The Kissing Booth Budget

What Is the Budget of The Kissing Booth (2018)?

The Kissing Booth (2018), directed by Vince Marcello and released by Netflix, was produced on an estimated budget of approximately $10,000,000. The figure has not been formally disclosed by Netflix, which does not publish per-title budgets for its originals, but the production scale across South African locations, the youth ensemble led by Joey King and Jacob Elordi, and the supporting roles for Molly Ringwald and Stephen Jennings all support a budget in the high single-digit to low double-digit million range typical of Netflix YA romance originals from that era.

The film was adapted from Beth Reekles' young-adult novel, which originated on the Wattpad self-publishing platform before HarperCollins acquired and reissued it in 2013. Netflix licensed the property as a streaming original through Komixx Entertainment, with producers Andrew Cole-Bulgin, Michele Weisler, and Ed Glauser sharing the financing structure typical of mid-budget Netflix YA. The film launched on May 11, 2018 and quickly became one of the most-watched titles on the platform that year, spawning two sequels in 2020 and 2021.

Key Budget Allocation Categories

The estimated $10,000,000 budget covered a Cape Town production block, a youth ensemble cast, and the practical set pieces of the high school carnival and house party sequences:

• Above-the-Line Talent: Joey King, then primarily known for television and supporting film roles, anchored the lead as Elle Evans at an emerging-talent rate. Jacob Elordi made his feature debut as Noah Flynn, taking the largest leap in subsequent industry visibility from the film. Molly Ringwald provided the marquee veteran name as Noah's mother in a strategic supporting role, with Joel Courtney rounding out the central trio as Elle's best friend Lee.
• South African Location Production: Principal photography took place across the Western Cape province of South Africa, exploiting the country's strong production rebate and the available high-school, beach, and suburban locations that doubled effectively for an American Pacific Coast setting. The South African production rebate offers up to 25% on qualifying spend and was the central economic driver behind the film's location choice.
• High School Carnival and Set Pieces: The screenplay's central kissing-booth carnival sequence required dressing of an entire fairground location, multiple booths, food and game stalls, lighting rigs, and hundreds of background performers. Supporting set pieces including the house party, beach gathering, and prom scenes added significant production-design and crowd-coordination cost.
• Cinematography and Bright Palette Photography: Anastas N. Michos shot the film in the bright, saturated palette that defined the Netflix YA romance look of the late 2010s. The exterior beach and pool sequences required careful management of South African sunlight schedules and additional rigging for the underwater and aquatic photography.
• Score and Soundtrack: Patrick Kirst delivered the original score, but the larger music spend went to licensing the contemporary pop and indie tracks that scored the film's teen-romance set pieces. Music supervision and rights clearances across multiple territories represented a substantial line item.
• Post-Production and Netflix Master Delivery: Editorial, color, sound mix, and visual effects cleanup were handled at independent rates appropriate to a mid-budget Netflix original. Delivery included global streaming masters in multiple resolutions and Dolby Atmos sound for Netflix's premium tier.

How Does The Kissing Booth's Budget Compare to Similar Films?

The Kissing Booth fits within the Netflix YA romance budget tier and the broader teen-romance landscape:

• To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018): Budget approximately $10,000,000 | Worldwide not separately reported. Susan Johnson's Netflix YA original, released three months after The Kissing Booth, sits in the same budget bracket and became its closest peer in audience reach across the 2018 Netflix slate.
• Sierra Burgess Is a Loser (2018): Budget approximately $10,000,000 | Worldwide not separately reported. Ian Samuels' Netflix YA original from the same release year offers another budget-bracket peer at the same production scale.
• Love, Simon (2018): Budget $17,000,000 | Worldwide $66,303,498. Greg Berlanti's 20th Century Fox theatrical YA romance demonstrates the budget gap between a streaming-original Netflix YA and a studio theatrical YA targeting traditional box office release.
• The Edge of Seventeen (2016): Budget $9,000,000 | Worldwide $19,030,196. Kelly Fremon Craig's STX theatrical YA at a slightly lower budget illustrates the indie-theatrical alternative to Netflix originals in the same general budget range.

