<Li> Greg Ellery as Steven, a friend of Johnny and Lisa . </Li> <P> The Room originated as a play, completed by Wiseau in 2001 . Wiseau stated he then adapted the play into a 500 - page book, which he was unable to get published . Frustrated, Wiseau decided to adapt the work into a film, which he would then produce himself in order to maintain total control over the project . </P> <P> Wiseau has been secretive about exactly how he obtained the funding for the project, but he did tell Entertainment Weekly that he made some of the money by importing leather jackets from Korea . According to Sestero in his book The Disaster Artist, Wiseau was already independently wealthy at the time production began, having amassed a fortune over several years of entrepreneurship and real estate development in and around Los Angeles and San Francisco . The budget for The Room reached US $6,000,000 (equivalent to about $7,800,000 in 2016), all of which was spent on production and marketing . Wiseau has stated that the reason the film was relatively expensive was because many members of the cast and crew had to be replaced, and each of the cast members had several understudies . According to Sestero, Wiseau made numerous poor decisions during filming that unnecessarily inflated the film's budget, such as building sets for sequences that could have been filmed on location, purchasing unnecessary equipment, and filming identical scenes multiple times using different sets . Sestero further wrote that the film's budget skyrocketed as a result of minutes - long dialogue sequences taking hours or days to shoot due to Wiseau's inability to properly remember his lines or move to the appropriate place on camera . </P> <P> According to Sestero and Greg Ellery, Wiseau came to the Birns and Sawyer film lot, rented a studio, and bought a "complete Beginning Director package," which included the purchase of two brand new film and HD cameras . Wiseau, confused about the differences between 35 mm film and high - definition video, decided to shoot the entire film in both formats simultaneously, using a custom - built apparatus that housed both cameras side - by - side and required two crews to operate . Commenting on his decision to shoot the film in this way, Wiseau said that he wanted to be able to say that he was the first director to film an entire movie simultaneously in two formats, although ultimately only the 35 mm footage was used in the final edit . </P>

How much did the room movie cost to make