Weekend Thread | Official Estimates: Moana - 55.5/81.1M; Fantastic Beasts - 45.1M; Doctor Strange - 13.4M; Allied - 13/18M; Arrival - 11.3M; Trolls - 10.3M; Bad Santa 2 - 6.1/9M

[keysersoze123]

2x budget is not enough. There are other costs like prints, marketing etc. Spielberg is definitely biggest ever(especially when you look at breadth of his efforts). But last 2 decades he has delivered flops and even disappointing mainstream movies. 

[Noctis]

Omg where is rth

[titanic2187]

Rth has abandoned us......

[Blaze Heatnix]

I went to the shopping yesterday, and there were tons of people to watch FB. It was delicious.

 

Word of mouth definitely made its part in Brazil. It was crazy good, crazy sexy and crazy exciting.

[wildphantom]

1 hour ago, keysersoze123 said:

2x budget is not enough. There are other costs like prints, marketing etc. Spielberg is definitely biggest ever(especially when you look at breadth of his efforts). But last 2 decades he has delivered flops and even disappointing mainstream movies. 

 

I didn't see any. Genuinely. 

Perhaps Crystal Skull, but I enjoyed it very much all the same - despite not being as good as the other three. 

 

Amistad

The Lost World

Saving Private Ryan

AI - Artificial Intelligence

Catch Me if You Can

Minority Report

The Terminal

Munich

War of the Worlds

Crystal Skull

War Horse

Tintin

Lincoln

Bridge of Spies

The BFG

 

15 films. All good to really great. 5 of them nominated for Best Picture. 4 of them monster blockbuster hits. 

There isn't a director in the business that's had a run as good as that in the last 20 years. Let's not forget the two decades he had that preceded those - lol.  

 

He is by a million miles the king of Hollywood since the late 70's. Nobody even comes close. 

[baumer]

1 hour ago, keysersoze123 said:

2x budget is not enough. There are other costs like prints, marketing etc. Spielberg is definitely biggest ever(especially when you look at breadth of his efforts). But last 2 decades he has delivered flops and even disappointing mainstream movies. 

 

2X the budget is what we have always used.  For all of the things you mention here, they are also offset by TV rights, HV (DVD, BR) Digital downloads and so on.  You can't just re-invent the wheel this late in the game @keysersoze123.  While the true profit to a studio will never be knows, the 2X gross to budget ratio is pretty fair and we have been using it since I've been on these forums since 2003.

[The Futurist]

"There is a time to be artistic, and there is a time to sell cars."

 

Steven Spielberg 

 

 

 

 

[Valonqar]

Yeah, Spielberg never had a mega flop. More like disappointments rather than a career or a studio ending bomb (Ishtar, Heaven's Gate, Waterworld, Golden Compass).

 

Hell, Bigelow had a megaflop with K19: The Widowmaker (100M budget/65M worldwide gross) but bounced back with a small budget THL. 

 

Bombs end careers mostly when there's a bigger story behind the scene, like director's egomaniac behavior, etc. Hollywood doesn't easily get rid of decent talented people who just weren't lucky this time around. Look how long they keep around actors who can't open a movie to save their lives, yet are constantly given to headline projects.

Edited November 27, 2016 by Valonqar

[Dingdong123]

So we aint getting Saturday estimates?

[Mojoguy]

So we aint getting Saturday estimates?

We will get the Sat numbers 6 hours from now. Now go to sleep or do other stuff until they come out.

Edited November 27, 2016 by Mojoguy

[POTUS 2020]

2 minutes ago, Mojoguy said:

We will get the Sat numbers 6 hours from now. Now go to sleep or do other stuff.

4 hours

A nap will do

[Mojoguy]

We will get the official weekend estimates in a few hours.

[terrestrial]

9 hours ago, robertman2 said:

Piranha 2

Please read up on the background to that one (btw, it is not called Pirhanha 2, Pirhanha 2 got released in 2012, the Cameron 'involved' one is titled = Piranha Part Two: The Spawning), you might be surprsed and - hopefully - never list that one again. And just in case: do not fall for the so called directors cut, it is still the 'producers' cut, he was not involved in the cut of that 'film'.

 

26 minutes ago, Christmas Baumer said:

2X the budget is what we have always used. ....

I disagree, there were even decades back not only a few people pointing out about calculating budget times 2 is too low, including for dom, but especially if a considerable part was made in OS.

For films releaded in e.g. this decade I use times 3, especially if China's part is a big one (25% return for the distributors), For films e.g. out of the '90 I use times 2.2, depending on OS split even a bit more.

[titanic2187]

24 minutes ago, terrestrial said:

Please read up on the background to that one (btw, it is not called Pirhanha 2, Pirhanha 2 got released in 2012, the Cameron 'involved' one is titled = Piranha Part Two: The Spawning), you might be surprsed and - hopefully - never list that one again. And just in case: do not fall for the so called directors cut, it is still the 'producers' cut, he was not involved in the cut of that 'film'.

 

I disagree, there were even decades back not only a few people pointing out about calculating budget times 2 is too low, including for dom, but especially if a considerable part was made in OS.

For films releaded in e.g. this decade I use times 3, especially if China's part is a big one (25% return for the distributors), For films e.g. out of the '90 I use times 2.2, depending on OS split even a bit more.

normally I use weighted average method, splitting the gross into 3 parts, USA, OS without china and china.

