[codefeenix]

Writing off a business expenditure just reduces your tax liability. It is similar to putting money into R&D for a potential product and then not producing the product. Yeah you tried, paid consultants, paid for hardware, labor, etc.. but realized that it wouldn’t workout as planned or wouldn’t end up being profitable.

[philipov]

It's more like doing the R&D and producing the product, but then deciding not to sell it. In fact, it's literally that. You make it sound more reasonable than it should because you stops things at the research phase rather than after producing the entire movie.

[rokkitmensch]

As noted elsewhere in this thread, production is barely half the cost of returns. Marketing is the other half. What you see here is a rejection of the sunk-cost fallacy.

[marak830]

I'm struggling to see how their costs for releasing with 0 marketing are that much higher than scrapping.

[isthatafact]

I agree with you. The article even mentions that streaming services were interested in buying it. I do not understand why trash it rather than sell it to someone for a modest amount.

Why did they spend the money to finish it? Are there some tax regulations that incentivize it? or is this just bad management?

As awful as the movie sounds to me, I want to see it now.

[rtpg]

Movie theaters aren’t going to put a movie into circulation with 0 marketing. Those are slots that are available for other things.

[hakfoo]

I think there's probably some room for more diverse options.

The last couple of times I went to the cinema were for when they'd do an English release of a popular anime film (One Piece Film Red and the Slime Isekai film). Those are not getting mainstream promotion. I don't think a couple of banner ads on animenewsnetwork.com count as meaningful. But they were in the "normal" multiplex with modest schedules. I feel like before the pandemic, those would exclusively get a one-week run in the art-house cinema by the college.

I wonder if it's a bit of a "flailing" response from an industry that 1) seems to have lost their cadence a bit after pandemics and labour stoppages, and 2) is still trying to figure out what's a viable draw when so much is heading straight to streaming.

The second-run cinema in town seems to be about a 50-50 split now between "second run of newish films" and a random assortment of classics and things obviously meant as family-friendly.

[galleywest200]

Then put it on a streaming service?

[rewgs]

This just seems to obvious to me, even when doing the math:

Max costs an average of $12.99/month. $30 million / $12.99 = 2.3 million. Max has over 95 million monthly subscribers, and one has to imagine that ~2% of the subscribers would pay for a single month of Max in order to see this movie. After that one month, the movie's made its budget back without having to market it at all. Like, come on, it's the age of the internet -- if you really don't want to market the film at all, just Tweet out "Hey this movie is out now on Max, go watch it" and you're sure to reach a decent amount of people.

I'm sure there's an argument against what I just said that it creates the perception of their original content made for Max being low quality or something, but that can't be worse than the now extremely accurate perception that creatives can't trust that their work will be released by WD, and thus would prefer to work for other studios. I myself work in Hollywood and have absolutely zero desire to work on a WB project after Batgirl and now this.

[tremon]

The cost of releasing with 0 marketing is that they forego the $30M tax write-off.

[lupire]

Releasing the movie delays the write-off until the film decays in value, not foregoes it.

[stu2b50]

It doesn't. A loss is a loss.

[rokkitmensch]

That is releasing in Hollywood. Due to the nature of the industry and the jobs everyone works, simply publishing it is an unthinkable thought. I get that "it should be as easy as uploading a repo to GitHub", but just for starters imagine the incurred cost of residuals tracking. Yes it's amortized over the whole enterprise's catalog, but that's work that still has to be done.

[Mindwipe]

Principle photography is done for this film, but it's effects heavy and there's nothing to suggest the effects work is anywhere near done, and releasing stuff also costs money.

You seem to feel like this is a completed master sat on the shelf, but it's likely not more than 60% complete to something that could be released.

[Cockbrand]

I'd assume that it's at least almost complete, as the article states that there have been test viewings. Also, the Wikipedia page [0] says that the the film had been completed, so I'd assume that at least a preliminary fully edited version exists. Maybe my definition of "completed" isn't entirely accurate here, though.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_vs._Acme#Cancellation

[Mindwipe]

> I'd assume that it's at least almost complete, as the article states that there have been test viewings.

Some of the reporting today is suggesting that the film is a lot closer to being completed than previously reported, so fair enough if so.

But for what it's worth it is very common for test viewings to include extremely unfinished animated work, including pencil storyboards with some voice acting over it.

[Cockbrand]

I've never seen a test viewing, so I apparently had a somewhat naïve idea. Thanks for the heads up!

[ed_elliott_asc]

I think it is good that someone has said that it is too poor quality to put out - refreshing even.

[Karellen]

> The difference here is that Coyote vs. Acme is a completed movie with very good test scores, 14 points above the family norm.