What Brady Corbet has done with “The Brutalist,” both artistically and financially, is damn-near miraculous and something that producers should be paying close attention to.
Corbet had originally told THR that “The Brutalist” was made for “under $10M,” but didn’t give a specific figure. It turns out, the actual budget was a measly $6M (via Deadline). That is staggeringly low for such an ambitious work of art. I’m absolutely amazed by that low number. Given how big the film feels, and the way it was filmed, this is an absolute triumph.
The general belief is that indie movies need to scale it back given all of the budgetary constraints, but “The Brutalist” seems to have defied all of that. It has a monumental scale to it, an event-worthy craftsmanship that makes it a very lived-in film, one which spans over four decades of one man’s life.
Corbet recently said that the low budget on “The Brutalist” meant “years and years” of working for free as he was developing the project. “The Brutalist,” which was financed by multiple countries, was filmed in Budapest and Tuscany in Spring 2023 after endless COVID delays.
“We cut every corner we could to make sure that every single cent was on-screen,” Corbet said. “It was a Herculean effort, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, because it was just years and years of essentially working for free.”
Now I get why Corbet has said, multiple times, that “The Brutalist” is “a lot of things that everyone tells you you’re not allowed to do” in filmmaking. It quite literally throws out the conventions of indie filmmaking 101 and defies what low-budget projects can achieve.
The end result is that “The Brutalist” won the Silver Lion at Venice and is now a major Oscar contender. A24 recently bought it for $10M. It’s set to screen at numerous other festivals this fall and will be released theatrically in December.