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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah when i see “cost 112m” I interpret is as “the producers probaly siphoned 56mil to themselves from the films budget before a single copy was ever sold”
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.
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.
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.
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.
As I understand it as a layman:
Famously, fucking The Empire Strikes Back didn’t make any money
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.
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.
Yeah when i see “cost 112m” I interpret is as “the producers probaly siphoned 56mil to themselves from the films budget before a single copy was ever sold”
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.