Barnack

I think it is a combination of the 2. Destruction of the home entertainment value made movie more dependent on the box office performance than before and the explosion of the OS market gave movie that can work everywhere a big advantage over the other on the theatrical screen. It is hard for a product made at 40 to 70 million to compete with one made with those 300-400 million budget like those giant PG-13 movies with giant world release, specially that they fight for very similar screen that sold ticket at similar price, those who become a must see on theater for sound/image spectacle reason has the advantage. If middle range type of movie would compete movie that cost 2,2.5 time there budget like in the past it would be a closer game or if they didn't have to do well at a first weekend to have a chance.

I would imagine many big movie in the dvd bubbles era did, theatrical was less than 30% of the studio revenues back then, and went up close to 35-40% over time by now. If you look at the sony leaked accounting, they made 29.49 billion in revenue from the movie release between 2006 and 2014. The breakdown of the revenue source by segment went like this: Domestic Theatrical 5,359,831 18% Intl theatrical 4,896,173 17% DOMESTIC HOME ENT REVENUE 7,151,339 24% DOMESTIC HOME ENT PPV REVENUE 591,133 2% INTL HOME ENT REVENUE 3,167,917 11% INTL HOME ENT PPV REVENUE 173,369 1% DOMESTIC TV PPV REVENUE 263,639 1% DOMESTIC PAY TV REVENUE 1,656,035 6% DOMESTIC FREE TV REVENUE 1,088,838 4% INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION 4,659,861 16% AIRLINES AND MUSIC 217,513 1% CONSUMER PRODUCTS REVENUE 270,395 1% So in total Theatrical revenue: 10.25 billion Home entertainment: 11.08 billion TV: 6.315 billion You can look at this image to see the relative importance of theatrical relative to the global feature film revenue in that era: Some of example of movie that did well at the box office and did more on Home entertainment: Captain Phillips: 218 million ww box office, 108 million in theatrical revenue, 110.97 million from home entertainment Pursuit of happyness: 307 million ww box office, 135 million from theater, 160.5 million from home entertainment. It is common for comedy too, like Grown ups, Click (Adam Sandler movies in general) to do so. When you look at how big domestic home revenue were in that period (almost 50% bigger than domestic box office) and how it is heavily correlated with the box office performance, it does show why domestic box office is more important than International, it is not just because you get 53% vs 35 to 47% of the revenue going to you, but because you have usually a much better part of the toy/home video/etc... domestic market than oversea. If you consider (TV+home video) vs Theater, almost all movie ever made in the home video era made more from those than from theater.

If you are talking about the-numbers figure ? They are not North American, only united state, at least when you go there: http://www.the-numbers.com/alltime-bluray-sales-chart They say: All-Time Best-Selling Blu-ray Titles in the United States And they are only estimate, Amazon/Wal-Mart and many other big vendor to do disclose the sales, as they say: Precise information on Blu-ray sales is not generally available. Our Blu-ray sales figures are estimates based on studio figures, publicly available data, and private research on retail sales carried out by Nash Information Services. The figures include estimated sales at Wal-Mart and other retailers that do not publicly release sales information. There is a good enough correlation between home entertainment revenue from the Sony leaked accounting and the-numbers figures to make them useful (some type of movie are more rentals than movie people buy, like Sandler/Will Farrell type of comedy), but as dvd/bluray sales become less and less relevant so does that metric. But we cannot use those numbers to talk about record or reaching precise landmark, they are only gross estimate, and for just one country anyway.

Why would 90 million opening weekend be the floor ? (I would think number around Ant-Man would be the floor, 60 million/175 total) Doctor strange just did 85 with a major box office draw in the lead role, Ant-Man did 57 million. Guardian of the Galaxy is the only non-sequel, non-RDJ to do over 90 million and that had impressive marketing, reviews and felt fresh relative to the other MCU output. Is it because Black Panther has a better release date ?

It was always a very frontloaded franchise that rely on a fanbases, but X-Men apocalypse made the top 15 of last year, with an impressive 543.9 million worldwide almost 200 million more than is direct predecessor/group of heroes First Class, and a first weekend very similar to Days of Future Past in many market once adjusted for the new exchange rate (a bit bigger even I think overall), if the movie would have been good, it would have made a lot. You could be right (it would not surprise me) but the recent X-men related output did really good numbers: 1 Deadpool Fox $783.1 $363.1 46.4% $420.0 53.6% 2016 2 X-Men: Days of Future Past Fox $747.9 $233.9 31.3% $513.9 68.7% 2014 3 X-Men: Apocalypse Fox $543.9 $155.4 28.6% $388.5 71.4% 2016 4 X-Men: The Last Stand Fox $459.4 $234.4 51% $225.0 49% 2006 5 The Wolverine Fox $414.8 $132.6 32% $282.3 68% 2013 6 X2: X-Men United Fox $407.7 $214.9 52.7% $192.8 47.3% 2003 7 X-Men Origins: Wolverine Fox $373.1 $179.9 48.2% $193.2 51.8% 2009 8 X-Men: First Class Fox $353.6 $146.4 41.4% $207.2 58.6% 2011 9 X-Men Fox $296.3 $157.3 53.1% $139.0 46.9% 2000 The 3 most recent X-men movie are the 3 that did the most worldwide in absolute number after all, it is more because of how popular supeheroes are and how big the global box office became in general, than the X-Men in particular thought, but those are just 2 big number to stop making them and for Logan to not have a chance to break out and be a big 350+ million worldwide massive success.

