Tyler Perry’s A Madea Family Funeral Budget

What Is the Budget of Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral (2019)?

Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral (2019), written and directed by Tyler Perry and released by Lionsgate, was produced on a reported budget of $20,000,000. Lionsgate financed the picture through Tyler Perry Studios in a continuation of the long-running output deal between the studio and the writer-director-star. The March 1, 2019 release was marketed as the final theatrical appearance of the Madea character, capping a 14-year run of Madea features that had begun with Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005). Madea would subsequently return in the Netflix-exclusive A Madea Homecoming (2022) and A Madea Family Reunion 2 (2025), but the 2019 theatrical release was positioned as the formal franchise capstone at the time of its release.

The investment supported the disciplined Tyler Perry Studios production model that had defined the franchise across its run: principal photography at Perry's owned Atlanta facilities, a contained shooting schedule, Perry playing multiple characters under prosthetic makeup (Madea, Joe, Brian, and Heathrow), and an established supporting cast including Cassi Davis, Patrice Lovely, David Otunga, Mike Tyson, KJ Smith, Jen Harper, and Aeriél Miranda. The picture's marketing as the franchise capstone drove substantial promotional engagement across Black-audience media platforms.

Key Budget Allocation Categories

A Madea Family Funeral's reported $20,000,000 budget was distributed across several major production areas:

• Above-the-Line Talent Tyler Perry commanded writer-director-star compensation for multiple roles (Madea, Joe, Brian, and Heathrow) plus producer fees through Tyler Perry Studios. The supporting cast (Cassi Davis, Patrice Lovely, David Otunga, Mike Tyson, KJ Smith, Jen Harper, Aeriél Miranda) worked at proportionate scale for a Lionsgate-distributed mid-budget comedy.
• Tyler Perry Studios Production Base Principal photography took place primarily at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta, Perry's owned production facility, which substantially reduced studio-rental costs relative to a traditional Los Angeles production. The studio infrastructure provided multiple standing sets that could be redressed for the funeral-home and family-residence interiors.
• Prosthetic Makeup Perry's multi-role performance required prosthetic makeup work for Madea, Joe, Brian, and Heathrow, with on-set makeup artists supporting the rapid transitions required for scenes featuring multiple Perry-played characters. Heathrow's specific aesthetic (a wheelchair-bound family member with a tracheostomy speaking device) required distinct prosthetic and costume work.
• Funeral Set Construction The funeral-home, family-residence, and rural-Georgia exterior sets were constructed or dressed at Tyler Perry Studios with detailed period and contemporary Black-Southern-family-event dressing. The funeral-service sequences and the family-confrontation sequences both required substantial set dressing and extras coordination.
• Score and Music Licensing Composer Christopher Lennertz returned from previous Madea features to deliver a comedic-and-melodramatic orchestral score, with music supervision incorporating gospel and contemporary R&B licensed tracks. The licensing budget was contained relative to a major-studio comedy with more elaborate needle drops.
• Georgia Tax Credit Production The picture qualified for Georgia's competitive 30% transferable film tax credit, providing a meaningful share of financing through tax-credit equity. The Atlanta-based production has been a recurring fixture in Tyler Perry's filmography across the past two decades.

How Does A Madea Family Funeral's Budget Compare to Similar Films?

At $20,000,000, A Madea Family Funeral sits in line with other Tyler Perry feature productions and below the average for studio comedy releases in the period. The comparison set illustrates the budget envelope across peer productions:

• Tyler Perry's Boo! A Madea Halloween (2016): Budget $20,000,000 | Worldwide $75,393,168. The Halloween-corridor Madea feature was produced on an identical budget and earned almost exactly the same worldwide gross, providing the closest in-franchise commercial-template comparison.
• Tyler Perry's Boo 2! A Madea Halloween (2017): Budget $25,000,000 | Worldwide $48,365,799. The earlier Halloween-corridor Madea sequel cost more and earned substantially less worldwide, demonstrating the franchise's late-period commercial volatility.
• Tyler Perry's Acrimony (2018): Budget $20,000,000 | Worldwide $46,896,054. Perry's contemporaneous Lionsgate thriller was produced on the same budget and earned moderately less worldwide, providing the closest same-studio same-creator comparison.
• Night School (2018): Budget $29,000,000 | Worldwide $103,108,000. The Malcolm D. Lee Kevin Hart comedy cost slightly more and earned slightly more worldwide than A Madea Family Funeral, providing the closest contemporary Black-audience theatrical-comedy benchmark.
• Daddy's Home 2 (2017): Budget $69,000,000 | Worldwide $180,576,855. The Sean Anders Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell family comedy cost more than three times A Madea Family Funeral and earned more than twice the worldwide gross, illustrating the upper tier of mid-budget studio family comedy.

A Madea Family Funeral Box Office Performance

Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral opened on March 1, 2019 in the United States, finishing second over the opening weekend with $27,062,037 across the three-day frame, behind How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. The picture demonstrated solid Madea-franchise commercial momentum and held through the March corridor before tapering off as the spring-release window crowded the marketplace.

