Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice movie thread for your reading pleasure 2 2

[rjrjr]

It looks like some of the international reporting caught up today.

 

As good as those numbers it still haven't done as well in the worldwide box office as Nolans Batman Trilogy. As well, these numbers don't paint a true picture of how they have done. It may have cost $250,000,000 to make, but how much did they spend on marketing and other fees? After all those other expenses is it currently in the red or black?

 

I'm willing to bet product placement and tie ins offset the marketing and other fees. This movie was huge on production placement.

[Captain Canuck]

It looks like some of the international reporting caught up today.

 

As good as those numbers it still haven't done as well in the worldwide box office as Nolans Batman Trilogy. As well, these numbers don't paint a true picture of how they have done. It may have cost $250,000,000 to make, but how much did they spend on marketing and other fees? After all those other expenses is it currently in the red or black?

 

I'm willing to bet product placement and tie ins offset the marketing and other fees. This movie was huge on production placement.

Maybe not this movie, but I think a majority of movies end up in the red at the end of day for the studios.

http://priceonomics.com/why-do-all-hollywood-movies-lose-money/

Edited April 20, 2016 by Captain Canuck

[Bosco685]

As good as those numbers it still haven't done as well in the worldwide box office as Nolans Batman Trilogy. As well, these numbers don't paint a true picture of how they have done. It may have cost $250,000,000 to make, but how much did they spend on marketing and other fees? After all those other expenses is it currently in the red or black?

 

'a true picture'? Turn that Marvel frown upside down, and think of the positives as well (restated again for - well, I lost count):

 

- Product placement revenue (Man of Steel made $160 MM alone in this category, so it is big)

- Tax incentives

- Merchandising

- Franchise build-out (including two new movie dates)

 

I am sure this movie is just fine.

 

[Captain Canuck]

As good as those numbers it still haven't done as well in the worldwide box office as Nolans Batman Trilogy. As well, these numbers don't paint a true picture of how they have done. It may have cost $250,000,000 to make, but how much did they spend on marketing and other fees? After all those other expenses is it currently in the red or black?

 

'a true picture'? Turn that Marvel frown upside down, and think of the positives as well (restated again for - well, I lost count):

 

- Product placement revenue (Man of Steel made $160 MM alone in this category, so it is big)

- Tax incentives

- Merchandising

- Franchise build-out (including two new movie dates)

 

I am sure this movie is just fine.

http://priceonomics.com/why-do-all-hollywood-movies-lose-money/

[Bosco685]

Maybe not this movie, but I think a majority of movies end up in the red at the end of day for the studios.

 

What has come out over the years is studios claim they do not make a massive profit on these movies. And for the sake of reduced taxes and not having to pay out revenue shares, they will claim a loss.

 

Hollywood Accounting: Isn't it as easy as reading a studio's prospectus to figure out profits?

 

How Hollywood Accounting Can Make a $450 Million Movie 'Unprofitable'

 

Here is an amazing glimpse into the dark side of the force that is Hollywood economics. The actor who played Darth Vader still has not received residuals from the 1983 film "Return of the Jedi" because the movie, which ranks 15th in U.S. box office history, still has no technical profits to distribute.

 

How can a movie that grossed $475 million on a $32 million budget not turn a profit? It comes down to Tinseltown accounting. As Planet Money explained in an interview with Edward Jay Epstein in 2010, studios typically set up a separate "corporation" for each movie they produce. Like any company, it calculates profits by subtracting expenses from revenues. Erase any possible profit, the studio charges this "movie corporation" a big fee that overshadows the film's revenue. For accounting purposes, the movie is a money "loser" and there are no profits to distribute.

 

Hollywood Accounting: How A $19 Million Movie Makes $150 Million... And Still Isn't Profitable

 

We've written about the wonders of Hollywood accounting before. It's a series of tricks pulled by Hollywood studios to make most of their movies look unprofitable, even when they're making a ton of money. The details can be complex, but a simplified version is that every studio sets up a new "shell" company for each movie -- and that company is specifically designed to lose money. The studio gives that company the production budget (the number you usually see) and then also agrees to pay for marketing and related expenses above and beyond that. Both of those numbers represent (mostly) actual cash outlays from the studio and are reasonable to count as expenses. Then comes the sneaky part: on top of all that, the studios charge the "movie company" a series of fees for other questionable things. Many of these fees involve no real direct expense for the studio, but basically pile a huge expense onto the income statement and ensure that the studio keeps getting all of the movie income -- rather than having to share the profits with key participants -- long after the movie would be considered profitable under regular accounting rules.

