Have you watched any of Jodorowsky’s films? He’s pretty principled and I don’t think he’d make a movie that studios like and would make money.
So he turned to graphic novels with Moebius, which I believe were successful (leading him to make a lot of them with a variety of artists - Manara, Jimenez).
My impression from the Dune documentary is he could find enough funding to pay for all the pre production work that now is in the book, which including hiring 3-4 artists. So I’m not sure he stop making films because he couldn’t get the funding, since the impression is he got enough to pay for those guys to work for him for a while.
Definitely not big chunks of money.
I liked Holy Mountain and I like crazy stuff. I’m not sure how he got his projects funded but it’s not based on his box office success.
El Topo also lost money.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_Mountain_(1973_film)
The box office you’re quoting is from a re-issue. It says right there on the page.
Again if you watch the Dune documentary, it’s stated there that: - holy Mountain did relatively well at the box office - that led producers to fund concept stage for his next idea, Dune
If the documentary is innacurate I don’t know. But that’s there, from memory.
Im not sure how the documentary producers substantiated their claim, so I linked to a pretty reputable source that describes the budget and box office.