Does money really buy happiness? What would you prefer: a big-budget CGI spectacle, or a tiny house-set indie?

Hollywood budgets have no doubt been increasing, but are audiences any happier? Would the industry be better off by producing better, lower-budgeted movies, or do audiences prefer more big blockbusters?

To find out, we listed budgets from 2,598 movies produced between 1960 and 2016, and graphed them against each movie’s user rating. (n=3,446,330)

The graph ranges from its lowest-budgeted movie Primer ($9K, adjusted) to its highest, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ($398M, adjusted).

We converted our 5-star system into a 0-100% scale.