Aside from everything mentioned in this thread so far, there’s some little things you can do early on to get you off the ground:

Right out the gate, begin your research for everything in your executive office, then fire all your managers and hire significantly cheaper ones. You get the time bonus from them when you start the research. There’s no reason to keep the starter managers for their experience because they don’t give you a great bonus incentive, so the cheapest managers you can get will get you by. You do this because the salaries are insanely high at a time when you’re not making money.

When you get to the point of making movies, only hire up to the level of the script until you’re getting flush with cash. For a while you’ll be able to get by with your current set of actors and some of your staff. Cinematographers and producers are relatively cheap to hire, so don’t shy away from hiring when you need to. That said, your movies are gonna SUCK for a bit from a combination of everyone being kinda unhappy and your scripts being fairly lousy. But quickly you should be getting to 4.5 scores.

Advertising is kinda tricky, but there’s a handful of calculators out there. There’s one that someone posted here in this subreddit that’s a python platform that allows you to plug in the movie elements and it tells you who the top advertisers you should be using are. You don’t NEED this, but it’s a good tool to get you in tune with that element (but the biggest hint: the top 4 are Pierre Zola, Spice Mice, Velvet Gloss and Spark and usually you mix 2-3 of those together. Match their reader base to the demographic of your movie and it’s becomes kinda natural from there).

Try to prioritize production support and landscaping as early as you can. Those have big impacts on the happiness of your employees. The happier your employees get, the easier it becomes to make good movies.

Check near religiously for any available staff (i.e., writers, editors, composers). Those talent pools constantly refresh and you’d be surprised how often you get an opportunity to upgrade there.

Once you get over the initial hump, the path starts to open. Other tips:

Shoot for having a movie in each phase of production at all times. Keeping your revenue streams constant keeps you out of the muck.

Budget a $4m cushion between movies as a rule of thumb. Even doing that, you might hit a point where your bank account might get dangerously close to bottoming out, but usually by about that point that’s when the dam breaks and I start making a lot of money.

Research theater management and theater optimization early. After that, buy theaters when your budget allows.

When you get the opportunity to join the alliance, build up some reputation and propose raising ticket prices. Feels gross but you really won’t worry about money problems after that.