Getting it in the can was probably only 20 to 25k, the 60k-70k people talk about include the post-production to generate the Sundance version (and is a bit on the low side). But after it was bought, they also did some additional photography/re-shoot not just a new sound work (not sure how much ended up in the final movie thought). http://ew.com/article/2009/07/09/blair-witch/ SANCHEZ: Well, the original budget to get the film in the can was probably between $20,000 and $25,000. Then, once we got to Sundance to make a print and do a sound mix, we were probably more in the neighborhood of $100,000. And then once Artisan Entertainment bought the film, they put another half-million dollars into it. They did a new sound mix, and they had us re-shoot some stuff. They didn’t like the original ending with Mike standing in the corner. They asked us to shoot some new endings — Mike hanging by his neck; Mike crucified on a big stick figure; Mike with his shirt ripped open and all bloodied. We shot them but ended up staying with our original ending. So the budget of what you saw in the theaters was probably $500,000 to $750,000.

Less than 75 million for a net production budget make sense. Currently the Hungary to US dollar is around 0.0035, it was 0.0045 before the end of summer 2014, that in part why Inferno was so much cheaper than expected, you only pay 77% of what you would have paid usually (and often planned to paid) in local expense. They also have a generous tax rebate of 25% percent (that accept that you pass some US expense on it), that can turn planned a 110 million gross production movie into a less than 75 million net one. As a reference the recent movie Allied had a planned net production budget of around 70 million With as planned salary Brad Pitt :17.5 million v 20% Zemeckis : 8.0 million v 15% Graham King (producer): 2 million v 5% With an early estimated break even point at $167 WWBO ($67M DBO / $100M IBO) and an early estimated target around $230 WWBO ($100M DBO / $130M IBO), when studio were bidding on it. It is easy to imagine something similar for the movie budget, break even point (maybe a little bit higher with the home entertainment market diminishing value) and the director / star actor type of deal, maybe a little less around 14/15 and 6/7 because they are less established.

The different rumored budget are a bit misleading, the Sundance print had a 60-70k cost, but that was not the movie we saw in theater, after the movie was bought at Sundance, they made reshoot (lot of it was not used thought), professional high level sound editing and mix was made and so on, it was more a 500 to 750k movie. Not that it matter, making 160.75 million in profit or 160.06 million in profit is pretty much the same. Some element of it was extremelly good, for example lot of people knew that the movie was fake but still thought it was about a real rural legend, it was all 100% made up, but the level of detail was just enough to make it feal real. The exposition made by interviewing people of the town instead of being in a library was also really well done, apparently some of the interview were not made with actor but with real local people that were making stuff on camera, like they often do if you ask people if they have seen UFOs and so on. The production and acting felt also really real, it was shot a bit like in Tropic Thunder, GPS destination, message in milk box about the scene, didn't sleep or ate much during the shoot. On a technical level having 2 different camera, and 2 different source of sound, one on a camera, the other independant you do not always hear the sound from the current camera point of view, it shift, notably in the last scene at the house, made a interesting edit and visuals. For that and for the marketing that was part of the experience, it is one of the interesting art piece of the 90's imo. That aged really well imo, in part because the similar output released since has rarely been good.

Angel & Demon had a 196 million budget, people salary was cut by 50% and first dollar gross bonus removed (Hanks and Howards accepted to open previous contract for that). that was sony offer according to the leaked e-mail: 2. Fixed fees of 16.25m (which represents a 50% reduction from A&D) as follows: a) hanks – 10m howard 5m c) grazer 1.25m Given the contractual first negotiation rights that ron and brian have (which entitles them to be offered AT LEAST the terms they received on A&D, which included first dollar gross), Davinci Code is one of the biggest success of all time, while Angels & Demons made a lost of over 40 million for the studio and third party investor. The main people needed to accept a massive paycutt to make Inferno happen.

Does the market changed that much since 2011 ? I suspect you are right, the buzz around a 3D re-release had probably a 3/4 year's windows of 2009 to 2012. All the big re-release happened during that time: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/showdowns/chart/?id=3drereleases.htm Opening a re-release at 30 million, is pretty hard to imagine now, we will need a new very popular technology before we get something similar happening again.

Oblivion/Elysium are clear box office underperformer (failure), but were still profitable. Elysium didn't miss Sony 300 million world wide box office target by that much and still made 20.45 million in profit, depending of Tom Cruise participation deal I imagine Oblivion did something really similar.

It is not a good way to judge how profitable they are, for sure, but it is a good way to judge what audience go see and want and domestic audience wanted to see a Ghostbuster very much, more than pretty much any original live action movie last year, despite average marketing and reviews. That show how much the general audience is starving and asking for franchise.

