Everybody knows about the big blockbuster movies because half the budget is marketing. There a lots and independent movies getting produces all around the world. But you will have to seek them out yourself to some extent.
Could you imagine a Hollywood film where the marketing scheme was “all the actors work for free but get to keep half the money they make selling copies of the film”.
This is pretty much what Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny de Vito negotiated with the studio that made Twins in 1988.
[1] He tells the Daily Mirror newspaper, "I said right off, 'Don't give me anything, you are taking a risk, let's make the movie for $16.5 million, let's keep it cheap, no one takes a salary. Let's just get a certain percentage, the back end, and then we'll split that.'"
The gamble paid off and Twins went on to gross $216 million at the worldwide box office, making a lot of money for the two lead actors. Schwarzenegger adds, "In the end, we made more money than we ever made on anything else we've done."
There are more details about the deal in his autobiography, I recall that Arnold became much more involved in the marketing of the movie than he had been in the past, scheduling press junkets, public appearances etc.
There are things like actors working for free with a percentage of the box office profit. Some top actors made more this way than if they actually got a salary.
SAGAFTRA rules do not permit actors to work for free, even if they get a percentage. (Despite claims that actors worked on the re-shoots for All the Money in the World for free, all of them except Mark Wahlberg were contractually obligated to participate in re-shoots, so they were already paid for their work. Marky Mark was not contractually obligated to participate in re-shoots, and collected roughly $5 million for his...efforts.)
They can work for minimum scale, and get a percentage of profits (Sandra Bullock and Gravity). The trick with Hollywood accounting is to know to ask for a percentage of the rights-owning entity, since the production entity is a loss vehicle that earns no income, and the licensing entity only earns a small markup for its "work" licensing the movie.
The distribution entity is frequently a third-party company or parent company. Distribution entities might get paid a % of revenue (most common if third-party distributor), a fixed or calculated fee for distributing the movie (i.e., Fox and Star Wars), or it might effectively own the rights altogether and get all of the revenues (Disney and other parent-company distributors, otherwise unncommon). In rare situations, the rights-holding entity is the distribution entity (i.e. Blumhouse).
Contrary to popular belief, not all actors work in the USA, and are under SAGAFTRA.
And even for those, working for a minimum fee, non representative of their actual asking price, for indy productions or movies they believe in and want a share of profits, is common, and is more or less the same.
(If you get normally $5 million per movie, doing one for e.g. $200k plus part of profits is not that different from doing it for profits only).
