Post by manowar2010 on Oct 16, 2017 0:37:32 GMT
There are some recent movies presented in B&W for artistic reasons but in some cases they are actually filmed in color and just converted/filtered to be presented in B&W. As for when the last time B&W was chosen for cost reasons, this would depend on several factors, including what film stock was available in the respective country and what was available to the photographers. As for the last time any major tv or film studio filming in B&W due to cost, my guess would be sometime in the early to mid 1970's.
For the broader question, when was the last ANY tv show or movie was produced in B&W because of cost savings, I found this on wikipedia regarding 1994's 'Clerks':
"In the case of Clerks, because of the extremely low budget, the production team could not afford the added costs of shooting in color. Although the difference in film stock price would have been slight, the store's fluorescent lights could not have been used to light for color. By shooting in black-and-white, the filmmakers did not have to rent lighting equipment."
That is the latest that I have ever heard of anyone choosing B&W over color due to cost, but it wasn't a major studio and was due to a unique reason, so I imagine there could be other cases since then.
For a more precise and objective answer, you could try and determine at what point color film became cheaper than B&W (or achieve relative parity) and look at what films/tv shows were produced around that time.
Manowar2010