Entergalactic Budget

What Is the Budget of Entergalactic (2022)?

Entergalactic (2022), directed by Fletcher Moules and released as a Netflix Original on September 30, 2022, was produced on an undisclosed budget that industry estimates place between $25,000,000 and $40,000,000. Netflix has never publicly disclosed the production cost, but the budget range reflects the film's status as a fully animated adult feature with a custom hand-drawn-look CGI pipeline and a wraparound visual album marketing strategy tied to Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi's eighth studio album of the same name, released the same day.

Kid Cudi developed and produced Entergalactic as a passion project across approximately five years of pre-production and animation. The hybrid concept, an animated narrative feature that doubled as a visual companion to a contemporaneous hip-hop album release, had limited precedent at this scale. Netflix's investment supported both the bespoke animation pipeline, developed by London-based Justin Cherry and the team at Carbon, and the simultaneous music marketing through Republic Records that positioned the film and album as a unified cultural event.

Key Budget Allocation Categories

The estimated $25,000,000 to $40,000,000 budget covered the core categories of a fully animated adult feature with a paired album release:

• Above-the-Line Talent: Kid Cudi served as voice of Jabari, executive producer, and co-songwriter, with Jessica Williams, Timothée Chalamet, Ty Dolla Sign, Vanessa Hudgens, Laura Harrier, Christopher Abbott, Macaulay Culkin, and Jaden Smith filling the supporting voice cast. Director Fletcher Moules and the writing team led by Maurice Williams represented the second major above-the-line line item.
• Custom Animation Pipeline: The film used a proprietary CGI pipeline developed to mimic 2D hand-drawn graphic-novel illustration, with linework rendered over 3D character models. The pipeline was built specifically for Entergalactic by Carbon and Justin Cherry over multiple years of pre-production and represented the single largest budget category.
• Music Production and Licensing: Kid Cudi recorded the Entergalactic album simultaneously with the film's production, with the album serving as the film's integrated soundtrack. Music budget covered original songwriting, recording, mixing, mastering, and the synchronization licensing for the eighteen tracks featured across the runtime. Producers included Dot da Genius, Plain Pat, and Steve Aoki.
• New York Production Design: The film's visual world is a heightened, color-saturated contemporary Manhattan rendered through the custom illustration pipeline. Production design, art direction, and the development of recurring visual motifs (Jabari's apartment, the lemon-yellow Boys photography studio, the rooftop sequences) represented a major creative and labor investment over the multi-year production cycle.
• Voice Recording: The named ensemble voice cast required individual recording sessions over an extended schedule. The recordings were directed by Fletcher Moules and animated against rather than recorded in conventional ensemble booths, an approach that increased per-actor session costs while preserving each performance's naturalism.
• Marketing for Simultaneous Release: Netflix and Republic Records coordinated the September 30, 2022 simultaneous release of the film and album as a single cultural event. Marketing budget covered traditional streaming advertising, music-marketing channels including digital streaming platform promotion and radio, and the album's rollout strategy.

How Does Entergalactic's Budget Compare to Similar Films?

At an estimated $25,000,000 to $40,000,000, Entergalactic sits in the mid-budget tier of contemporary streaming animated features. The comparison set:

• Klaus (2019): Budget $40,000,000 | Worldwide not applicable (Netflix). Sergio Pablos' Oscar-nominated 2D-style animated feature for Netflix represents the high end of the Entergalactic range and the closest stylistic peer in hand-drawn-look digital animation.
• The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021): Budget $40,000,000 to $80,000,000 (estimated) | Worldwide not applicable (Netflix). Mike Rianda's Sony Pictures Animation feature, sold to Netflix during the pandemic, occupies a higher-budget tier within the Netflix animated slate.
• Soul (2020): Budget $150,000,000 | Worldwide $117,800,000. Pete Docter and Kemp Powers' Pixar feature represents the premium studio-animation tier, costing approximately four times the Entergalactic high estimate and demonstrating the budget ceiling for theatrical-scale animation.
• Sing 2 (2021): Budget $85,000,000 | Worldwide $408,500,000. Garth Jennings' Illumination musical feature represents the music-driven studio-animation comparison, costing approximately twice the Entergalactic high estimate and earning a wide theatrical release.
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018): Budget $90,000,000 | Worldwide $384,300,000. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman's graphic-novel-look feature, the closest visual-style peer for Entergalactic's 2D-over-3D pipeline, cost approximately three times the Entergalactic high estimate.

Entergalactic Box Office Performance

Entergalactic did not receive a theatrical release. The film premiered as a Netflix Original on September 30, 2022, with day-and-date availability in all Prime Video territories worldwide, and was promoted as a unified release with Kid Cudi's eighth studio album of the same name. Netflix has not publicly disclosed viewership figures for the title.

