Authors:

The model we established was to give creative people complete creative freedom in exchange for betting on themselves, so they work for the minimums you're allowed to work for, and if the movies work in a big way, everyone does very well. If the movies don't, nobody loses too much money. The benefit to doing all the movies low budget is we can tell different types of stories and take creative risks. The Purge would have been irresponsible to do for $20M, but to do it for $3M makes sense.

Source: deadline.com
The model we established was to give creative people complete creative freedom in exchange for betting on themselves, so they work for the minimums you're allowed to work for, and if the movies work in a big way,