One Battle After Another is the latest in a long string of movies that have led me to believe that mega-budget tentpoles will become increasingly rare, and that’s a good thing for the state of the movie industry. Paul Thomas Anderson’s satirical action thriller debuted to some of the best Rotten Tomatoes scores of the year, and has already generated considerable Oscar hype for everyone involved.

All that acclaim may not mean much when it comes to profitability, however. Another key talking point around One Battle After Another is its exorbitant cost, which is rumored to be anywhere from $130 to $175 million. It represents a daunting roll of the dice for Warner Bros., given that Anderson’s highest-grossing movie at the box office was Oscar darling There Will Be Blood, which brought in just over $76 million worldwide.

However, profitability doesn’t appear to be the end goal for One Battle After Another, although the dynamite review scores and strong word of mouth could help it achieve that as well. Warner Bros.’ 2025 success has allowed it to take such risks, as they became the first studio to gross $4 billion in 2025, a feat they’ve not accomplished since 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Warner Bros. fundamentally shifted their offering of movies in 2025, with a focus on ambitious, original storytelling in addition to their premium IP. They were rewarded with an unprecedented streak of seven movies opening with $40 million or more at the global box office, and One Battle After Another could be the eighth in a row if it outperforms early expectations.

Warner Bros. success in 2025 may have unintentionally provided a blueprint for Hollywood to follow in coming years. In lieu of shelling out $200M+ for individual blockbuster tentpoles that may or may not return a profit, I believe there may be more money in taking chances on lower-budget, riskier original projects throughout the year, just as the big studios used to operate.

Great Movies Simply Don’t Need To Cost That Much To Be Successful

By betting on what I’ll call “qualitative quanтιтy” as opposed to pushing all their chips on one or two movies for the year, movie studios can adapt to the shifting reality of the post-COVID box office, which will simply never return to the levels we saw before the true advent of streaming. It’s a strategy that can work, and frankly needs to work, given how audiences experience movies in the digital age.

Fortunately, Hollywood has been provided with a number of recent examples that demonstrate what miracles can be worked without breathtaking effects budgets. In 2023, Takashi Yamazaki took the world by storm with Godzilla Minus One, which cost roughly $10-$15 million to produce, yet grossed over $113 million, won an Oscar for Best Special Effects, and dominated end-of-year Best Of lists.

Just in 2025, two major dinosaur movies demonstrated the concept in near-real time. Jurᴀssic World Rebirth, the latest entry in the long-running Jurᴀssic series, rattled off $867 million at the box office despite the middling reviews that have come to mark the franchise. However, it cost a whopping $180-$225 million to make, and earned just a 71% with audiences via Rotten Tomatoes.

Roughly a month and a half later, Luke Sparke’s sci-fi action horror adaptation Primitive War debuted with an extremely limited release, and achieved an 85% Rotten Tomatoes audience score. The dinosaur effects were touted by most who saw Primitive War as comparable to those of Jurᴀssic World Rebirth, and reviews indicate the story itself was superior. The difference? Primitive War cost between $7 million and $12 million to make.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that throwing hundreds of millions at a project can’t guarantee quality, and that quality doesn’t need to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Hollywood may be starting to get the hint, especially with former “can’t-miss” tentpoles like the MCU and DC properties failing to even approach the former box office standards despite the budgets remaining the same.

Horror Has Proven How Much Money There Is To Be Made Outside Tentpoles

No genre has proven that quality doesn’t need to be expensive more than horror has, especially in 2025. Horror has long been looked down upon as a cheap version of the art form that is filmmaking, albeit unfairly so.

The tables have turned in the new modern Golden Age of Horror, which has seen some of the greatest talents in Hollywood (in front of and behind the camera) turn their eyes towards the genre as a powerful lens through which to tell stories. The quality of horror has been on the rise for the last few years, but 2024 saw its raw potential for profitability unleashed.

Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe’s high-profile horror mystery Longlegs rightfully garnered headlines for its astounding marketing campaign and $128 million box office haul on a $10 million budget. However, the ultra-gory Christmas slasher Terrifier 3 took $90 million home on a $2 million budget, achieved a 78% Certified Fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes, and blew Longlegs out of the water with its 85% audience score.

2025 continued the trend, with four of the aforementioned seven Warner Bros. $40 million openings coming from horror movies. Between them, Sinners, Final Destination Bloodlines, Weapons, and The Conjuring: Last Rites have grossed a cumulative $1.367 billion (and counting) on a cumulative budget of $243 million, marking an astonishing victory for Warner Bros., and for the horror genre in general.

Good horror is driven not by expensive CGI monsters and city battles, but by exquisite camerawork, sound editing, and powerful acting performances. The genre lends itself to lower budgets, and now that so many talented storytellers are delivering their art through that lens, it seems a near-guarantee that we’ll continue to see more horror movies making big money at the box office.

A Billion Dollars Is No Longer The Bar

For most of the 2010s, $1 billion became the de facto benchmark for success for what the highest-profile movies might earn, and for a while Hollywood was able to churn out movies that achieved that mark. Part of that is undoubtedly due to the expanded adoption of premium-format theaters and the higher ticket costs therein, along with the expansion of the Chinese market during that time.

