/352522776/The-Interview-Budg...

gniv3• 2 years ago

A surprising tidbit: Key make-up and hair each made 72.5k, but there was a make-up and hair designer, who made 105k.

ojosilva• 2 years ago

Photocopier rental $20k!

ashwinne• 2 years ago

I'd assume it is an office copier that can produce lots of copies of scripts, receipts, invoices, signs for the sets etc. they might need all through the day. And by renting, if it breaks down they get an immediate replacement from the rental company (at zero cost) I guess. So don't need to worry about repair downtime.

pavlov2• 2 years ago

Is it surprising? It’s the same for costumes, sets, visual effects, and many other creative aspects of the production: there’s a lead designer / supervisor who is in charge of the overall look and concept, and then individual artists who implement the look.

gniv3• 2 years ago

Yes, I don't know why I was surprised about make-up in particular. I guess it shows my biases.

mkl6• 2 years ago

The original title "The Woods" is down in the footer. Apparently it was changed during production to avoid a clash with another film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Village_(2004_film)#Produc...

entropy47• 2 years ago

The original title is, in fact, the very first thing in the document. Twice!

fractallyte• 2 years ago

It was this film (The Woods, 2006): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0380066/

...which was actually a rather cool movie! Anything with Bruce Campbell and Patricia Clarkson piques my interest.

JohnMakin• 2 years ago

10% of the budget was for story rights? the story was the worst part of that movie.

mkl6• 2 years ago

10% of the budget was to be able to say "M. Night Shyamalan wrote this", which guaranteed a healthy profit in 2004 no matter what the story was.

blackoil• 2 years ago

Yeah, it follows The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs and The Village itself made >250 million on this 72 million budget.

huytersd3• 2 years ago

Completely disagree. I didn’t really see the twist coming so I enjoyed the story.

pawelmurias• 2 years ago

It's a money making project. I assume it would be easy to have the mainstream movies have "better" stories but they are money making not artistic endeavours.

circularfoyers• 2 years ago

Is there any context to this document? Was this just leaked or previously leaked, where was it originally posted, etc?

joshspankit3• 2 years ago

Doesn’t help much, but one clue is WordPress shows the pdf was uploaded “/2012/10/“

mcapodici• 2 years ago

Based on that I conjecture that it was going to be included in this post:

https://wlmager.com/why-i-havent-used-crowdfunding-to-pay-fo...

For all blog posts, use this link:

https://wlmager.com/?s=a

mavhc• 2 years ago

Don't see a related post on the blog pages https://wlmager.com/author/wlmager/page/3/

AceyMan• 2 years ago

I remember these sheets (or the same type artifact) in a newstand magazine fifteen years ago or so; I read it in Wired, Esquire or some similar publication, iirc.

gniv3• 2 years ago

I expected the high fees for actors/director/writer, but the composer fee was surprising (page 69). And the movie was nominated for Oscars for original score (and nothing else)! Interesting decision to hire that composer, presumably made by MNS.

ycdxvjp• 2 years ago

VFX is 250K for 5 shots. Total VFX budget is 500K. And total post production is 10 Mil. Or ~14% of the whole budget. These days I bet it's probably double or triple that.

adastra22• 2 years ago

SPOILER well The Village benefits from the fact that the monsters were in fact just the other characters in rubber masks. Practical effects would have been entirely accurate anyway, no VFX required. I expect that money was mostly spent on color correction and removing phone lines and such.

dcanelhas• 2 years ago

VFX was Matte shots and wire removal, according to the doc.

matt-attack2• 2 years ago

And color correction is listed as its own line item (see “DI”).

overvale• 2 years ago

Shows how much things have changed. These days it would likely be ~14% of the entire budget, not just post. And there would be 1,000 VFX shots.

nathan-wailes• 2 years ago

Does anyone know where I can find more film budgets broken down in detail like this?

qubex2• 2 years ago

This film gets bashed often but I remember seeing it in the cinema when it was released and I absolutely adored it, and still do. I’ve ’inflicted’ it on several friends and acquaintances — and keep in mind I’m no M. Night Shyamalan fan having never seen Unbrekable and having walked out of the cinema midway through The Last Airbender that I hold to be one of the worst films ever. Anyway back to The Village: its scenery and ambiance were absolutely perfect. The twist was pure genius.

eterm• 2 years ago

The film didn't work for me, because I didn't realise the "twist" was supposed to be a twist. I had assumed it from the start and was expecting the reverse to be the twist.

i80and2• 2 years ago

As somebody who did like the movie despite itself, I like the version you expected more

wharvle2• 2 years ago

Same. “Oh, it’s just… the obvious thing.”

geek_at• 2 years ago

It's one of my favorite movies. I love movies or books that get me thinking "what the hell is going on" until in the end there's a twist where it now all makes sense.

Another movie like this is "Big Fish"

Grazester• 2 years ago

There wasn't a twist in Big Fish.

matt-attack2• 2 years ago

The slo mo shot still gives me chills.

fullshark• 2 years ago

I remember liking it a lot, I didn't see the twist coming even though the guy was known at the time for having a twist in his films. I liked how it wasn't just about a "gotcha" but revealed character motivations and how people try to retreat from the world due to trauma, and the lengths parents go to protect their children. I bet it would hit harder if I watched it now that I have children.

astrostl• 2 years ago

IDC about the twist. It's a standout to me on VIBE. Of what I've seen from MNS, it's my favorite.

zbendefy• 2 years ago

It's interesting that according to wikipedia its budget was $60M.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Village_(2004_film)#Produc...

