Slice Budget

What Is the Budget of Slice (2018)?

Slice (2018), written and directed by Austin Vesely and released by A24, was produced on a micro-budget reported at approximately $1,000,000. A24 acquired the picture as part of its expanding genre slate after producing the film with Vesely's longtime collaborator Chance the Rapper (credited as Bennett Bramani in his executive producer capacity). The picture was Vesely's debut feature after directing several Chance the Rapper music videos including Sunday Candy, Angels, and No Problem.

The investment reflected an explicit indie aesthetic: a single production base in Joliet, Illinois, a contained ensemble cast headlined by Chance the Rapper and Zazie Beetz (the year before Beetz broke out in Deadpool 2), and practical horror-comedy effects rather than CG-heavy spectacle. A24's commercial expectation skewed toward video-on-demand and streaming returns rather than theatrical, with the picture ultimately bypassing a traditional theatrical release and debuting on DirecTV before a wide VOD launch.

Key Budget Allocation Categories

Slice's $1,000,000 budget was distributed across several major production areas:

• Above-the-Line Talent Chance the Rapper (Chancelor Bennett) starred as Dax Lycander on a deferred-and-equity arrangement typical of indie horror, with Zazie Beetz leading as Astrid in her first leading film role. Director Austin Vesely worked at a debut-feature scale, having developed the project with Chance the Rapper from their music-video collaborations.
• Joliet, Illinois Location Shoot Principal photography took place across Joliet, Illinois, doubling for the fictional town of Kingfisher. The production used standing locations including a real pizza shop converted into the central Perfect Pizza Base set, with Joliet's deteriorated downtown providing the picture's deliberately unsettling small-town texture at substantially below the cost of comparable Chicago shoots.
• Practical Horror Effects The picture's werewolf transformations, ghost prosthetics, and pizza-shop murder set pieces relied on practical makeup effects and rubber-foam prosthetics rather than digital VFX, reflecting both the budget envelope and Vesely's deliberate genre-throwback aesthetic homaging 1980s horror comedies.
• Cinematography Cinematographer Brandon Riley delivered a saturated neon-and-pastel palette across the single night the picture is set, with practical light sources including pizza-shop signage, streetlamps, and a recurring purple gel motif serving as both production-design and budget-conscious lighting choice.
• Costume and Production Design Production designer Jordan Berman built the Perfect Pizza Base interior and the Kingfisher ghost-town aesthetic on a contained set budget, with costume designer Liz Garcia dressing the ensemble in 1980s-throwback delivery-uniform looks that doubled as character signage.
• Music and Score Composer Ludwig Goransson, fresh off his Black Panther Academy Award win the same year, delivered a synth-and-orchestral score that became one of the picture's most-discussed elements. The score's cost reflected Goransson's long collaborative history with the Chance the Rapper team.
• Post-Production and Festival Prep Editing by Anders Lindwall and post-production through A24's in-house systems prepared the picture for a limited festival showcase before the DirecTV and VOD release strategy was finalized in mid-2018.

How Does Slice's Budget Compare to Similar Films?

At approximately $1,000,000, Slice sits in the micro-budget range for late-2010s indie horror comedies. The comparison set illustrates how its scale tracked against peer productions:

• Krampus (2015): Budget $15,000,000 | Worldwide $61,541,940. Michael Dougherty's Universal horror comedy cost fifteen times Slice and earned a wide theatrical release, providing the major-studio template the Vesely film deliberately scaled away from.
• The Babysitter (2017): Budget approximately $5,000,000 | streaming exclusive. McG's Netflix horror comedy, released the year before Slice, established the streaming-first horror-comedy template that A24 echoed with the Slice VOD release.
• Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010): Budget $5,000,000 | Worldwide $5,235,952. Eli Craig's cult horror comedy cost five times Slice and earned a comparable theatrical and VOD outcome, illustrating the genre lineage Slice operated within.
• Cooties (2014): Budget $4,500,000 | Worldwide $124,083. The Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion zombie comedy starring Elijah Wood demonstrated the commercial risk in mid-budget indie horror comedy that Slice's smaller envelope mitigated.
• The Final Girls (2015): Budget $5,000,000 | limited theatrical and VOD. Todd Strauss-Schulson's meta horror comedy provided a recent template for the kind of festival-then-VOD commercial path Slice ultimately followed.

Slice Box Office Performance

Slice bypassed a traditional theatrical release entirely. A24 launched the picture on DirecTV on September 6, 2018, followed by a wide video-on-demand release on September 10, 2018. The picture did not report meaningful theatrical revenue, and A24 did not disclose VOD revenue figures, which is standard for the distributor's streaming-first releases.