Against a $20,000,000 production budget, the film needed approximately $50,000,000 worldwide to reach profitability after marketing. Here is the financial breakdown:

• Production Budget: $20,000,000
• Estimated Prints & Advertising (P&A): approximately $25,000,000 to $30,000,000
• Total Estimated Investment: approximately $45,000,000 to $50,000,000
• Worldwide Gross: $74,564,140
• Net Return: approximately $25,000,000 to $30,000,000 profit (against total estimated investment)
• ROI: approximately positive 50% to positive 65% (against total estimated investment)

A Madea Family Funeral returned approximately $1.57 in theatrical revenue for every $1 invested when measured against total estimated production and marketing spend, putting it in solid theatrical profit. The domestic gross of $74,166,303 substantially led the international take of $397,837, a 99/1 split typical of Tyler Perry's filmography, in which the films historically have not traveled outside the United States.

The picture's commercial success capped the Madea franchise's 14-year theatrical run with a clear profit. Although Tyler Perry initially marketed the picture as the final Madea feature, the character has subsequently returned in the Netflix-exclusive A Madea Homecoming (2022) and the announced A Madea Family Reunion 2 (2025). The franchise has accumulated approximately $660,000,000 in lifetime worldwide gross across the 11 feature films.

A Madea Family Funeral Production History

Development on A Madea Family Funeral began at Tyler Perry Studios in 2017 as the planned franchise capstone for the theatrical Madea series. Tyler Perry publicly announced his intention to retire the Madea character from theatrical features following the 2019 release, citing both the physical demands of the prosthetic makeup work across multiple roles and the desire to focus on other production projects through the expanding Tyler Perry Studios infrastructure.

Principal photography took place in early 2018 at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, the production base for the entirety of Perry's filmography. The studio's owned infrastructure substantially reduced studio-rental costs relative to a traditional Los Angeles production, and the Atlanta location work provided access to Georgia's competitive 30% transferable film tax credit. Perry's writer-director-star-producer multi-hat arrangement extended across the entire production cycle from screenplay completion to final delivery.

Perry wrote the screenplay, directed, and played four roles (Madea, Joe, Brian, and Heathrow) under prosthetic makeup. The supporting cast included long-time franchise contributors (Cassi Davis as Aunt Bam, Patrice Lovely as Hattie) alongside new ensemble members including Mike Tyson in a notable supporting role. Tyson's casting as Heathrow's funeral-attendee acquaintance generated industry-press attention and contributed to the franchise capstone marketing positioning.

Post-production was completed for the March 1, 2019 release, with Lionsgate's marketing campaign emphasizing both the Madea franchise familiarity and the formal-capstone positioning. Tyler Perry's retirement-of-Madea promotional appearances across the late-night and morning-show circuit generated substantial press attention and contributed to the picture's strong opening-weekend commercial performance.

Awards and Recognition

A Madea Family Funeral received Razzie Awards nominations in the 2020 ceremony cycle, including Worst Actor (Tyler Perry, for multiple Madea performances) and Worst Director (Tyler Perry), without winning. The picture also received NAACP Image Award nominations including Outstanding Motion Picture and Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture (Cassi Davis), recognizing the picture's commercial cultural significance within Black-audience theatrical exhibition.

The film received no significant mainstream prestige-circuit recognition, reflecting the comedy and broad-audience category boundaries that affect Tyler Perry's filmography across the major prestige ceremonies. The Image Award nominations represented the principal awards-circuit acknowledgment for the film, as the major prestige ceremonies have historically not engaged with Perry's filmography. The picture sits within Tyler Perry's broader recognized Madea franchise rather than as an individual prestige-awards title.

Critical Reception

A Madea Family Funeral received negative reviews from mainstream critics. The film holds a 39% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 49 critic reviews, with a critical consensus calling it "a fitting if predictable conclusion to the long-running Madea franchise that will satisfy existing fans without converting skeptics." On Metacritic, the film scored 39 out of 100, indicating generally unfavorable reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an A-, an extreme audience-critic gap typical of Perry's filmography.

Variety's Owen Gleiberman wrote that the picture "works exactly as Madea fans will expect and very little more," and The Hollywood Reporter's John DeFore called it "a familiar exercise that closes the theatrical Madea chapter with workmanlike efficiency." Roger Ebert.com's Glenn Kenny gave the picture one and a half out of four stars, while noting that the franchise's audience metrics suggest critical reception is unlikely to affect commercial performance.

Black-audience and Christian-press coverage was substantially more positive than mainstream critical response, with the picture appearing on multiple year-end favorite-films lists in publications focused on the Madea franchise's core audience. The commercial outcome of $74,564,140 worldwide against the $20,000,000 production budget, combined with the A- CinemaScore, demonstrates that the audience-critic divergence has not affected the financial viability of the franchise. The picture's status as the planned theatrical capstone gave it additional cultural weight at the time of release, even as Madea would subsequently return through Netflix.