Brady Corbet directed, produced and co-wrote The Brutalist, which is currently up for ten Oscar nominations. Before Anora swept the major guild awards, many believed that The Brutalist would likely end up winning Best Picture and possibly Best Director for Corbet. The film is still a major contender, but far from a sure thing. It’s also likely that Adrien Brody (the star of The Brutalist) will win Best Actor. All in all, a well-run Oscar campaign with some money behind it. Unfortunately, none of that money is going to Corbet, who developed The Brutalist over the course of eight years. Corbet was recently on Marc Maron’s podcast and he spoke about how he hasn’t seen any money from all of these Oscar nominations, and he’s directing commercials in Europe to pay his rent.

The Brutalist director Brady Corbet is getting honest about filmmaking finances. Speaking with Marc Maron on his podcast WTF in a candid episode published Monday, Feb. 17, the Oscar nominee — currently in contention for writing, directing and Best Picture at the upcoming Academy Awards — said the amount of money The Brutalist has made him is a simple number: “zero.”

“I just directed three advertisements in Portugal,” said Corbet, 36. “It’s the first time that I had made any money in years.” He and Mona Fastvold, his wife and co-writer, “made zero dollars on the last two films that we made.”

When a surprised Maron, 61, clarified that the film has netted Corbet no income, the recent BAFTA winner responded, “Yes. Actually, zero. We had to just sort of live off of a paycheck from three years ago.”

Noting that filmmakers are “not paid to be promoting a film,” he added, “if you look at certain films that premiered in Cannes [Film Festival], that was almost a year ago … I mean, our film premiered in September. So I’ve been doing this for six months. And had zero income because I don’t have any time to go to work.”

Corbet also likened the promotion around releasing and campaigning for The Brutalist to “a six-month interrogation.” Press interviews are “boundless,” he said. “It’s constant travel, and you’re also working Saturdays and Sundays. I haven’t had a day off since the Christmas break.”

Lack of income is not a challenge exclusive to him, Corbet continued. “I’ve spoken to many filmmakers that have the films that are nominated this year that can’t pay their rent. I mean, that’s a real thing,” he said.

[From People]

When Netflix announced that they were no longer picking up the costs of Karla Sofia Gascon’s awards season appearances and promotion, this is why I said it was a big deal. A company like Netflix has the money to spread around for an Oscar campaign, and that includes hotels, cars, fashion, travel and glam squads for the awards-contenders and actors in the movie. The Brutalist is being distributed by A24, Focus and Universal – somewhere along the line, someone really should have been paying Corbet for the promotion and awards season appearances. I also doubt the Anora people are getting that much money for the awards season as well – it’s such a small film and I doubt Neon has much money to spread around to the cast or Sean Baker. Anyway, just something for studios and distributors to think about: an awards season salary or per diem, because that’s months of “work” too.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.