Yes, but in recent year big budget double it at the box office at a much higher rate than smaller budget, they are still safer to do and clearly the most popular with the audience, none of those movie will come close to Star wars 8.

Achieving to do that much in a complete critical failure is kind of why, they pay them that much and make it a big budget movie because it make it a much safer project than a 30 million movie that would have had a hard time getting a release (even the acclaimed Ex Machina had a hard time reaching 2000 theater and didn't had a release in many market).

Look at the top 20 of 2016: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2016 Pretty much all big CGI heavy sequels/franchise entry. All of them are, instead Central intelligence. Audience are clearly saying them to continue doing those movies.

I don't think it work like that, participation bonus are not on actual net profit, even when they are called profit participation they tend to be calculate on premade rules of thumbs agreement (mutliply .53* domestic, 0.4*foreign, 0.25* china box office, remove 10% of the top, minus pre agreed break even point and that were you get your percentage of), actor can estimate their bonus themselves using box office mojo and a simple equation. I don't think Harry Potter ever said they didn't make a profit, there is even a leaked distribution report that show people receiving a really giant participation bonus: https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/harry-potter-net-profits.jpg?w=605 Look at the line called Negative cost and/or advance, currently at 316 million (I doubt the movie costed that much to do), it is advancing at the rate of 33% of the gross revenue (the line just above), I think it is the movie production cast, plus the participation bonus to the cast, director, producer and Rowling, and that it is why that cost is still growing year after the release. Warner being treated as a theatrical distributor on that accounting mechanic thus not having the DVD revenues on it or the television revenues, by far the biggest source of revenue at that time (just look how much it is making from VHS...), make it look strange to us a little bit, but add those 2 revenues source and it was by hundreds of million into profit. They certainly never said to David Heyman or Rowling that those movie were not making money, they would have changed studio and not continue to work for decades with Warner Brothers. Most of those story about studio declaring a lost to get out of participation bonus are simply bad reporting (Studio never said that Forest Gump didn't make money or the Lords of the rings, for other famous example)

I could be misreading your post, but it is not that the movie will break even and then there will have the dvds, streaming service and TV come in. dvds, streaming service, tv and others is where the majority of revenues come from for the studios (Warner Brothers in 2015 made only 30% of is motion picture division revenue from theater ticket sales for example, without considering the video games movie adaptation sales). To go back to the Sony Elysium example. That is a breakdown of the movie revenue source DOMESTIC THEATRICAL REVENUE 43,737 INTL THEATRICAL REVENUE 74,017 DOMESTIC HOME ENT REVENUE 53,270 DOMESTIC HOME ENT PPV REVENUE 9,604 INTL HOME ENT REVENUE 36,210 INTL HOME ENT PPV REVENUE 6,665 DOMESTIC PAY TV REVENUE 13,552 DOMESTIC FREE TV REVENUE 12,193 INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION REVENUE 45,600 AIRLINES AND MUSIC 2,701 NON-THEATRICAL & OTHER 335 From the total of 297.934 million in revenues, about 40% came from theatrical (117.808 million), (close to the studio average of 35% of revenue coming from theater, big movie tend to do a bigger part of their revenue in cinema), 60% came after the theater run (180.126 million) A movie like Passenger (well almost every movie made in the home video era) do not turn a profit before television revenue come in at the very end. TV is around 25+% of a studio revenue from their motion picture division, much bigger than a movie division gross margin of profit.

It did get around 30 million on it's marketing tv budget in the united states alone, it was an small for a wide release big budget studio movie, but still considerable. There is no good rules of thumb to evaluate a movie break even point, because where the box office come from change it, the ratio production cost/total cost can change a lot, people can have first dollar gross type of contract, but the best I did come up with seem to be around for big movies is (1.3 * domestic box office + foreign box office) >= 2 * (net production budget + participation bonus before hitting the mark) smaller movie will need a much bigger ratio, because the production budget is much smaller relative to the releasing cost. Movies almost never do that, most movie have a theatrical release that cost more than the theatrical revenue, if you look at a studio annual report, they do 30-40% of their annual revenue from theatrical, most of the revenue come after. Think about a movie like Passenger, imagine a 400 million world box office, divided 70 million in china, 130 million in domestic, 200 million foreign. 130 * 0.53 + 200 * .4 + 70 * .25 = 166.4 million, more than enough to pay the 100 million world release, but the 66 million you are left with do not pay the production budget and the overhead (and the participation bonus would have started to kick in too) To not be a flop (i.e. not loose money) for a movie like Passenger the best reference is probably the movie Elyisum and looking at sony leaked document to see is break even point and expectation, it has a similar budget in a similar genre. Elyisum with a 125.62 net production budget planned, with a world release P&A of about 100 million had Break even point: 91.6 domestic / 128.3 international box office, 219.9 worldwide total Targeted/budgeted to achieve (9.6% ROI): 125 dbo/175 ibo, 300 million worldwide Wished Return break (15.5% ROI): 145 dbo / 203 ibo, 348 million worldwide The movie ended up generating 297.93 million in total revenue, doing 20.453 million in profit for Sony, on a 93 million dbo / 193 million ibo 286 million worldwide box office performance.