The Kissing Booth Box Office Performance

The Kissing Booth premiered exclusively on Netflix on May 11, 2018 and did not receive a theatrical release. The film earned no box office revenue. Netflix does not publicly disclose granular viewership data on a per-title basis, but the company publicly stated through Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos that The Kissing Booth was "one of the most-watched movies in the country, and maybe in the world" in 2018, with Netflix subsequently citing it among the top-performing originals of the year.

Because the film was a direct-to-streaming exclusive, the standard six-bullet box office breakdown does not apply in its conventional form. The economics:

• Production Budget: approximately $10,000,000
• Estimated Prints & Advertising (P&A): absorbed by Netflix as platform-level marketing
• Total Estimated Investment: approximately $10,000,000 (production cost)
• Worldwide Theatrical Gross: $0 (streaming-exclusive release)
• Net Return: covered by Netflix license fee plus franchise renewal value
• ROI: not publicly reported; the franchise produced two greenlit sequels (2020, 2021), confirming the platform-side ROI was substantial

The clearest signal of the film's ROI is the franchise treatment that followed. Netflix greenlit The Kissing Booth 2 (2020) at a higher budget and an expanded cast, then The Kissing Booth 3 (2021) shot back-to-back with the second installment. Few Netflix originals receive a two-sequel commitment, and the trilogy outcome confirms that the platform recouped its The Kissing Booth investment many times over through subscriber acquisition and retention.

The Kissing Booth Production History

Vince Marcello adapted Beth Reekles' Wattpad-originated young-adult novel into a screenplay and attached as writer-director, with Andrew Cole-Bulgin, Michele Weisler, and Ed Glauser producing through Komixx Entertainment. Netflix acquired the project as a streaming original following the company's aggressive 2017-2018 expansion of in-house and licensed YA programming. Principal photography took place in Cape Town and the surrounding Western Cape province of South Africa during the summer of 2017, with the country's production rebate of up to 25% on qualifying spend driving the location decision.

Joey King and Joel Courtney were cast as the lifelong best friends Elle and Lee, with Australian newcomer Jacob Elordi cast as Noah Flynn in his feature debut. Molly Ringwald took the principal supporting role as Noah and Lee's mother, providing a generational nod to the John Hughes teen-romance lineage the film consciously emulated. Stephen Jennings appeared as Elle's father.

The film launched on Netflix on May 11, 2018 to modest reviews but enormous platform engagement. Within weeks, the title had become one of Netflix's most-rewatched movies, prompting the platform to greenlight a sequel by November 2018. The Kissing Booth 2 (2020) and The Kissing Booth 3 (2021) followed, with the second and third installments shot back-to-back in Cape Town in 2019. Jacob Elordi subsequently leveraged the franchise into starring roles in Euphoria, Saltburn, and Priscilla, becoming the production's most high-profile breakout.

Awards and Recognition

The Kissing Booth received no major awards recognition. The film was not nominated at the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, the Critics' Choice Awards, or the Independent Spirit Awards. It did feature on multiple People's Choice Award shortlists and won the Teen Choice Award for Choice Drama Movie in 2018, with Joey King and Jacob Elordi winning Choice Drama Movie Actress and Actor respectively. The franchise's subsequent installments collected additional Teen Choice and MTV Movie & TV Award nominations.

Critical Reception

The Kissing Booth received broadly negative reviews. The film holds a 17% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 30 critic reviews, with a critical consensus that called it a regressive, dated take on the teen-romance formula. Metacritic recorded a score of 36 out of 100, indicating mixed or generally unfavorable reviews. The film did not receive a CinemaScore poll because it bypassed theatrical exhibition.

Critics broadly objected to the film's treatment of consent dynamics, possessive masculinity, and a screenplay structure that critics argued normalized behavior the genre had largely moved past. The Guardian called it "a film whose retrograde gender politics undercut its frothy surface," and Vox wrote that it "feels like a movie made in 1998 and released in 2018 by accident." Audience response on Netflix and Letterboxd was dramatically more positive than the critical aggregate, with the film generating one of the largest disparities between Rotten Tomatoes critic and audience scores of any 2018 release, a pattern that continued across the sequels and helped define the late-2010s Netflix YA romance category as a genre with low critical reception but exceptional platform engagement.