 

NPR: We See Angelina's Bottom Line

 

As a case study, he walks us through the numbers for "Gone In 60 Seconds." (It starred Angelina Jolie and Nicolas Cage. They stole cars. Don't pretend like you don't remember it.)

 

The movie grossed $240 million at the box office. And, after you take out all the costs and fees and everything associated with the movie, it lost $212 million.

 

This is the part of Hollywood accounting that is, essentially, fiction. Disney, which produced the movie, did not lose that money.

 

These are articles about how studios play with their individual movie balance sheets to claim expenses, actors claim salaries not received for negotiation power later on with other movies, or doing all they can to avoid paying royalties.

 

Fun times!

 

Good reading about what appears to be a very tricky industry.

[Bosco685]

http://priceonomics.com/why-do-all-hollywood-movies-lose-money/

 

Read the articles I just posted on Hollywood accounting. They are quite eye-opening the trickery that goes on.

[Captain Canuck]

http://priceonomics.com/why-do-all-hollywood-movies-lose-money/

 

Read the articles I just posted on Hollywood accounting. They are quite eye-opening the trickery that goes on.

Different movie, but I know that Robert Downey Jr. gets a cut of his marvel movies, based on what you just posted, he probably made little extra in return. So basically don't make your contracts based on the back end. Lucas was very smart with requesting the merchandising rights to his films.

[MetalPSI]

http://priceonomics.com/why-do-all-hollywood-movies-lose-money/

 

Read the articles I just posted on Hollywood accounting. They are quite eye-opening the trickery that goes on.

Different movie, but I know that Robert Downey Jr. gets a cut of his marvel movies, based on what you just posted, he probably made little extra in return. So basically don't make your contracts based on the back end. Lucas was very smart with requesting the merchandising rights to his films.

 

Which Fox for sure will never ever let happen again

[revat]

Maybe not this movie, but I think a majority of movies end up in the red at the end of day for the studios.

 

What has come out over the years is studios claim they do not make a massive profit on these movies. And for the sake of reduced taxes and not having to pay out revenue shares, they will claim a loss.

 

Hollywood Accounting: Isn't it as easy as reading a studio's prospectus to figure out profits?

 

How Hollywood Accounting Can Make a $450 Million Movie 'Unprofitable'

 

Here is an amazing glimpse into the dark side of the force that is Hollywood economics. The actor who played Darth Vader still has not received residuals from the 1983 film "Return of the Jedi" because the movie, which ranks 15th in U.S. box office history, still has no technical profits to distribute.

 

How can a movie that grossed $475 million on a $32 million budget not turn a profit? It comes down to Tinseltown accounting. As Planet Money explained in an interview with Edward Jay Epstein in 2010, studios typically set up a separate "corporation" for each movie they produce. Like any company, it calculates profits by subtracting expenses from revenues. Erase any possible profit, the studio charges this "movie corporation" a big fee that overshadows the film's revenue. For accounting purposes, the movie is a money "loser" and there are no profits to distribute.

 

Hollywood Accounting: How A $19 Million Movie Makes $150 Million... And Still Isn't Profitable

 

We've written about the wonders of Hollywood accounting before. It's a series of tricks pulled by Hollywood studios to make most of their movies look unprofitable, even when they're making a ton of money. The details can be complex, but a simplified version is that every studio sets up a new "shell" company for each movie -- and that company is specifically designed to lose money. The studio gives that company the production budget (the number you usually see) and then also agrees to pay for marketing and related expenses above and beyond that. Both of those numbers represent (mostly) actual cash outlays from the studio and are reasonable to count as expenses. Then comes the sneaky part: on top of all that, the studios charge the "movie company" a series of fees for other questionable things. Many of these fees involve no real direct expense for the studio, but basically pile a huge expense onto the income statement and ensure that the studio keeps getting all of the movie income -- rather than having to share the profits with key participants -- long after the movie would be considered profitable under regular accounting rules.

 

NPR: We See Angelina's Bottom Line

 

As a case study, he walks us through the numbers for "Gone In 60 Seconds." (It starred Angelina Jolie and Nicolas Cage. They stole cars. Don't pretend like you don't remember it.)

