Blonde

Production Budget Analysis

What was the production budget for Blonde?

Directed by Andrew Dominik, with Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale leading the cast, Blonde was produced by Plan B Entertainment with a confirmed budget of $22,000,000, placing it in the low-budget category for drama films.

At $22,000,000, Blonde was produced on a modest budget. Lower-budget films benefit from reduced break-even thresholds, with profitability achievable at approximately $55,000,000.

Budget Comparison — Similar Productions

• 12 Rounds (2009): Budget $22,000,000 | Gross $17,280,326 → ROI: -21% • Before I Go to Sleep (2014): Budget $22,000,000 | Gross $17,669,776 → ROI: -20% • Dances with Wolves (1990): Budget $22,000,000 | Gross $424,208,848 → ROI: 1828% • Derailed (2005): Budget $22,000,000 | Gross $57,479,076 → ROI: 161% • Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (2005): Budget $22,000,000 | Gross $45,109,561 → ROI: 105%

Key Budget Allocation Categories

▸ Above-the-Line Talent Drama films live or die on the strength of their performances. Securing award-caliber actors and experienced directors represents the single largest budget line item, often consuming 30–40% of the total production budget.

▸ Location Filming & Period Production Design Authentic locations — whether contemporary or historical — require scouting, permits, travel, lodging, and often significant dressing to match the story's time period. Period dramas add the cost of era-accurate props, vehicles, and set decoration.

▸ Post-Production, Color Grading & Score The editorial process for dramas is typically longer than genre films, with careful attention to pacing and tone. Color grading, a nuanced musical score, and detailed sound mixing are critical to achieving the emotional resonance that defines the genre.

Key Production Personnel

CAST: Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Sara Paxton, Lucy DeVito Key roles: Ana de Armas as Norma Jeane / Marilyn Monroe; Adrien Brody as The Playwright; Bobby Cannavale as The Ex-Athlete; Sara Paxton as Miss Flynn

DIRECTOR: Andrew Dominik CINEMATOGRAPHY: Chayse Irvin MUSIC: Warren Ellis, Nick Cave EDITING: Adam Robinson PRODUCTION: Plan B Entertainment FILMED IN: United States of America

Box Office Performance

Theatrical box office data is not publicly available for Blonde (2022). This may indicate a limited release, direct-to-streaming, or a release predating modern box office tracking.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

PRODUCTION NOTES

▸ Development

As early as 2010, director and screenwriter Andrew Dominik began developing the project, which is an adaptation of the novel Blonde (2000), a fictional and controversial account of Monroe's life—and a Pulitzer Prize finalist—by Joyce Carol Oates. Dominik said that he read several of Monroe's biographies but that he used very little of this research in the film, adding that Oates' novel was "pretty much the bible for the film." Dominik told Vulture that Blonde is "a film that definitely has a morality about it. But it swims in very ambiguous waters because I don't think it will be as cut-and-dried as people want to see it. There's something in it to offend everyone."

Dominik described the film as being "more accessible" than his previous projects and revealed that his script contained "very little dialogue", as he preferred to make it more of an "avalanche of images and events." Furthermore, Dominik stated:

For Dominik, Blonde was his first attempt at developing a film featuring a woman at the center of the story. During a retrospective screening of his Oscar-nominated western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), Dominik stated, "It's a different thing for me to do [...] the main character is female. My films are fairly bereft of women and now I'm imagining what it's like to be one."

While Netflix classified Blonde as "a fictional portrait of Marilyn Monroe" on the platform's official website, Dominik stated; "I think Blonde is a work of fiction and it's got just as much Joyce in it as it does Marilyn. But having said that, I think it's probably closer to the truth than what Fox is pushing to sell Marilyn stuff."

▸ Casting

In March 2019, it was announced that Ana de Armas was in early negotiations to star in the film, replacing Chastain.

In preparation, de Armas worked with a dialect coach for a year. De Armas described her casting process: "I only had to audition for Marilyn once and Andrew said 'It's you,' but I had to audition for everyone else [...] The producers. The money people. I always have people I needed to convince. But I knew I could do it. Playing Marilyn was groundbreaking. A Cuban playing Marilyn Monroe. I wanted it so badly. You see that famous photo of her and she is smiling in the moment, but that's just a slice of what she was really going through at the time."

De Armas considered her relationship with Dominik to be the most collaborative of her career, remarking, "Yes, I have had collaborative relationships, but to get phone calls at midnight because he has an idea and he can't sleep and all of a sudden you can't sleep for the same reason." De Armas read Oates' novel and also said she studied hundreds of photographs, videos, audio recordings, and films.

Vanessa Lemonides provided Monroe's singing voice in the film.

