Suicide Squad: 750 - 800 Million needed to break even?

[Lawlight]

Soundwave said:

Augen said:

I'd say Avatar had a high threshold to satisfy the studio given the new technology they developed for it.

As others have pointed out they don't take home 800 million, they take home anywhere from 300-500 million of that depending on where revenue comes from.

Given all the accounting practices my simple rule is this, they don't keep making sequels to films that lose money (like they tried to insist about the Harry Potter films losing money).

Yeah Hollywood studios are notorious for lying about what is the true break even point for movies. They want it to be as high as possible so people with back end deals (a percentage of the profits) can take as little as possible. They also want to be able to claim as many tax benefits/filming benefits as they can. 

Personally I don't really believe many of these break even numbers, and I think things like the cost of marketing are grossly inflated by studios. 

Every blockbuster movie basically needs to sell $500-$600+ million to make a profit these days apparently, if that's the case IMO blockbuster movies would quickly be extinct because more than 1/2 of them lose money by that metric. 

Obviously they are not losing money because studios keep investing in bigger budget films. 

Also it's understated that North American theater chains don't actually get much of ticket prices. Most blockbuster movies are front loaded and the studio collects up to 70% of that in actuality, I am dubious about the 55%-45% split. The reason popcorn and soda is sky high in price is because that's basically the only thing movie theaters make money off of. 

That's because marketing costs are rising. Take your beloved Ghostbusters, for eg, $144M production budget and $100M marketing budget for a total of $244M. So, yeah, it does need $500M WW to break even.