Star salaries can definitely bloat a movie budget but it still costs 10s of millions to make a "small" film. Look up Blumhouse productions, they make low budget horror movies (if a big star is involved, they get a low salary and a share of profits/revenue) and it still gets into the $20-$40 million range

Maybe I'm just if ignorant about what it takes to make a movie.

But 25 million seems like a lot for a small film that's mainly script and acting.

Horror movies require a ton of special effects which I imagine is where huge budgets start to come into play.

But many of the best movies I've ever seen don't require tons of special effects.

Taxi driver, good will hunting, the godfather, moonlight, etc.

It's possible if the quality is there.

> Maybe the real reason is that these people aren't willing to work for reasonable wages.

If you want cheaper actors you can cast cheaper actors. But obviously you won’t get any actor to take minimum wage gig if they have a better offer somewhere else.

This has nothing to do with unwillingness to work for less money. And trying to put the blame for what movies get made on actors who have absolutely no control over that is just silly.

I'm just saying they're going to start seeing their salaries leveled and that's a good thing.