[deanCommie]

Keep in mind, financials are extremely difficult to get to ground on:

1. Budgets tend to not include marketing which are all over the place - big movies TEND to have a marketing budget of almost the same magnitude as the filming budget

2. But at the same time, movie theaters keep half of the box office gross.

So in the worst case, a movie needs to make FOUR times it's "budget" to be profitable.

But movies keep making money after the initial box office - either on home media, or streaming, though exactly how studios attribute individual streams to revenue from a monthly subscription is opaque and impossible to uncover.

By and large though, you're probably right - all 3 of these are failures.

[orra]

Plus there's Holywood Accounting. Hollywood filmmakers are famous for their film expenses being as fictitious as their plots.

[gamblor956]

The marketing budget being the same magnitude as the film budget is actually a large part of Hollywood Accounting. At least for the major studios, most of the "marketing budget" for a big film is in cross-promotional efforts with related entities that don't cost them actual money, or for tie-ins or licensing deals which their marketing partner is sharing some or all of the costs.

Also, movie theaters don't get half the box office gross. For big budget films, the distributor gets a declining share of ticket sales, starting with 90% for major films (Marvel, Fast and Furious, Mission Impossible, anything by James Cameron), and declining each week down to a low of about 10% after 2-3 months (depending on the specific contract between the distributor and the theater). This is a large part of why studios are now so focused on first-weekend gross: it's also their most profitable weekend.

[deanCommie]

Today I learned!