10 Recent Movies That Were Absolute HELL To Make
6. Hundreds of Beavers
On the polar opposite end of the budgetary spectrum, we have Mike Cheslik's brilliantly unhinged slapstick comedy Hundreds of Beavers, which was produced for a mere $150,000, and despite being self-distributed by Cheslik has more than doubled its budget at the speciality box office.
The road to release was anything but easy, though - armed with so little money, the entire film was shot by a mere six-person crew over a period of 12 weeks in 2019 and 2020, most of it spent in sub-zero temperatures in the wilderness of Wisconsin.
The majority of the movie's sight gags also required extensive VFX work, with more than 1,500 effects being produced on Adobe After Effects.
Post-production and editing took another two years after shooting, and though it premiered at film festivals in late 2022, the film then fell upon deaf ears from distributors.
And so, the filmmakers took it upon themselves to book Hundreds of Beavers into cinemas across North America, which helped word-of-mouth spread and allow it to secure a larger limited release.