Against a $1,000,000 production budget, the financial breakdown below uses approximate marketing estimates for A24's VOD-first releases:

• Production Budget: $1,000,000
• Estimated Prints & Advertising (P&A): approximately $500,000 to $1,000,000 (VOD marketing)
• Total Estimated Investment: approximately $1,500,000 to $2,000,000
• Worldwide Gross: not reported (VOD exclusive)
• Net Return: undisclosed (A24 internal accounting)
• ROI: undisclosed (A24 does not report VOD revenue)

Slice's commercial performance is opaque by design. A24 classified the picture as a VOD-strategy release, with the Chance the Rapper marketing platform substituting for traditional theatrical promotion. The picture has remained available on A24's streaming partnerships in the years since release, with subsequent availability on Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and the A24 channel.

Industry estimates suggest the picture likely recouped its modest production budget through DirecTV's exclusivity window and the subsequent broad VOD release, though A24 has not confirmed those figures. The picture's commercial outcome is best understood as a brand-building exercise for the A24 and Chance the Rapper relationship rather than a traditional theatrical commercial proposition.

Slice Production History

Austin Vesely developed Slice in collaboration with Chance the Rapper after directing several of the rapper's music videos including Sunday Candy, Angels, and No Problem. The pair conceived the project as a Joliet, Illinois-set horror comedy with deliberate 1980s genre influences, drawing on Vesely's interest in Joe Dante, John Carpenter, and the Amicus anthology tradition.

A24 came on as both financier and distributor, marking one of the studio's earliest investments in a Chicago-rooted genre debut from a music-video director. The picture filmed across Joliet in summer 2016, using the deteriorated downtown as the fictional Kingfisher and a real pizza shop converted into the Perfect Pizza Base central set. The Illinois Film Office production base provided modest below-the-line tax-credit benefits, with the production qualifying under the Illinois Film Production Tax Credit at the time.

Zazie Beetz was cast as Astrid in late 2015, before her breakout role as Domino in Deadpool 2 (2018), and the picture's release timing in September 2018 coincided with her rising profile. Supporting players included Paul Scheer, Joe Keery (the year before Stranger Things season three), Hannibal Buress, Chris Parnell, and Tim Decker as the ghost-detective figure. Principal photography wrapped in summer 2016, after which the picture sat in post-production for nearly two years as A24 evaluated release strategy.

Composer Ludwig Goransson delivered the score during the same year he composed Black Panther (2018) and Creed II (2018), placing Slice in a remarkable run of work that culminated in his Academy Award for Best Original Score. The picture finally premiered theatrically at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles on September 10, 2018, with the DirecTV exclusivity window opening September 6, 2018 and the broad VOD release following on the same September 10 date.

Awards and Recognition

Slice received no significant industry awards recognition. The picture skipped the major festival circuit (no Sundance, SXSW, or Toronto premiere), with A24 opting instead for a single theatrical-event premiere and a direct VOD launch. The picture did not register at the Saturn Awards, Independent Spirit Awards, or the major genre awards bodies.

Contemporary critical coverage occasionally cited Ludwig Goransson's score as the picture's standout element, with retrospective genre coverage placing the picture in the A24 unreleased catalog alongside other VOD-first titles from the distributor's 2017 to 2019 slate. The picture has developed a modest cult following through subsequent streaming availability, particularly among Chance the Rapper fans and Joe Keery completists, but its awards profile remains negligible.

Critical Reception

Slice received mixed-to-negative reviews. The film holds a 41% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 39 critic reviews, with a critical consensus calling it a curious tonal mishmash whose ambitious genre-blending exceeds its execution. On Metacritic, the film scored 53 out of 100, indicating mixed or average reviews. The picture did not receive a CinemaScore polling, standard for VOD-exclusive releases.

IndieWire's David Ehrlich called the picture an impressively assembled muddle whose visual ambition outpaces its narrative coherence, while Variety's Dennis Harvey praised Ludwig Goransson's score and the production design but criticized the screenplay's pacing. The AV Club's Charles Bramesco wrote that the picture was admirably weird and ultimately frustrating, singling out Zazie Beetz's lead performance as the film's strongest sustained element.

Retrospective coverage has been somewhat more generous, with Slice often cited as an example of A24's willingness to support unconventional genre debuts from music-video directors. The picture's critical reputation has stabilized at roughly its initial reception, with the score, production design, and Zazie Beetz's leading performance frequently singled out as the most successful elements of an otherwise tonally uneven debut feature.