From thousands to millions: the film budgets of Stanley Kubrick

29 October 2024

Late American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick made his first feature, Fear and Desire, on a budget of a little over fifty-thousand dollars (US), in 1952. Almost thirty-years later, Kubrick had a budget of nineteen million dollars to make The Shining.

I expect many successful filmmakers move along a similar budget trajectory. But it sounds like Kubrick was boot-strapping to the max, during the production of Fear and Desire:

I then found out how much feature films were being made for, you know, millions, and I calculated that I could make a feature film for about $10,000…by projecting the amount of film I’d shoot, figuring that I could get actors to work for practically nothing. I mean at this point I was the whole crew, cameraman, assistant cameraman, you know, director, everything.

As a comparison, 2001: A Space Odyssey, made in 1968, and easily my favourite Kubrick movie, came with a ten million dollar price tag. Over budget, and almost a year and half behind schedule, but worth every cent. Watch this trailer for 2001, made in 2018, and tell me I’m wrong.