Damien Chazelle May Not Get Another Big Budget to Work With After the Disappointment of 2022’s BABYLON

Babylon Flop Leaves Damien Chazelle Wondering About Next Project

For his next film, director Damien Chazelle doubts he’ll have a budget to work with that is as high as the $80 million he was given to make the 2022 disappointment, Babylon.

When Babylon came out, many were expecting it to be a tentpole for Paramount at the box-office. It featured Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Tobey Maguire, to name just a few of the film’s stars. But, the movie crashed and burned all around. It hugely divided critics across the board and received a measly “C+” CinemaScore grade. It ran over three hours in length and earned a paltry $15 million domestically on an $80 million budget. But, it was certainly an intriguing movie and its failure should have no bearing on how his next project is treated. However, Chazelle does not have high hopes he’ll have a budget that big to work with anytime soon.

Chazelle was successful in Hollywood almost right off the bat with one of his early movies, Whiplash, garnering three Academy Awards. Then just a couple of years after that film’s tremendous success, Chazelle won the Best Director Oscar for La La Land. Of course, that year was a catastrophe at the Academy Awards when the title La La Land was announced as the year’s Best Picture when, in actuality, it lost to Moonlight. Chazelle’s next movie, First Man, wasn’t a huge financial success but won a technical Oscar (always a good thing). At this point, Chazelle was positioned for continued greatness with his next project but, instead, Babylon landed with a resounding thud.

A lot of critics liked Babylon but at over three hours in length, it was always a hard sell. Adult audiences were sort of just getting over the pandemic and weren’t exactly racing to movie theaters to see anything other than Avatar: The Way of Water at the time Babylon was released. It didn’t help that Babylon was about a time period in motion pictures that never really seems to gel at the box-office. The star power of Margot Robbie hadn’t really been established yet since Barbie had yet to be released. Brad Pitt was coming off a successful action picture called Bullet Train which made $103 million but Pitt wasn’t the real star of Babylon. Robbie was. Even Tobey Maguire’s role in Babylon was rather small in all honesty.

Hollywood could have delayed Babylon until after Barbie‘s release but that may have made matters more confusing. Babylon was also positioned as 2022 Oscar bait only the Academy wasn’t taking the bait that year. Not from Chazelle’s overpriced and overblown spectacle anyway. I thought every scene in Babylon was interesting but can certainly understand why the movie fizzled from a financial perspective. In the meantime, mum’s the word on Chazelle’s next project. The only things certain right now are death, taxes and that Chazelle won’t get $80 million to make his next picture.

Leave your thoughts on Damien Chazelle’s box-office bomb, Babylon below in the comments section. Readers seeking to support this type of content can visit our Patreon Page and become one of FilmBook’s patrons. Readers seeking more movie news can visit our Movie News Page, our Movie News Twitter Page, and our Movie News Facebook Page. Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Google News, Feedly, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, Telegram, Mastodon, Flipboard, and Threads. This news was brought to our attention by The Hollywood Reporter.