The Grudge Budget

What Is the Budget of The Grudge?

The Grudge (2020), written and directed by Nicolas Pesce, carried a production budget of $10,000,000 according to Box Office Mojo. Deadline's opening weekend report placed the net production cost higher, in the range of $12,000,000 to $14,000,000, and Wikipedia's infobox follows that reporting. The gap between the two figures is the usual one for a studio genre release: the lower number reflects the picture negative cost as tracked by Box Office Mojo, while the trade figure absorbs the additional photography carried out a full year after principal photography wrapped.

The film was produced by Screen Gems, Stage 6 Films and Ghost House Pictures, with Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert and Takashige Ichise credited as producers, and released by Sony Pictures Releasing. That is the same three-company structure and the same Raimi and Tapert producing partnership that Screen Gems had already used for its low-budget horror slate, and $10,000,000 sits squarely in the band that model was built for. The film is the fourth installment of the American Grudge series and functions as an interquel, which meant the production inherited an existing audience and an existing mythology without having to pay to establish either.

Key Budget Allocation Categories

At $10,000,000, The Grudge had to choose where to concentrate. The choices are legible in the finished film:

• Above-the-Line Cast: Andrea Riseborough leads as Detective Muldoon, with Demian Bichir, John Cho, Betty Gilpin, Lin Shaye, Jacki Weaver, William Sadler and Frankie Faison filling out the ensemble. That is a denser roster of established character actors than a $10,000,000 January horror release usually carries, and it is the most visible place the money went.
• Manitoba Location Production: Principal photography ran from May 7 to June 23, 2018 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, roughly six and a half weeks, with the city standing in for a small Pennsylvania town. Shooting a Pennsylvania-set story in Manitoba is a cost decision before it is a creative one.
• A Single Redressed House: Almost the entire film takes place at one address, 44 Reyburn Drive, across three separate years. One standing set redressed for 2004, 2005 and 2006 does the work that three locations would otherwise require, and the nonlinear structure turns that constraint into the film's organizing idea.
• Camera, Cut and Score: Zachary Galler shot the film, Gardner Gould and Ken Blackwell are both credited as editors, and The Newton Brothers wrote the score. Two credited editors on a 94 minute picture is a real post-production line item.
• Additional Photography in 2019: Reshoots took place in June 2019, twelve months after principal photography ended. Bringing a cast of this size back a year later is the single likeliest reason trade reporting put the net cost above the $10,000,000 Box Office Mojo figure.

How Does The Grudge's Budget Compare to Similar Films?

The Grudge's $10,000,000 budget was not the problem. Sony had run this exact playbook profitably several times, which is what makes the comparison set so unflattering:

• Don't Breathe (2016): Budget $9,900,000 | Worldwide $157,761,002. The closest possible comparison. Same three production companies, the same Raimi and Tapert partnership, the same distributor and a budget within $100,000. It grossed more than three times what The Grudge did.
• Escape Room (2019): Budget $9,000,000 | Worldwide $155,712,077. Sony's January release slot exactly one year earlier, at a slightly lower budget. It opened to $18,238,172 against The Grudge's $11,404,113, which establishes that the release date was not the constraint.
• Ma (2019): Budget $5,000,000 | Worldwide $61,220,856. A half-budget horror picture built around one recognizable lead that still out-grossed The Grudge worldwide.
• Brightburn (2019): Budget $6,000,000 | Worldwide $33,224,654. Another Screen Gems horror release from the previous year, below The Grudge on both budget and gross. It shows $49,511,319 was not the floor for this model, only a disappointment against its own recent history.
• The Turning (2020): Budget $14,000,000 | Worldwide $19,428,166. Released into the same January 2020 corridor three weeks later at a higher budget, finishing at well under half of The Grudge's worldwide gross.

