5.5 million dollar budget!???!!!

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Anyway...I think maybe the budget was probably $550,000 and someone added a zero by mistake.

I would say that the budget is about right - while small in cast, break it down by the number of people it took to make the movie:

1 million for budget (sets and such)
1 million for the director
1 million split amongst the production crew (probably 40-60 people behind the scenes)
1 million to the author for his work and to any other writer
1.5 million split amongst the cast - while they were relatively unknown, they knew the play backwards and forwards and their roles are spot on to the characters.

I know that breakdown seems silly, but you know that's how Hollywood rolls, everything is so out of line with reality they spend thousands on just the right prop and it never gets used again. such as the ones Emory puts on the fireplace...imagine that they cost thousands as a prop, but can now be found in Salvation Army for 99 cents....Hollywood for ya!

I'm guessing that 5.4 million of the 5.5 went to Maud Adams for her two second photo-shoot cameo.

the answer to your question in two words. WILLIAM FRIEDKIN. the film could have cost over five million dollars if friedkin had gone wildly over budget. which he was to do, over and over again. sorcerer. the brinks job. both big budget monstrosities. and i'm sure friedkin wasted millions of dollars on the films he directed in the eithties. in retrospect, a 5.5 million dollar budget is a "moderate" budget by william friedkin standards. and a 5.5 million dollar budget would not have been unrealistic by 1970's standards. twentieth spent MUCH more on "myra breckenridge" which was released the same year, and on "hello, dolly!" the year before. arguably, the money spent on "boys in the band" was INTELLIGENTLY spent. at least the investors got something of value for their money, despite friedkin's overspending........

The trivia section indicates a 1.25 million dollar budget.

To me the 5.5 million, also, sounds like a gross error. As you point out the props were basically one room and the cast was made up of unknown names some of which never performed again in any other movie. When we consider that in 1970, 5.5 million was a lot more than it is today, it becomes even more apparent that this number is a mistake. Look at Friedkin's magna opus, "The Exorcist," it was produced 3 years after Boys in the Band and it cost $10,000,000 which was considered an outrageous expenditure at the time! How can Boys in the Band cost half as much as the Exorcist when the Exorcist had expensive special effects and special sets built for some of the scenes [example: an enormous refrigerator that would bring the temperature down to 30 below zero in Regan's room] huge sets in Iraq, Georgetown. and New York and actors which while not widely known, better known than the Boys...cast. As someone else pointed out, I believe that it was probably a budget of $550,000 and another zero was mistakenly added on.