 

The movie grossed $240 million at the box office. And, after you take out all the costs and fees and everything associated with the movie, it lost $212 million.

 

This is the part of Hollywood accounting that is, essentially, fiction. Disney, which produced the movie, did not lose that money.

 

These are articles about how studios play with their individual movie balance sheets to claim expenses, actors claim salaries not received for negotiation power later on with other movies, or doing all they can to avoid paying royalties.

 

Fun times!

 

Good reading about what appears to be a very tricky industry.

 

I think most people in MOST big industries will tell you there's a big difference in 'being profitable' vs 'showing a profit on financials' and the various contexts and shades therein. And then there's the issue of taxability, which involves a separate type of accounting which is correlated but definitely different.

 

That's why its VERY hard to know how profitable a movie (or most anything) truly is, but you can kind of compare it to others using some multipliers and other metrics.

[Bosco685]

I'm willing to bet product placement and tie ins offset the marketing and other fees. This movie was huge on production placement.

 

I had posted $160 MM for Man of Steel. I missed $10 MM.

 

How Superman has made $170million without even selling a ticket

 

Almost 100 companies have inked deals with Warner Brothers for their brands to appear in the film. From a marketing perspective, what company wouldn't clammer to be associated with the world's hardest, and nicest, man?

 

The deals have earned the film-makers $170million (£107m).

 

Product placement generates more profit for a movie than some would assume.

[roulette44]

I wish top execs at Disney and WB would read this thread and point out all the ways that this is silliness

 

- people everywhere speculating on what the break even number is on the film, if it was even profitable, will they even make more movies blah blah blah

 

- 50 uber negative posts from a clearly intelligent, articulate guy who is really not coming across as he intended. Not because he's critiquing something he hasn't seen...but for the length of effort he's going to hate on it. You'd think ZS was his estranged half brother circa origins of wolverine and Sabretooth/wolvie!!

 

Here are my bottom lines guys -

 

• the movie didn't do as well as some thought, but better than others did. This movie would have crossed a billion if it was a raging success, but not much more.....DC has to build the character loyalty for the sequels, that takes a bit more time!

• people hated the choice of Ben affleck as batman and even gal gadot as Wonder Woman (for a bit). Those same people have now tried to pretend they didn't originally write that ( unless your name is Brock, it's not the end of the world to admit you were wrong...it happens)

• the movie wasn't loved by everyone, and spawned some controversy with some people thinking it was the best movie ever, others thinking it was dog poopy). Gets people talking about it, which is good publicity for the next one so I like that

• the box office take, the actual production costs....at the end of the day, what matters is this was the beginning of an saga. Let's hope the producers address some of the feedback to try and make the next movie appeal as broadly as possible, which is good for business. No matter what they do, some people (you know who you are) will hate it....so let's solve for the folks with doable expectations! I find it very promising that they decided to reshoot some SS scenes to respond to feedback on the excessive dark feeling of the movie

• a movie that does $800-$900 at the box office in a month -- is making money. I'm sure their books will reflect whatever their corporate finance objectives are for the next quarter.....but they made money here.

 

thank you for reaching the end of the thought process.

 

[jsilverjanet]

Thread closed. Let's move this convo over the civil war thread and bash it

 

 

In all seriousness - great post.

 

[Iceman399]

It looks like some of the international reporting caught up today.

 

As good as those numbers it still haven't done as well in the worldwide box office as Nolans Batman Trilogy.

 

Are we looking at the same numbers for international?

 

Batman Begins $167M

Dark Knight $470M

DKR $636M

 

it wasn't until the 3rd installment that Nolan's Batman beat out BvS... I wonder how JLA 2 will do overall compared to the above numbers.

[Gatsby77]

 

 

But for a film of this magnitude to be both critically savaged AND vastly underperform the last two Nolan movies (without even accounting for inflation or the increased international market since) is unacceptable.

 

In 2006, Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone fired Tom Cruise from Paramount Pictures for his couch-jumping antics on Oprah, claiming that that incident alone basically cost Mission Impossible III $100 million in box office revenue.

 

Here, poor quality (see: critical & audience response) of BvS easily cost it ~$200 million. (Assumption: Final worldwide gross of only $900 million vs. minimum $1.1 bn. expectation).

 

Bottom line: someone's getting fired.