Example for captain america 3, $1153m WW, $408m USA, $555m OS, and $190m from china.

Assume 55% for USA, 45% OS and 25%China: it would be (408 x 0.55) + (555 x 0.45) + (190 x 0.25)= $521.65 estimated revenue for studio, only then minus $250m prod.budget and many more for P&A to get net profit.

[filmlover]

All of this talk of director's and no one mentions Zemeckis rough run recently?

 

Haven't seen Allied yet (soon) but I'm actually kinda sad he is looking at two big misses in a row. Oh well, at least he's given us the closest thing to a Christmas classic this generation (The Polar Express) which will continue to make dough for many years to come.

[iHeartJames]

4 minutes ago, filmlover said:

All of this talk of director's and no one mentions Zemeckis rough run recently?

 

Haven't seen Allied yet (soon) but I'm actually kinda sad he is looking at two big misses in a row. Oh well, at least he's given us the closest thing to a Christmas classic this generation (The Polar Express) which will continue to make dough for many years to come.

I've never gotten a chance to finish that movie for some reason something always comes up during the train part

[baumer]

But you are arbitrarily deciding what a movie is getting if you are using three times the budget. How can you possibly know what a film studio actually gets from each film? You don't know what they get in Germany or what they get in Luxembourg or what they get in Brazil or what they get from Russia and so on and so on. You have the 25% figure from China but that's not even accurate because every film is different. For example I read that Transformers is basically a 40% return in China back to the studios. So unless you have absolute facts where you are privy to a budget sheet that shows exactly what percentage is coming back we have used the two times the budget for 20 years. I don't see why that would change now simply because we don't have the facts in front of us.

[terrestrial]

13 minutes ago, titanic2187 said:

normally I use weighted average method, splitting the gross into 3 parts, USA, OS without china and china.

Example for captain america 3, $1153m WW, $408m USA, $555m OS, and $190m from china.

Assume 55% for USA, 45% OS and 25%China: it would be (408 x 0.55) + (555 x 0.45) + (190 x 0.25)= $521.65 estimated revenue for studio, only then minus $250m prod.budget and many more for P&A to get net profit.

Usually I read 0.4 as the muliplier for non-China OS, but that seems to shift at least in some key markets. It depends also strongly on the distributor, e.g. Disney is far more ... energetic to get the max. possible.

Means e.g. here small city cinemas got usually a better for the cinemas percentage, but since I think 2 years or so they do not get that anymore. They tried even to boycott Disney distributed films,.. not any-more (at least the majority). As far as I know e.g. smaller distributors have by far not reached the same percentage. And the basic percentage was in past deeper than now ....

 

Local laws too can cut into what cinemas/distributors  get, here e.g. between 1.8% and 3% goes to the 'Film Support' = out of that money film-makers who do want to do a cultural film can get money for the production out of that fond (?term?), depending on detail up to 8% of the whole production costs.

 

If I am interested into the details of a film in-depth I too look into it similar to your approach or even more so, incl tax rebates, product placement and,..., but if it is only about to get an ~ impression I use the rule of thumb like e.g. Baumer, but with other multiples.

 

Distribution budget I do see as done via TV, HV, ... at least with films who get seeked out by TV/merchandise/... for getting the rights. It is not correct to do so, but:

to me it is the film studios profit I am interested into, not the distributor, even if they need to stay afloat too. A distributor might distribute films not even out of it's own mother company, is not as bound to what to chose and what not in comparison to a film studio like e.g. Marvel, as part of Disney is, see your example CA 3.

 

Also how much in average a company spends varies to other companies (WB seems to pay a considerable bigger amount / percentage per film than e.g. Disney, see TalismanRing's quotes out of websites observing that for  the US market) and varies even between films distributed by the same company.

Plus the contracts between distributors and cinemas still vary in general and about the splitting-conditions depending on how long it is running in the cinemas date-wise (not as much as in the past).

Plus special circumstances, see actual Billy Linn / Sony project.

For e.g. an indy specialised on an US theme I take a complete other approach....

[terrestrial]

26 minutes ago, Christmas Baumer said:

But you are arbitrarily deciding what a movie is getting if you are using three times the budget. How can you possibly know what a film studio actually gets from each film? You don't know what they get in Germany or what they get in Luxembourg or what they get in Brazil or what they get from Russia and so on and so on. You have the 25% figure from China but that's not even accurate because every film is different. For example I read that Transformers is basically a 40% return in China back to the studios. So unless you have absolute facts where you are privy to a budget sheet that shows exactly what percentage is coming back we have used the two times the budget for 20 years. I don't see why that would change now simply because we don't have the facts in front of us.

see my answer to titanic2187

Plus

Even here at BOT are users who since years do not use the times 2 multiplier, I think even some of your co-mods and/or admins wrote accordingly in the past.

 

Edit:

see the text about distribution.... 'It is not correct to do so '

= I am aware about the BO income first goes to the distributor (ignoring cinemas for the moment),...

= it is not correct to move HV/TV/... income to them to counterbalance distribution costs, but to stay with the rule-of-thumb style to see with a fast glance if a film should have left the reds,... I still use it like you, just using other multipliers.

If I am a bit more seriously interested I usually start into looking for a film's BO/other income/... = it being profitable earliest 2y after the last country it got released in.

Edited November 27, 2016 by terrestrial

[FantasticBeasts]

When will we know the Saturday numbers??