I thought the studio gets much more than 50% of the ticket revenue??

http://www.themovieblog.com/2007/economics-of-the-movie-theater-where-the-money-goes-and-why-it-costs-us-so-much/

Here it states that initially the cinema only usually gets 20-25% and in subsequent weeks(when the viewer count diminishes), the cinema gets a higher percentage.

Is this wrong?

That is from 2007 isn't it.

Either way, people have shown ll through this thread (if you read the whole thing and follow their links for proof), that there are many different theories or ideas on how the studios get their cut out of the large dollars that movies "make" from box office.  So, we will never have a consensus on VGchartz.  Everyone here wants to point to one little article or whatever and hope that it is the answer. 

I can say this, I read THR.com(the holllywood reporter), Variety.com, Moxofficemojo.com, Boxofficeguru.com, BoxofficeProphets.com and IMDB.com almost every single day.  Very few times will you find an actual article explaining how all this breaks down, only bits and pieces thrown into other articles about a particular topic.  One thing is clear, the 50% is on the high end and it could go down from there and that is only the US sales.  Outside of the US, it starts at 40% and goes way down from there depending on the market(think china at 25%! or Russia at 30%).

The short answer is that there is no answer.  And, like a few people are debating above, the way studios account for this stuff makes it almost impossible to ever know anyway.

Yes, from 2007 so it could have changed since then.

So in places like China and Russia the studio gets even less of a cut? Wow.

It's also different for each studio or even each movie. Larger movies can cut better deals, since they pretty much know it's going to make a lot of money.  The theatres may also have "flop" clauses in those agreements, which means their cut will go up quicker if the movie fails, so they don't end up making very little if a movie under performs. 

Personally, I always use 55%, just to give the studio the benefit of doubt.  And who knows if they are slightly exaggerating their marketing budget.  Of course, it's probably closer to 50%, truthfully.

Even if we do a very conservative calculation the movie will profit big:

Cost of movie + marketing= $285 million

Revenue from worldwide ticket sales: 0,4 x $800 million = $320 million
Revenue from DVD-sales (rufly 5% of movie ticket sales) = $40 million
Revenue from cable and streaming = $30 million
Revenue from global regular TV rights = $40 million
Revenue from toys and merchanise = $50 million

Total profit: $480 million - $285 million = $195 million

Hmm this seems more likely, but I still have feeling it will be shy by 100 Million in terms of boxoffice, imagine what it could have done with China. 

Not that much more I'm thinking it would have made $50 million tops there, half as much as Batman Vs Superman did there since its a new IP and I doubt many Chinese people are familiar with any of the characters in it.

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. 

No China and half of Mexico pulled out, that could have potentially been anywhere between another $50-100 million that this movie supposedly needs. It needs to have a solid second weekend in the U.S. and European countries. At this rate, it may not break $550 million for all we can tell.
Honestly though as I said in another thread, I think this was a fun movie to finish the season.