 

Batman's my favorite character & the reason I got into comics in the first place more than 25 years ago.

 

We fans deserved better.

 

It'd be one thing if the 2020 Green Lantern movie is mediocre but for a Batman v. Superman film to be so, _especially_ after the Nolan trilogy knocked it out of the park, is infuriating.

[Cat-Man_America]

 

But for a film of this magnitude to be both critically savaged AND vastly underperform the last two Nolan movies (without even accounting for inflation or the increased international market since) is unacceptable.

 

In 2006, Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone fired Tom Cruise from Paramount Pictures for his couch-jumping antics on Oprah, claiming that that incident alone basically cost Mission Impossible III $100 million in box office revenue.

 

Here, poor quality (see: critical & audience response) of BvS easily cost it ~$200 million. (Assumption: Final worldwide gross of only $900 million vs. minimum $1.1 bn. expectation).

 

Bottom line: someone's getting fired.

 

Batman's my favorite character & the reason I got into comics in the first place more than 25 years ago.

 

We fans deserved better.

 

It'd be one thing if the 2020 Green Lantern movie is mediocre but for a Batman v. Superman film to be so, _especially_ after the Nolan trilogy knocked it out of the park, is infuriating.

 

Well stated!

[jsilverjanet]

 

We fans deserved better.

 

Herein lies the problem. Personally I don't agree with this. They owe me nothing.

[zosocane]

Here, poor quality (see: critical & audience response) of BvS easily cost it ~$200 million. (Assumption: Final worldwide gross of only $900 million vs. minimum $1.1 bn. expectation).

 

Bottom line: someone's getting fired.

 

Agreed. And I would be shocked -- shocked -- if WB leaves Zack Snyder in the director's chair for JLA or any other DC film. There has to be a reckoning.

[Bosco685]

Are we looking at the same numbers for international?

 

Batman Begins $167M

Dark Knight $470M

DKR $636M

 

it wasn't until the 3rd installment that Nolan's Batman beat out BvS... I wonder how JLA 2 will do overall compared to the above numbers.

 

We are looking at the same numbers. I include the 2016 worldwide total by converting this to recent USD. So do remember when you compare these movies only the worldwide adjusted displays same USD.

 

BATMAN BEGINS

Domestic: $206,852,432 (55.3%)

Foreign: $167,366,241 (44.7%)

Worldwide: $374,218,673

 

THE DARK KNIGHT

Domestic: $534,858,444 (53.2%)

Foreign: $469,700,000 (46.8%)

Worldwide: $1,004,558,444

 

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

Domestic: $448,139,099 (41.3%)

Foreign: $636,800,000 (58.7%)

Worldwide: $1,084,939,099

[drotto]

Here, poor quality (see: critical & audience response) of BvS easily cost it ~$200 million. (Assumption: Final worldwide gross of only $900 million vs. minimum $1.1 bn. expectation).

 

Bottom line: someone's getting fired.

 

Agreed. And I would be shocked -- shocked -- if WB leaves Zack Snyder in the director's chair for JLA or any other DC film. There has to be a reckoning.

 

I believe Snyder has already started shooting JLA 1 about 2 weeks ago. So him leaving in the immediate future seems unlikely.

[Gatsby77]

Are we looking at the same numbers for international?

 

Batman Begins $167M

Dark Knight $470M

DKR $636M

 

it wasn't until the 3rd installment that Nolan's Batman beat out BvS... I wonder how JLA 2 will do overall compared to the above numbers.

 

We are looking at the same numbers. I include the 2016 worldwide total by converting this to recent USD. So do remember when you compare these movies only the worldwide adjusted displays same USD.

 

BATMAN BEGINS

Domestic: $206,852,432 (55.3%)

Foreign: $167,366,241 (44.7%)

Worldwide: $374,218,673

 

THE DARK KNIGHT

Domestic: $534,858,444 (53.2%)

Foreign: $469,700,000 (46.8%)

Worldwide: $1,004,558,444

 

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

Domestic: $448,139,099 (41.3%)

Foreign: $636,800,000 (58.7%)

Worldwide: $1,084,939,099

 

 

I think it was posted a few hundred pages back but do we have a benchmark for the average increase in international screens and/or % over those 12 years?

 

I suspect it's not that Batman Begins didn't resonate as well internationally as much as the international market for U.S. films was then much much smaller.