Why Movies Are So Expensive (And How To Fix It)

I'm entirely convinced that movie budgets are ridiculous because someone is laundering money through them

Accounting for inflation, $55M is about the budget of the first Star Wars film. Someone paid Dwayne Johnson a Star Wars film to be in a forgettable one.

Godzilla:Minus One is a testament to the unmatched power of less is more

"The first woman to discover fire." That line had me on the floor.

I once watched Desperados, dubbed with Tarantinos and Rodriguez comment. Tarantino said something that I have not forgotten in 20 years: "The good thing about having no money is - you needa become creative"

I recently learned that James Woods had so much fun playing Hades in Disney's Herclusese that, when he found out the movie was on the brink of going overbudget, he volunteered to refund his salary. His offer was refused and the movie stayed within budget. However, it really exemplifies how the first problem you mention is purely artificial and doesn't need to be an issue if we just figure out how to not overvalue celebrities.

One of the problems with CGI is all of these big movies now are written by committee and they always undergo changes based on focus group testing and market research, even during filming. This causes CGI artists to constantly rework everything they do. Not only does this waste money, it prevents the CGI artists from polishing anything, so the movies cost more and end up looking worse.

I feel a reason that these celebrities have lost most of their star power is that fact that most of them no longer act. They are not becoming another character they are just acting as themselves while pretending it is someone else.

I recall Katee Sackoff saying at one point that she felt like the catering budget alone for Mandalorian cost more than a whole season of Battlestar Galactica.

I am not sure that Hollywood is any different than other businesses today. I am in medicine and there was a study that came out in 2012 that showed how many physicians were in a hospital compared to administrators over the years. In the 50s, for every physician in a hospital, they had 2 administrators. Now, for every physician in my hospital, we have over 400 administrative people. And people wonder why healthcare is so expensive. Lots of mouths to feed.