There was a time in the not so distant past where every VHS cover at a Blockbuster followed the same format: the floating heads of two movie stars (one of which was usually Michael Douglas) and a short, punchy title like Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, The Game (all of which, in fact, star Michael Douglas). This was a time when the mid-budget thriller was king.
Cut to 2023. Blockbuster no longer exists. Michael Douglas stars as Hank Pym in the highly anticipated Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. And the mid-budget thriller is dead.
Or is it?
Looking back over the past 10 years, there has been a steady uptick in volume of mid-budget thrillers garnering both theatrical and streaming releases. And further…people are watching, and enjoying, them.
Which begs the question: Is the mid-budget thriller making a comeback? And if so, why?
What Is a Mid-Budget Thriller?
A mid-budget movie is any feature film that is loosely within the range of $4 million and $75 million dollars to make. Though these numbers are not set in stone, the mid-budget movie encompasses everything except the micro-budget/low budget movie and blockbuster studio cinema. They also tended continually make profit through home video rentals and cable replay. Think The Shawshank Redemption playing endlessly on TNT.
Peaking in popularity from the late 1980s to early 2000s, the mid-budget thriller relied on several core facets – star power, clear storytelling, and, most importantly, coming in at budget and on time. Look at 1990’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery. The film stars an up and coming Kathy Bates (Titanic, The Office) and James Caan (The Godfather). Its premise is straightforward: woman kidnaps a bestselling author and holds him captive. It cost $20 million to make and made $61.3 million, tripling its budget. Misery is emblematic of the mid-budget thrillers in this time period – a stable return on investment for studios.
What Happened to Them?
Two connected factors contributed to the downtick of mid-budget thrillers – international box office draw and the rise in franchise filmmaking. Using Misery again, of the $61.3 million it made only $7000 of that came from the international box office. This number illustrates one of the main issues with thrillers of the time – they played specifically to American audiences.
Jump ahead 15 years. Studios have made strides to market and push mid-budget thrillers to an international audience, but this also means an inflated budget. 2005’s Flightplan starring Jodie Foster (Silence of the Lambs) grosses $223 combined on a $55 million dollar budget. That same year, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is released and makes nearly $900 million combined on a $150 million budget.
Studios began to see that by taking greater risks on higher budget franchise films, the return on investment would be much higher as well. They may have misfires in doing this, but by betting big they would be able to recoup any lost budgets on other films. Therefore, the risk vs. reward on mid-budget features dwindled.
So Why Are They Coming Back?
The answer is complicated. But we might have TV to thank.
For the last 15 years, we have been in what many people call the Golden Age of Television. Shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men all encapsulate the epic scope and scale that TV can accomplish in our modern time, with hours of attention and content paid on character development.
But with a heavier focus on television, the landscape has become saturated with multi-season shows that people devote hours, if not days, of their lives to watching. And in so, a new type of return on investment has come to pass: one where the viewer has to weigh time spent watching a show with the ultimate payoff at the end of the series. Which in many recent cases, has left people underwhelmed. The greatest modern example of this being the final season of Game of Thrones.
So enter…the mid-budget thriller. The ultimate palate cleanser after watching 70+ hours of a television show. A lean, mean 120-minute film where character motivations are clear, plot is straightforward, and the viewer can go on a journey without surrendering days of their lives to it.
And studios seem to be noticing. In just the past year, several mid-budget thrillers have made their mark. Warner Brothers released both The Menu starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Ralph Fiennes to critical success and netted an estimated $48 million profit and the debaucherous Don’t Worry Darling. While the film didn’t live up to critical expectations, it still managed make $50 million at the box office based solely on the antics of a press tour alone.
The Impact of Streaming on Mid-Budget Movies
An even greater factor to the mid-budget renaissance may come as a surprise – the advent of streaming services and the need for content.
Last year, we saw Netflix acquire the distribution rights to The Good Nurse starring Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne from indie juggernaut Filmnation (Arrival, Palm Springs, Spencer). The week it premiered on Netflix, it was the #1 most viewed film with over $68 million viewing hours. That’s right. A somber, yet thrilling. drama about nurse malpractice outpaced Season One of Ryan Murphy’s stalker drama The Watcher and the third season of reality smash Love is Blind.
Later in the year, Netflix hit again by landing the streaming rights to Aubrey Plaza’s Emily The Criminal -- a quiet sincere thriller about the lengths young people will go to in order to make a living. Though they didn’t release the streaming numbers for Emily, it sat on the Top Films list for several weeks and even garnered praise from Taxi Driver scribe Paul Schrader who caught it on the streaming service.
The Future of Mid-budget Thrillers
As of the writing of this article, two new thrillers are set to hit theatres this weekend. Lionsgate’s Alice, Darling, starring Anna Kendrick, and Missing, Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick’s directorial follow-up to, their 2018 hit, Searching. And dozens more are on the way. With the studio system in disarray and big shakeups happening in the streaming world, perhaps the Golden Age of TV has ended and we are entering a midbudget renaissance.
As long as we can get Michael Douglas out of the Quantum Realm, we should be in good shape.