The film industry has been built and sustained by freelance talent. But what happens when the marketing budget of a film can come close to—or even exceed—the budget to make it? We analyse the new realities of film budgets and how they’re devastating the workers who bring these stories to life.
When a star isn’t enough to make a box office hit
The Smashing Machine, the much-anticipated cinematic portrayal of mixed martial arts pioneer Mark Kerr’s life and career, opened this past weekend to critical acclaim but a surprisingly subdued box office performance.
Despite strong reviews praising Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s transformative performance and Benny Safdie’s gritty direction, the film struggled to draw the numbers expected for a high-profile biopic featuring one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
Why did The Smashing Machine have subdued ticket sales at the box office? The answer reveals a crisis in how films are financed, marketed, and made—one that’s quietly destroying the careers of thousands of industry professionals and freelancers.
The marketing arms race
Consider the competition. The Smashing Machine went head-to-head with several established blockbusters, most notably Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another and several other new releases, fragmenting the potential audience.
In today’s cinema market, films battle for audiences’ attention more fiercely than ever. This tug of war between different productions is heavily influenced by readily available streaming services such as Netflix and Apple TV.
Cinema releases fight an uphill battle from the moment production commences. They must compete with the streaming format while expending massive portions of their budget on marketing and advertising—often matching or exceeding what was spent making the film itself.
Movie production v. marketing budget comparison 2024-2025
| Film Title (Year) | Production Budget (Estimated) | Marketing/P&A Budget (Estimated) | Marketing to Production Ratio (Estimate) |
| Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) | $200 million | $100 – $180 million | 50% – 90% |
| Wicked (2024) (Part 1) | $150 million | $150 – $350 million | 100% – 233% |
| Beetlejuice (2024) | $100 million | $80 – $100 million | 80% – 100% |
| Inside Out 2 (2024) | $200 million | $100 – $150 million | 50% – 75% |
| Gladiator II (2024) | $210 – $250 million (Net) | $100 – $150 million | 40% – 71% |
| Superman (2025) | $225 million | $125 – $200 million | 55% – 89% |
Understanding the numbers
Production Budget: This represents the negative cost—what it took to film and produce the movie, including salaries and visual effects, often shown net of tax incentives.
Marketing/P&A Budget: This primarily covers Prints and Advertising (P&A), including trailer placements, TV spots, online advertising, and physical distribution costs.
Examples:
- Wicked (2024): The $350 million marketing figure reported is exceptionally high and may represent total spend, including massive brand partnerships, or the combined push for both Part 1 and Part 2. For Part 1 alone, marketing potentially exceeded production by more than 100%—common for highly competitive holiday releases.
- Gladiator II (2024): The production budget of approximately $210-$250 million is the estimated net cost after tax credits and subsidies, as the gross production cost was reported to be higher.
The £100 family cinema night problem
The rising price of movie tickets, particularly for premium formats like IMAX, combined with absurdly high concession costs, makes a family trip a significant financial outlay.
For a family, a single movie night can cost over £100—an expense that feels extravagant when compared to a flat-rate streaming subscription offering hundreds of hours of content.
In a climate of economic uncertainty and rising household costs, consumers prioritise where they spend discretionary income. Waiting a month or two to watch a new release at home for little to no extra cost is financially sound for many.
The decline in overall cinema performance is less about movies losing their appeal and more about how they’re being consumed. Films that succeed in the current climate deliver event-level spectacle that cannot be replicated at home—like Barbie and Oppenheimer—creating shared cultural moments that drive audiences off their couches.
Barbie’s production budget came in around $145 million. Its marketing budget was even higher, estimated at over $150 million. This marketing spend was considered successful, as the film brought in $337 million globally on its opening weekend, according to reports.
For the movie theatre industry to stabilise and thrive, the focus must shift from simply showing a film to offering a truly cost-effective, social, and memorable experience. Otherwise, for the vast majority of new releases, waiting for the convenient, affordable, and comfortable home streaming option will remain the audience’s default choice.