The estimated financial picture, treating the production cost as Netflix's investment, is as follows:

• Production Budget: estimated $25,000,000 to $40,000,000 (undisclosed by Netflix)
• Estimated Prints & Advertising (P&A): not applicable for theatrical (Netflix in-platform marketing plus Republic Records album marketing)
• Total Estimated Investment: estimated $25,000,000 to $40,000,000
• Worldwide Gross: not applicable (no theatrical release)
• Net Return: subscriber retention and album revenue split with Republic Records (undisclosed)
• ROI: measured by Netflix internally via viewing hours and Republic via album streaming and sales

The Entergalactic album debuted at number five on the Billboard 200 in the week of October 8, 2022 with 71,000 album-equivalent units, including 32,000 in pure album sales. The album spent multiple weeks in the Billboard 200 top fifty and produced two charting singles, with the title track and Do What I Want each reaching the Billboard Hot 100. The integrated music revenue, split between Republic Records and Netflix per the production agreement, contributed a separate revenue stream beyond the film itself.

From Netflix's commercial perspective, the film functioned both as a Black-led adult-animation original within the streamer's fall 2022 slate and as a marketing event positioning the platform as a cultural-music destination. The dual-release strategy was discussed within the industry as a template that Netflix did not subsequently repeat at the same scale.

Entergalactic Production History

Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi began developing Entergalactic in 2018 with Netflix, initially conceived as a television series and later restructured as a feature-length film with a coordinated album release. Cudi co-wrote the screenplay with Kenya Barris (Black-ish, #BlackAF), Maurice Williams, and Ian Edelman, drawing on Cudi's own experience as a recording artist navigating the contradictions between confidence-driven hip-hop performance and personal vulnerability.

Director Fletcher Moules, a British animator and director coming off commercial and music-video work, joined the project in 2019. Pre-production focused on developing the custom animation pipeline that would render the film's contemporary New York setting in the 2D-over-3D illustration style. Production design and animation work was distributed across multiple international studios with Justin Cherry and the London-based team at Carbon leading the central pipeline.

Voice recording took place across 2020 and 2021, with the named ensemble cast (Kid Cudi, Jessica Williams, Timothée Chalamet, Ty Dolla Sign, Vanessa Hudgens, Laura Harrier, Christopher Abbott, Macaulay Culkin, Jaden Smith) recording individually to preserve each performance's naturalism. Cudi recorded the eighteen-track Entergalactic album in parallel with the animation pipeline, with the music's scene-by-scene integration directing the film's emotional pacing.

Netflix originally announced a 2020 release window before the COVID-19 pandemic and the project's extended animation pipeline pushed the premiere to September 30, 2022. The date was set to align with the simultaneous album release through Republic Records, with the film and album promoted as a single cultural event across Netflix in-platform marketing, music streaming platforms, and traditional media.

Awards and Recognition

Entergalactic received modest industry awards recognition. The film won the 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Animated Series, an unusual placement given the title's feature-length runtime and Netflix's categorization of it as a film. The NAACP categorization reflected the industry's uncertainty about how to award a self-contained feature that doubled as a music-marketing vehicle.

The film also received a Hollywood Music in Media Awards nomination for Original Song (Visual Media) for the title track Entergalactic. The album received Soul Train Music Awards nominations for Album of the Year and Best Hip Hop Song. The film was not nominated at the Academy Awards, BAFTA, or Annie Awards for Best Animated Feature.

Critical Reception

Entergalactic received generally positive reviews. The film holds a 71% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 28 critic reviews, with a critical consensus that praised the animation style, Kid Cudi's vocal performance, and the integration of the album soundtrack with the narrative. On Metacritic, the film scored 56 out of 100, indicating mixed or average reviews.

Critics broadly praised the custom 2D-over-3D animation pipeline and the chemistry between Kid Cudi and Jessica Williams in the lead voice roles. The A.V. Club's Tomris Laffly called the film "a sumptuous visual album that doubles as a contemporary New York rom-com," while The Hollywood Reporter's Jourdain Searles wrote that the film "succeeds as a mood piece even when it stumbles as a story." Variety's Owen Gleiberman praised the animation but observed that the narrative "leans on the soundtrack to do emotional work the screenplay does not always earn."

Several critics flagged the screenplay's romantic plot beats as conventional relative to the visual and musical ambition, with the central misunderstanding-and-reconciliation arc described by some reviews as too thinly drawn for the runtime. The general consensus, however, treated the film as a successful experiment in pairing recording-artist branding with adult-animation craft, and a possible template for further hip-hop visual-album feature projects.