▸ Pre-Production

In May 2010, it was announced that Naomi Watts would star in the film as Monroe, and that the production, which at this point cost an estimated $20 million, was slated to begin principal photography in January 2011. During this time, Dominik directed the crime drama Killing Them Softly (2012), starring Brad Pitt, who subsequently became interested in the project.

In June 2012, it was announced Plan B Entertainment would produce the film, with Pitt, In April 2014, it was announced that Jessica Chastain had replaced Watts as Monroe. Chastain had co-starred in Terrence Malick's drama The Tree of Life (2011) opposite Pitt, who was instrumental in her casting. The report also revealed that Dominik was planning to begin principal photography in August of that year.

Dominik attributed the delays in production partly due to financing: "it's just a question of how much money I can get to make the film. And I really want to make that movie. I've been working on it for years."

▸ Filming & Locations

Principal photography began in Los Angeles in August 2019.

During Blonde's press conference at the 79th Venice Film Festival, Dominik said that the initial scenes of the film were shot in the same apartment where Monroe had lived with her mother. Monroe's death scene was also filmed in the same room where she died in real life. "It definitely took on elements of being like a seance," Dominik said.

Much of Blondes cinematography is digitally shot in black and white; other portions of the film are in color, aspect ratios (1:1, 1.37:1, 1.85:1, 2.39:1) shift to depict historical usage. Many scenes are visual homages to classic photographs of Monroe by notable photographers. Blonde was set to premiere at 2021 Venice Film Festival, but Netflix was unhappy with the final cut it received, and hired Jennifer Lame to help.

Real footage from Monroe's filmography is used in this movie mixed in with scenes recreated by Ana de Armas, who was placed in the films All About Eve (1950), Don't Bother to Knock (1952), Niagara (1953), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and Some Like It Hot (1959). Andrew Dominik said that he initially failed to obtain permission from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to use footage from their films, so he had to recreate some scenes, such as the scene with de Armas and Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot, which he shot with an actor playing Curtis in case he couldn't get permission to use the original footage. Dominik was allowed to use the footage after an MGM executive was fired and was replaced by Michael De Luca, who finally gave him permission to use the film clip.

[Filming] Principal photography began in Los Angeles in August 2019.

During Blonde's press conference at the 79th Venice Film Festival, Dominik said that the initial scenes of the film were shot in the same apartment where Monroe had lived with her mother. Monroe's death scene was also filmed in the same room where she died in real life.

▸ Music & Score

The score was composed and performed by long-time collaborators Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, with the soundtrack album released on September 28, 2022.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: Nominated for 1 Oscar. 12 wins & 36 nominations total

Additional Recognition: ! scope="col"| Award ! scope="col"| Date of ceremony ! scope="col"| Category ! scope="col"| Recipient(s) ! scope="col"| Result ! scope="col" class="unsortable"|

! scope="row"| Venice Film Festival

! scope="row"| Golden Globe Awards

! scope="row" rowspan="2"| London Film Critics' Circle

! scope="row" rowspan="2"| Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild

! scope="row"| British Academy Film Awards

! scope="row"| AACTA International Awards

! scope="row"| Screen Actors Guild Awards

! scope="row" rowspan="8"| Golden Raspberry Awards

! scope="row"| Academy Awards

! scope = "row" | Actors and Actresses Union Awards

! scope="row" rowspan="2"| Golden Trailer Awards

CRITICAL RECEPTION

Joyce Carol Oates, the author of the novel on which the film is based, observed a rough cut of the film, and publicly stated: "I have seen the rough cut of Andrew Dominik's adaptation and it is startling, brilliant, very disturbing and perhaps most surprisingly an utterly 'feminist' interpretation... not sure that any male director has ever achieved anything [like] this."

Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar called Blonde a "great film" and praised Ana de Armas for portraying Monroe in "a chillingly real way". He later argued that de Armas deserved to win the Best Actress Oscar for her performance.

Actress Jamie Lee Curtis—who starred opposite Ana de Armas in Knives Out (2019), and whose father, Tony Curtis, starred opposite Monroe in Some Like It Hot (1959) and is featured in Blonde—was impressed with de Armas' performance, after also seeing an early cut: "I dropped to the floor. I couldn't believe it. Ana was completely gone. She was Marilyn." Actor Casey Affleck also praised the film, stating, "I've seen a couple of versions of Blonde and it's taken him [Dominik] a long time to get it out into the world. But that's just how he is. He's so slow with it. And it's an amazing, beautiful film."

Suzie Kennedy, an English Marilyn Monroe impersonator and historian for over 20 years, openly despised the film, calling it "a terrible movie... an absolute assassination of Marilyn Monroe's legacy... an assassination of an icon," and that it "capitalized on and exploited the deep sadness of Marilyn's life."