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Kasz216 on 27 April 2014
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pezus said:
Kasz216 said:

I'm not sure thats exactly true.

People tend to make the mistake of looking a Production Budget and comparing it vs the Box Office and thinking that's all there is it.

Marketing budgets are highly expensive.  The current one being nearly ~200 M itself.

Then distribution costs.

Then Movie theatres take 30% off the top...

Then up until 2011, Marvel actually got a percentage of theatre gross.  Which apparently is why Sony makes no money off Spiderman movie games or any spiderman merchandise including anything movie related.

Pure Box Office wise seems like the Original Trilogy Spiderman movies lost money overall past the first.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/03/16/the-key-question-for-sony-can-the-spider-man-movie.aspx

Aren't distribution costs included in the production budget? And what's your source for the marketing budget being nearly 200M? Let's say the combined budget is then 400-450M then and that theaters take 30%, that still means the movie only has to make around $600M at the box office, something every SM film has done easily so far.

$827m for them to break even? I simply can not believe that to be true. How did they reach that estimate?
Even if that's true, the break even point should be lower now due to the 2011 deal.


In theory yes.  In practice, usually not.  

I don't even think this is even covered in that article really, but the fun well known secret about movie studios is they all lie about their production budgets.

Making the 400-450M Total budget actually probably pretty low.

Spiderman 3 for example was at one time the most expensive movie of all time, and what was admitted wasn't even close to what industry insiders said it cost... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9914883

Spiderman 3 was the most expensive, but if you take a 350 Budget + 150 Marketing campaign, that's around 500 right there... and I'm not even sure this guy was talking about everything that has to do with the movie.

Additionally, keep in mind,  the above link was counting Marvel's cut for the first 3 Spdiermen movies.  Though there are plenty of other cuts that aren't accoutned for in the production budget because well... they can't.

For example points...  The big stars look overpaid with the big numbers they get upfront, but what people don't realize is they get even more overpaid by getting a percentage of the gate.

from the link above, they suggest that the actors, directors Producers etc share is about 25%.  (and that's a low amount!)  Heck they tend to even get a cut of the DVD sales.

They say share of the profits, but they likely mean gross revenue share as actors are generally not dumb enough to except anything but revenue numbers as studios will play with the "Profits".  (For example, Return of the Jedi with all of it's liscensings and rereleases has never made a profit according to Lucasfilms.)

 

So going back to the article... looking at what we know,  the 827 Sony and Marvel share is looking more like $372.2 Million.  (Probably a bit more since these guys would of gotten less points in Spiderman 1 then they would have 2 &3. which i want to say were negotiated together.)

Take out marvel's share, and add the Advertising budget of the first 3 Spiderman movies.  (100 for one to 150M for 3,  2 presumibly in the middle.)

 

and it becomes clear pretty quick how fast the numbers add up even with the understated exec budgets.