The Brutalist director reveals he didn’t make any money on the Academy Award-nominated film

Brady Corbet is a director who knows how to stretch a dollar. His Oscar-nominated film, The Brutalist, is a 3-and-a-half-hour drama shot on 70mm and it was made for under $10 million. One of Corbet’s strategic advantages to make such a film with a small budget was to use the benefits of tax credits when shooting the American immigrant tale in a location like Hungary. Corbet explained, “We were shooting in a country where things would cost what they really should cost. Hungary is not that cheap where we shot. It’s cheaper than New York City where we spent $1M in transpo on the last movie.”

Deadline is reporting that despite the attention his film is getting, Corbet hasn’t exactly turned any kind of profit from the A24 drama. Corbet revealed on the WTF Podcast with Marc Maron that it would actually turn out to be a number of advertising gigs in Portugal where it had been “the first time that I had made any money in years.” The director said that he and his wife, who co-wrote The Brutalist, had “made zero dollars on the last two films that we made.” Maron would react in surprise, Corbet confirmed, “Yes. Actually, zero. We had to just sort of live off of a paycheck from three years ago.” He continued, “I’ve spoken to many filmmakers that have films that are nominated this year that can’t pay their rent. I mean, that’s a real thing.”

Corbet and other directors are often spending months promoting their films on a worldwide press tour, but aren’t paid by the studio to it. Corbet expounded, “If you look at certain films that premiered in Cannes [Film Festival], that was almost a year ago … I mean, our film premiered in September. So I’ve been doing this for six months and had zero income because I don’t have any time to go to work. I can’t even take a writing job at the moment.” He adds, “It’s constant travel, but you’re also working Saturdays and Sundays. I haven’t had a day off since the Christmas break.” He also says that he had partaken in “like 90 interviews last week” in a junket-style press run.