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Soundwave on 10 April 2023
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IcaroRibeiro said:
mZuzek said:

Hence why it's often said that movies need to double their budget to break even. Either way the movie's gonna be massively profitable, it's essentially guaranteed to do at least $1b and that's with really bad legs. I wonder if it has a shot at $2b.

Just a minor correction, the common say about a mvoie needing to double down the budget is not related with marketing costs, rather with the fact that on average only half of the box office comes to the studios. The reasons behind this can vary, the most common ones are:

- Theaters earns a fair percentage of the box office gross

- Distributors and sales agents (responsible to make the movies to actuly arrive in the theaters, respecting contracts and countries laws) also have their share of the box office

- Taxes

So actually some movies needs sometimes even 4x of the budget to break even, depending on the marketing costs. If Mario has 100 million for budget and 100 million for marketing its probably going to break even tomorrow when it reaches 400 million

Kinda, sorta. 

Marketing costs are generally covered by post-theaterical release windows (TV rights, video on demand, and ultimately streaming), or should be, if you've overspent on marketing that way you're kinda screwed. In Mario's case (and as with many big budget blockbusters) there's also money from merchandising to take into account. 

It kind of sucks for Hollywood that the DVD market went to shit, that was for a long time actually a bigger money maker for studios than even box office take and a reliable way for them to earn their money back. When you look at how much money the DVD/Blu-Ray market made for movies, it's almost kind of crazy that Hollywood studios did not stand firm and refuse to support streaming services, because if they could have maintained the DVD/Blu-Ray setup they would been making way more money. 

I'm just looking at DVD/Blu-Ray sales for like The Dark Knight (2008) ... 19.2 million copies sold in the US market alone, at lets say a $10 profit margin per unit for the studio, that's $192 million in profit on a film like that just from the US market alone, then probably add another $150 million in sales from global market ... you're making like $350 million just from the DVD/BR sales, which would more than cover all production and marketing expenses. 

While I get the convenience factor for people, if Hollywood studios had to do it again, I think they would stand steadfast in not giving films to Netflix. They could have maintained the home video control, even if it became a setup where people purchased movies digitally ($3.99 to rent, $14.99-$24.99 to buy) only. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 10 April 2023