I don't think anyone is likely to be able to make film any less expensively than Eastman Kodak.
How quickly the view on Kodak changes...
Five, or eight, or ten years ago (when I used to browse APUG without an account) everybody said that Kodak had higher costs than other manufacturers since their operations scale was far bigger than the reduced demand. And that a manufacturer that wanted to make film economically would need to have a small-scale operation, not the huge coaters and machines that Kodak had.
This view was supported, if I recall correctly, by Kodak insiders like Photo Engineer.
The whole point of, for example, the Ferrania project, was to dramatically scale-down the operations of a big factory to be able to make film with reasonable costs.
So now I don't understand why everybody is assuming Kodak is the manufacturer that would have the least cost. Maybe yes, for a film in high demand like ColorPlus 200. But for any other film that has not such a massive demand? I'm not so sure.