Of the 5,000 films submitted to Sundance each year—generally with budgets under $10 million—maybe 100 of them got a U.S. theatrical release three years ago. And it used to be that 20 of those would make money. Now maybe five do. That’s one-tenth of 1%. Put another way, if you decide to make a movie budgeted under $10 million on your own tomorrow, you have a 99.9% chance of failure.
Mark Gill (film department chief) in L.A. Times