Midsommar

Production Budget Analysis

What was the production budget for Midsommar?

Directed by Ari Aster, with Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper leading the cast, Midsommar was produced by B-Reel Films with a confirmed budget of $9,000,000, placing it in the micro-budget category for horror films.

At $9,000,000, Midsommar was produced on a modest budget. Lower-budget films benefit from reduced break-even thresholds, with profitability achievable at approximately $22,500,000.

Budget Comparison — Similar Productions

• Memento (2000): Budget $9,000,000 | Gross $40,060,108 → ROI: 345% • 3 Idiots (2009): Budget $9,000,000 | Gross $70,000,000 → ROI: 678% • There's Still Tomorrow (2023): Budget $9,000,000 | Gross $50,121,593 → ROI: 457% • Manchester by the Sea (2016): Budget $9,000,000 | Gross $79,000,000 → ROI: 778% • The Edge of Seventeen (2016): Budget $9,000,000 | Gross $18,803,648 → ROI: 109%

Key Budget Allocation Categories

▸ Practical Effects, Prosthetics & Makeup Horror productions invest disproportionately in practical effects — prosthetic applications, animatronics, blood and gore effects, and creature suits. A single hero creature suit can cost $50,000–200,000.

▸ Atmospheric Production Design & Cinematography Creating dread through environment is essential. Abandoned locations must be secured and dressed, lighting rigs designed for shadow and tension, and sets built to enable specific camera movements and reveals.

▸ Sound Design & Score Horror is arguably the most sound-dependent genre. Foley work, ambient textures, frequency manipulation, and jump-scare stingers require specialized sound designers working with unconventional techniques.

Key Production Personnel

CAST: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Will Poulter, Vilhelm Blomgren Key roles: Florence Pugh as Dani; Jack Reynor as Christian; William Jackson Harper as Josh; Will Poulter as Mark

DIRECTOR: Ari Aster CINEMATOGRAPHY: Pawel Pogorzelski MUSIC: Bobby Krlic EDITING: Lucian Johnston PRODUCTION: B-Reel Films, Square Peg FILMED IN: Sweden, United States of America

Box Office Performance

Midsommar earned $27,426,361 domestically and $21,072,047 internationally, for a worldwide total of $48,498,408. Revenue was split 57% domestic / 43% international.

Break-Even Analysis

Using the industry-standard 2.5x multiplier (P&A + exhibitor shares of 40–50% + distribution fees), Midsommar needed approximately $22,500,000 to break even. The film surpassed this threshold by $25,998,408.

Return on Investment (ROI)

Revenue: $48,498,408 Budget: $9,000,000 Net: $39,498,408 ROI: 438.9%

Profitability Assessment

VERDICT: Highly Profitable

Midsommar was a clear financial success, generating $48,498,408 worldwide against a $9,000,000 production budget — a 439% ROI. After estimated marketing costs, the film still delivered substantial profit to B-Reel Films.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

The outsized success of Midsommar likely influenced studio greenlight decisions for similar horror projects.

PRODUCTION NOTES

▸ Filming & Locations

Some early scenes set in the United States were also filmed there; Dani's apartment was filmed in Brooklyn, New York City, while other scenes where Christian's friends interact were filmed in Utah. The majority of the film was shot in Hungary rather than Sweden, primarily due to financial constraints, but also as Sweden limits daily film shoots to no longer than eight hours.

Harper said the shoot was "arduous" due to the heat. Wasps were highly abundant and a major issue on set. Pugh reflected "the shoot was totally nuts" and commended Aster's direction: "he was dealing with possibly 100, 120 people, additional extras and actors there, all speaking in three different languages and he was the captain of the ship".

Ahead of filming the drug use scenes, Reynor said that the cast discussed their own experiences with psychedelic mushrooms.

The sex scene between Christian and Maja was filmed on the final day. Reynor said he spent time attempting to boost morale among the extras involved, none of whom spoke English, and Isabelle Grill (who plays Maja) who was appearing in her first feature film role. He reflected that he felt male nudity was unusual for a horror film, where female nudity is more typical. He said that he "advocated for as much full-frontal nudity as possible, I wanted to embrace the feeling of being exposed and the humiliation of this character. And I felt really, really vulnerable, more than I had even anticipated".

[Filming] Some early scenes set in the United States were also filmed there; Dani's apartment was filmed in Brooklyn, New York City, while other scenes where Christian's friends interact were filmed in Utah. The majority of the film was shot in Hungary rather than Sweden, primarily due to financial constraints, but also as Sweden limits daily film shoots to no longer than eight hours.

Harper said the shoot was "arduous" due to the heat. Wasps were highly abundant and a major issue on set.

▸ Post-Production

Aster said the visual effects for the psychedelic scenes involved trial and error: "I'm sure for some of those shots we got to the point where we had 60 versions. In one iteration the tripping was way too distracting and you're not paying attention to the characters. Then you brought it down to the point where if you are paying attention to the characters, you'll never notice the tripping effects." The more minimal visual effects were settled on a week before the first screening.

▸ Music & Score

Aster wrote the film while listening to the British electronic musician the Haxan Cloak's 2013 album Excavation. Aster recruited him to compose the score, credited under his real name, Bobby Krlic. Krlic began composing the music before filming began, taking inspiration from Nordic folk music, and collaborating closely with Aster. The film makes use of diegetic music, where events on screen meld with the score. The soundtrack album was released on July 5, 2019, via Milan Records.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: 27 wins & 74 nominations total

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! scope="row" rowspan="2" | Gotham Independent Film Awards

! scope="row"| Hollywood Critics Association

! scope="row"| Independent Spirit Awards

! scope="row"| Ivor Novello Awards

! scope="row"| National Society of Film Critics

! scope="row"| Santa Barbara International Film Festival

! scope="row"| Saturn Awards

! scope="row" rowspan="5" | Fangoria Chainsaw Awards

CRITICAL RECEPTION

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 83% based on 405 reviews, and an average rating of 7.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Ambitious, impressively crafted, and above all unsettling, Midsommar further proves writer-director Ari Aster is a horror auteur to be reckoned with." On Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the film has a score of 72 out of 100, based on 54 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter described the film as the "horror equivalent of a destination wedding", and "more unsettling than frightening, [but] still a trip worth taking." Writing for Variety, Andrew Barker noted that it is "neither the masterpiece nor the disaster that the film's most vocal viewers are bound to claim. Rather, it's an admirably strange, thematically muddled curiosity from a talented filmmaker who allows his ambitions to outpace his execution." David Edelstein of Vulture praised Pugh's performance as "amazingly vivid" and noted that Aster "paces Midsommar more like an opera (Wagner, not Puccini) than a scare picture," but concluded that the film "doesn't jell because its impulses are so bifurcated. It's a parable of a woman's religious awakening—that's also a woman's fantasy of revenge against a man who didn't meet her emotional needs—that's also a male director's masochistic fantasy of emasculation at the hands of a matriarchal cult." In The New York Times, Manohla Dargis was critical of the character depth behind Dani and Christian, finding them "instructively uninteresting" and stereotypically gendered as a couple.

Eric Kohn of IndieWire summarized the film as a "perverse breakup movie," adding that "Aster doesn't always sink the biggest surprises, but he excels at twisting the knife.