Devastated crews who make films possible
The relationship between the film industry’s box office struggles and the treatment of its freelance talent is a cycle driven by financial volatility and risk transfer. When studios pour equivalent or greater resources into marketing than production, someone has to pay—and it’s rarely the executives.
The core issue is that the traditional theatrical business model is undermined by high consumer costs and streaming convenience, forcing films to become “event-level spectacle” to succeed.
When a film like The Smashing Machine underperforms, production and distribution companies immediately face financial uncertainty. The need to expend massive portions of budgets on marketing, alongside the risk of subdued box office returns, creates constant pressure to reduce costs elsewhere.
The film industry’s entire operating model is built on using a large freelance workforce, which allows companies to offload financial risks onto the workers themselves.
When the industry faces economic downturns, production slowdowns, and revenue uncertainty—a situation compounded by the pandemic, strikes, and cost-of-living crisis—companies tighten their budgets.
The consequence? Freelancers, who are the most unprotected part of the workforce, bear the brunt of this cost-cutting. They face the highest degrees of income insecurity, and the industry sees a “worrying exodus of talent” because it is no longer financially sustainable for experienced professionals to remain in the sector.
Financial precarity drives poor treatment and closed hiring
The urgent need to deliver projects quickly and cheaply under financial duress directly fuels the industry’s closed and precarious hiring culture.
Bectu’s Big Survey of over 5,500 creative industry workers in non-performing roles—from theatre to film and TV to fashion—has given unique insight into the perspective of workers in the sector.
The creative sector union said the results have raised fresh fears about a lack of open hiring practices in the creative industries, with jobs going to the well-connected and many workers marginalised from the industry.
“These findings make clear that the creative industries continue to operate a closed hiring culture which is leaving many talented workers out in the cold, often driven by last-minute decision-making by studios that incentivises people to hire those they already know,” said Head of Bectu Philippa Childs.
The vicious cycle
The precarious box office performance and streaming competition create a climate of financial anxiety for production companies. This drives last-minute decision-making that relies on established networks, exacerbating an already closed hiring culture.
Based on Bectu’s findings, the following cycle of poor financial and hiring practices in the film industry is harming freelancers:
| Industry problem | Freelancer treatment/practice | End result |
| Volatile Production Cycles | Last-minute, closed hiring: The quick turnaround nature of work means productions need crew at very short notice, incentivising them to hire those they already know for speed and reliability. | 82% of film and TV drama workers get jobs through a friend or contact. Only 27% of film positions are advertised publicly, and only 30% use a formal interview process. |
| Financial Uncertainty | Vulnerable work conditions: Production companies try to save time and money by cutting administrative corners, creating legal and financial risk for workers. | 55% of creative workers experienced a job being cancelled at short notice in the past year. 43% started working without a formal booking confirmation, leaving them vulnerable to non-payment. |
| Lack of Career Security | Concealment and inequality: The fear of losing out on jobs in this closed, competitive environment forces workers to hide personal information to appear constantly available and compliant. | Knowing the hiring environment is a closed circuit, freelancers are desperate to get any type of work. They can overextend themselves, leading to burnout. Others will have no choice but to change careers, leading to an exodus of diverse talent. |
Ultimately, this unstable model transforms the financial risks of filmmaking onto freelance workers, making their careers increasingly unsustainable and driving the current talent drain from the industry.
Films like The Smashing Machine—quality productions with A-list talent that still struggle at the box office—exemplify why this model is broken. When even Dwayne Johnson can’t guarantee returns, studios panic and slash costs where they can: crew rates, hiring timelines, and worker protections. The people who built the world Mark Kerr inhabits on screen are the same people left scrambling for their next gig when the film underperforms.
The solution requires rethinking the entire economic model. Studios need innovative marketing approaches that don’t rival production costs. They need transparent, open hiring practices that don’t punish workers for having disabilities or caring responsibilities. Most importantly, they need to recognise that sustainable filmmaking means sustainable careers for the thousands of freelancers who make the magic happen.
Without these changes, the exodus of talent will continue, and the industry will find itself unable to make the films audiences want to see, no matter how much money they throw at marketing them.