The Grudge Box Office Performance

The Grudge opened in Indonesia on December 31, 2019 and in the United States on January 3, 2020 across 2,642 theaters. It took $1,800,000 from Thursday night previews, $5,400,000 on its first day and $11,404,113 across the opening weekend, finishing fifth. Deadline reported it as the lowest opening of any United States theatrical release in the series. The second weekend fell 69 percent to $3,500,000 and eleventh place, a collapse consistent with the F CinemaScore the film had already received.

A wide studio release generally needs to earn around twice its production budget to clear marketing and distribution, which puts the break-even threshold here at roughly $20,000,000 worldwide. The film cleared that, but not by the margin this production model was built to deliver.

The split ran $21,221,803 domestic and $28,289,516 international, or 42.9 percent to 57.1 percent, with France, Spain and the United Kingdom the strongest overseas markets. The film reached Digital HD on March 10, 2020 and disc on March 24, 2020, adding $1,100,000 in home video sales, and its ancillary window opened directly into the month theaters closed. Set against Don't Breathe at $157,761,002 and Escape Room at $155,712,077 on nearly identical budgets, $49,511,319 is the number that ended this iteration of the franchise.

At 148%, "The Grudge" earned roughly $2.48 for every $1 invested.

The Grudge Production History

A fourth American Grudge film was announced in August 2011, to be developed by Ghost House Pictures and Mandate Pictures as a reboot. It then sat. Jeff Buhler was hired to write in March 2014 and said in April that the film would carry new ghosts, characters and mythology rather than continue the existing ones. In July 2017 Nicolas Pesce was hired to rewrite Buhler's draft and direct, saying the film would be darker, grittier and more realistic.

Pesce was an unusual hire for a studio horror reboot. His two previous features, The Eyes of My Mother (2016) and Piercing (2018), were art-house genre films, and the tension between that sensibility and a franchise assignment became the central subject of the film's reviews.

Casting came together quickly in the spring of 2018. Andrea Riseborough was reported in March 2018, followed by Demian Bichir, John Cho and Lin Shaye that same month, and Jacki Weaver, Betty Gilpin, William Sadler and Frankie Faison in April. Principal photography began on May 7, 2018 in Winnipeg, Manitoba and ended on June 23, 2018, with Winnipeg standing in for the small Pennsylvania town where the story is set.

The film did not then go straight out. Screen Gems moved it off its 2019 date, Deadline reporting the shift to 2020 in January 2019, and additional photography and reshoots took place in June 2019, a full year after the Winnipeg shoot wrapped. It finally opened on January 3, 2020, the first new wide release of the year, running 94 minutes and rated R.

Awards and Recognition

The Grudge received no major industry awards or nominations. It was not among the nominees at the 41st Golden Raspberry Awards, which covered 2020 releases, so it did not attract recognition at either end of the scale.

The one measured audience verdict on record is a CinemaScore of F, a grade the exit polling service issues rarely enough that The A.V. Club ran a piece examining what an F actually signifies. PostTrak respondents scored the film 0.5 out of 5. Those two numbers, and not any award, are the recognition this release is remembered for.

Critical Reception

The Grudge holds a 20 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes from 128 reviews with an average rating of 4.1 out of 10. The critics consensus reads: "Dull and derivative, the rebooted Grudge wastes a talented cast and filmmaker on watered-down scares that may leave viewers nursing grievances of their own." Metacritic assigns a 41 out of 100 from 28 critics, indicating mixed or average reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it an F, and PostTrak respondents averaged 0.5 out of 5 stars.

The negative reviews focused on inertia rather than incompetence. Owen Gleiberman of Variety described it as "a reboot of a remake of a film that wasn't all that scary to begin with" and wrote that it "plods on as if it were something more than formula gunk." Ben Kenigsberg of The New York Times concluded that "the remake remains cursed by a fatally hokey concept."

A minority defended it, and their defense is specific about what Pesce brought. Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, calling it "often as nasty as you want it to be, its cheesy jump-scares and generic packaging be damned." Noel Murray of the Los Angeles Times drew the same distinction from the opposite direction: "This is not a fun horror picture. It is about miseries both supernatural and mundane. And, yes, it is scary."