This breakdown is about $71M, and it doesn't even account for reshoots in 2004 ~april. Which one is the more accurate? Are all publicly reported budgets this different?

Or is there something in this report that is not counted there?

Joeboy3• 2 years ago

I think the public "budget" number is best considered as part of the film's publicity. It might reflect reality, it might not. Some films exaggerate their production budgets to make them seem like good value to buyers, some understate them for "plucky outsider" cred.

Keyframe4• 2 years ago

Shyamalan got good out of it. Usually it's ~5% of the budget for director, but he did write it as well and then some. Hefty fee. Looking through the budget I guess only surprise would be music composer at 4x Deakins' fee; That's interesting. Always weird to see Hollywood sheets like that, they're so inflated in some ways. For example, 50k for someone to run a generator on-set for three months and then also 30k for same generator rental. Or, matte shots/plates 50k apiece, 50k wrap party allowance, DI at 350k (jesus, yet whole of foley was 112k), titles at 160k, 2 AVID machines rental at 270k (even then one could've bought several times over several full systems for that), 20k for MIDI file transfer :P And all that's in 2003 money.

mensetmanusman• 2 years ago

Those costs remind me of the cost for dealing with emergency water damage.

They would be extraordinarily cheaper if they were working nonstop, but the asks are so intermittent they have to charge enough to maintain availability of the service. This becomes especially true and high cost-of-living areas.

germinalphrase• 2 years ago

Generators on film sets aren’t the type of thing you power your house with in an outage; they are a truck sized, high power piece of specialist equipment. Running one of those generators safely with zero downtime is absolutely a job. People think of movie sets as dangerous places due to stunts, fire and explosions. I was always weary of the electricity.

simple10• 2 years ago

I worked on a few films back in college. It's a huge deal if the generator goes down. It completely stops production, especially when shooting at night with giant lights. It's not possible to run most productions off of the normal power grid due to the voltage and amp requirements of the lights. At least that was the case before LEDs. I'm not sure what the large studio production lights are using these days.

Keyframe4• 2 years ago

I was on a number of film sets, you are right, but it's also not a job that warrants that much of a compensation and it usually is included in rental fee. Rarely will rental company of a genny give out generator itself without a guy or two.

petee• 2 years ago

Not only that, but rain and wet environments, it takes a skilled person to keep everyone safe, and also be able to wrench on a large diesel engine...while starting at 3 am, wrapping 14hrs later.

And in some large film unions, you need to pass a test just to get into the department, let alone run a generator.

jdietrich• 2 years ago

2 AVID machines rental at 270k (even then one could've bought several times over several full systems for that)

You aren't paying for the machine, you're paying for a guarantee that there will be a working machine when and where you need it.

Keyframe4• 2 years ago

The did pay additionally for AVID technicians

Kaedon• 2 years ago

DI probably also involves at that time the cost of scanning it into film. I worked in the industry a little after this and some of the DI theatres rent out for 1K+ per hour, plus there’s conform artist time, incorporating new cuts, etc. I could see it.

bilsbie• 2 years ago

I wonder why no one has tried setting up a village like in the movie? With all the ills of society it seems worth a try.

wingspar• 2 years ago

If they did, we wouldn’t know…

krsrhe• 2 years ago

Lots of people have. From Amish to communes to cults.

gbacon• 2 years ago

Are you from the Towns?

getlawgdon2• 2 years ago

We're currently in it.

zeroonetwothree4• 2 years ago

Because then how would you comment on HN all day?

m3kw9• 2 years ago

That heck of a list of 71mil of economic activities. I keep seeing these “fringes” fees, what are these?

tauchunfall• 2 years ago

looks like "fringes" are what we call in German TV and ad productions "markup".

Fringes can track the value of benefits or fees that are required above and beyond the raw cost of labor or materials. Fringe benefits could include employment taxes, fees for pension & welfare programs, or daily charges for a given resource. They might also include allowances for holiday or sick leave funds. Fringes can also be used to track things like sales tax on materials. Many employment benefits have a limit or cap for how much total compensation an employee can make before the Fringe benefit is cut off in a given project.

via: https://mmb-docs.ep.com/Setup/fringes.html

woobar2• 2 years ago

Mostly taxes on wages paid as a part of making this movies.

FICA - employer part of payroll taxes

FICA/Medi - employer part of Medicare insurance

FUI/SUI - federal/state unemployment insurance

mihaic• 2 years ago

Pretty fascinating to see how the actor pays don't match what I was expecting, nor how expensive the actual film stock and its processing was (380k).

Do anyone know if there's more of these breakdowns publicly available?

lxmorj• 2 years ago

Firm believer that he stole the entire thing from the book Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

allen3• 2 years ago

A few things to note: this isn't the budget that Disney ended up having. This doesn't include Prints & Advertising. I'm assuming the picture also had a state tax credit for filming in NY and Penn. So the overall budget would probably be 10-15 million dollars less than itemized. It also looks like N.Night had a 3 picture deal at Disney.

Full $71M breakdown for The Village by M. Night Shyamalan (2003) [pdf]

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