• unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    421·
    18 hours ago

    The thing is they dont “bomb” they create revenue stream and they even make a profit most of the time.

    Morbius had a cost of $75–83 million and a Box Office return of $167.5 million
    Most of the other recent ones also turned a profit

    Of course there are some break evens or minor flops, but they dont care about that, they just want volume. Quantity over quality is what makes for large salaries for bosses.

    • djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      40·
      17 hours ago

      A big thing you aren’t including in those production costs is marketing, which is a huge part of a film’s budget that always gets conveniently left out of these calculations because Hollywood doesn’t include marketing costs as part of production…for some reason.

      A good rule of thumb is that most studios spend an additional amount roughly equal to 50% of what the film cost to make on marketing. So the total Morbius costed Sony is likely closer to 112m-124m. Still profitable, but quite a thin margin. For Tron:Ares, it’ll need to clear ~270m to actually make money. Since most of these studios treat these films like investments, that’s p bad RoI.

      • ideonek@piefed.socialEnglish
        32·
        17 hours ago

        On the other hand they inflate the cost, by “renting” equipment to themselves, so who the fuck knows what’s going on… I would be more concerned with the opportunity costs. Breaking even or even a reasonable profit is just not enought for those gluttonous monsters.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
          2·
          6 hours ago

          It makes some sense for them to rent the equipment to themselves because it effectively adds opportunity cost to the budget. That equipment can’t be used on another film, so it has an opportunity cost to the studio to be used in this one. Are the numbers reasonable though? Idk.

        • justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io
          6·
          14 hours ago

          As I understand it as a layman:

          1. They put out a cost to profit that says whatever they are trying to say to investors, the market and potential investors.
          2. They use a 2nd, greatly inflated, number when paying the actors and staff so that very few movies have ever made money according to this method.
          • bless@lemmy.mlEnglish
            2·
            4 hours ago

            Famously, fucking The Empire Strikes Back didn’t make any money

          • ideonek@piefed.socialEnglish
            2·
            7 hours ago

            I heard one of many trick they do is creating the shell companies to produce a specific movie. Than that company pay for borrowing equipments, studios, licences etc from parent company… And than its bankruped beecouse the move “didn’t do that well”… All profits ate transfered upfront, while or costs are part of the bankruptcy process.

      • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        21·
        17 hours ago

        Right, but isn’t there literally a saying about how fucked up the ‘accounting’ is for movies? Something along the lines of “hollywood accounting”…

        I wouldn’t trust the ‘profits’ or ‘costs’ of any of those movies as far as I could throw them.

        • Denjin@feddit.ukEnglish
          15·
          16 hours ago

          The Return of the Jedi grossed $482,466,382 and yet David Prowse has never received a penny in residuals because of the absurd “distribution fees” charged to the production company by 20th Century Fox. It apparently never made any profit.

  • djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    34·
    18 hours ago

    I mean, this one at least makes sense though, Leto was one of the main producers of the film. It’s like when Ryan Reynolds worked to get Deadpool made and cast himself as Deadpool. It’s not like a casting director actually thought Leto would be good for the role.