It came to a head just before the pandemic hit in early 2020. As Scott Mendelson noted in Puck, 25 different movies achieved $1 billion or more at the global box office between 2015 and 2019. The climax of the Infinity Saga of the MCU, the newly revamped Jurᴀssic World franchise, and Disney’s most prestigious live-action remakes of animated classics led to the establishment of an atmospheric and unsustainable bar.

*COVID-19 virus outbreak

With that much potential profit on the table, it becomes far easier to justify budgets north of $200 million. However, since the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily killed theaters and streaming platforms truly took off, that $1 billion mark became a near-impossibility, not a common eventuality.

In 2019, nine movies hit the $1 billion mark, but since then no year has seen more than three. In 2025, only two movies have hit the $1 billion mark: the live-action adaptation of Lilo & Sтιтch ($1.037B), and the Chinese animated fantasy adventure movie Ne Zha 2 ($1.902B).

The new normal simply isn’t $1 billion, and astronomical movie budgets can’t be counted on to get you there. Mendelson, like other experts, has placed the new elite benchmark closer to $800 million, which seems reasonable based on the box office totals we’ve seen over the last two years.

Big-Budget Tentpoles Will Always Exist In Some Capacity

To be clear, there will always be several big-budget event-style films. Certain properties will always command a large enough global audience that they’ll be able to cross the $1 billion mark, or come predictably close to it. Every Avatar movie is a virtual lock for $1 billion, if not $1.5 billion, while the Avengers and Spider-Man properties will be put to the test in 2026.

Pixar and Disney Animation Studios have been less reliable lately when it comes to surefire hits, but the family audience will always still prop up highly-anticipated sequels, even if they’re not great (looking at you, Moana 2). DreamWorks Animation has turned into a juggernaut in their own right thanks to the Despicable Me and Shrek franchises among others, as well.

The big shift will be whether studios are willing to risk their fiscal year on one or two major тιтles as opposed to spreading their stake out over the course of the year, as Warner Bros. did in 2025. Warner Bros. had several major box office hits already in their back pocket by the time One Battle After Another hit theaters in late September, so the inherent risk in a budget that high is lower.

By taking more swings on original movies that carry a lower price tag, studios generate a much higher chance that they’ll hit on a few of them, minimizing the risk to the studio. Basically the question becomes: do you want to spend $200 million on one blockbuster that might flop, or on four smaller movies, each with a chance at becoming mᴀssively profitable?

For comparison, Warner Bros. spent $250 million on Red One, the Dwayne Johnson-led Christmas adventure movie at the end of 2024, which grossed less than $190 million. Just a few months later, they went on their big run with horror movies, and turned $243 million into over $1.3 billion.

That’s obviously a cherry-picked example for comparison, but the concept is clear. Give yourself more chances for hits instead of putting all your eggs into one or two baskets, and in doing so spread the wealth among a variety of filmmakers who can bring original stories and unique voices to the front and center of the global cinematic stage.

There Are Already Signs That Hollywood’s Priorities Are Shifting

We’ve already seen a shift in how studios interact with filmmakers as a response to the shifting method via which movies are consumed. Many of the biggest names in Hollywood have signed exclusive deals with streaming platforms, earning fixed income not dependent on the whims of the box office while also maintaining more creative freedom and control.

The desire for creative control has always been a sticking point in Hollywood, especially with studios. As they seek to protect their investment in a movie, they have historically meddled with movies to the point of making them unrecognizable, believing in focus groups and online feedback over a director’s vision.

With top talent leaving for streaming, studios will need to loosen the leashes and allow for more risks to be taken if they want to maintain relationships with the best filmmakers in cinema. Developing trust and successful relationships with talent can only benefit the studios, and it will ultimately lead to higher-quality movies.

Warner Bros. providing Paul Thomas Anderson a budget many times larger than anything he’s worked with before for One Battle After Another is a good example of them choosing to trust in talent and their own marketing prowess. Anderson has plenty of Oscar nominations, but he’s simply never made movies that are big box office draws, making the budget he was given a pretty significant risk.

With such a high budget, profitability might wind up a long sH๏τ, but given that they’re so far in the green for the entire year, Warner Bros. is okay giving Anderson the money to make the movie he wants. The results could be incredibly positive PR for Warner Bros., seemingly several Oscar nominations for Anderson and his cast and crew, and at least most of their money back in the process.

If budgets aren’t gargantuan to begin with, there is little reason not to trust in a proven talented filmmaker. If the movie bombs, the risk is minimal. If it’s a hit, you’ve made a far greater profit. Money talks, and if other studios take the right notes from what Warner Bros. accomplished in 2025, that atтιтude could become the dominant one in Hollywood, to everyone’s benefit.

Actors and actresses are also stepping outside their typical boxes to undertake new creative challenges. Perhaps the most relevant example at the moment is Dwayne Johnson, who has almost exclusively been a blockbuster action star during his time as an actor, stepping into an intimate and dramatic biopic, The Smashing Machine. It’s entirely new ground for Johnson, but it’s already generating Oscar buzz for the wrestler-turned-actor.

As it stands, I believe Hollywood studios need to continue to follow the path laid out by Warner Bros. in 2025 if they are to succeed moving forward. By returning to the days when one or two tentpoles were propped up by a varied slate of adult-oriented comedies, dramas, and horror movies, modern studios can minimize their risk while simultaneously providing more opportunities for high-quality hits like One Battle After Another.