Skyscraper | July 13 2018 | Legendary | Rawson Marshall Thurber directing. The Rock. China co-production, set in China.

[Jay Beezy]

Just now, KeepItU25071906 said:

one problem: Rock can use his trick pony in different movies, Diesel- not. Oops

That's not what this is about, though. It's about Rock's inability to take a hit. Vin Diesel doesn't seem to gloat about superficial "victories".

[Barnack]

20 minutes ago, Jay Beezy said:

30M prints and advertising. Just a guesstimate. I don't know the actual P&A number but it has to be at least 30M. And add that to the 69M production costs and you're likely looking at a combined cost of 100M+.

Ok it was so low I assumed it was something else, a world studio release is usually way more than 30m P&A, that a small domestic release cost alone.

 

I used 75m ww P&A and 105m total releasing cost when including home ent and TV in my numbers above. After residual and overhead my total cost was of 180m, much much more than 100m, if a 70m would cost only 100m in total, it would not need much at the box office to turn a great profit.

 

20 minutes ago, Jay Beezy said:

What matters most to a studio is how much money they get from a movie when it's in *theaters*. They want their movies to be moneymakers at the box office first and foremost.

I am not exactly sure what you mean by that, why would they care about how much money they make when it is in theater ? Because the future windows tend to be highly correlated with that one ? Well yes, but with the current interest rate the money made by the movie in the first 3 month and the 9 month after that.... not that big of a difference. Why would take care if the money come from movie ticket or somewhere else ? I never read anyone ever made that distinction.

 

20 minutes ago, Jay Beezy said:

If the studio doesn't recoup its budget at the box office, then it's a flop

You would need to define what you mean by that.

 

Do you mean if

(Dom rental + Intl rental)  < (Production cost + overhead + participation bonus at that moment in the movie still in theater + WW P&A)

 

If so about all movies are flops, Guardian of the Galaxy was a flop it didn't recoup is money just a the box office either.

 

A movie like Baywatch will have a total cost of what 150m if we do not consider residual, home entertainment release cost, before the bonus kick in, to make that from the box office alone, you need to make what around 340m ? So if a 70m movie does not make 340m at the box office (almost 5 times it's budget) it is a flop ?

 

How much do you think Deepwater Horizon needed to make to not be a flop ?

Edited July 25, 2018 by Barnack

[Captain Craig]

34 minutes ago, Heat Vision said:

Vin Diesel is the same but even he recognizes he's a one trick pony and sticks to Fast and Furious for the most part.

I still like his one trick pony being used as Riddick and XxX though so Vin gets 3 franchises out of my movie going dollar. 

[Jay Beezy]

21 minutes ago, Barnack said:

Ok it was so low I assumed it was something else, a world studio release is usually way more than 30m P&A, that a small domestic release cost alone.

 

I used 75m ww P&A and 105m total releasing cost when including home ent and TV in my numbers above. After residual and overhead my total cost was of 180m, much much more than 100m, if a 70m would cost only 100m in total, it would not need much at the box office to turn a great profit.

If P&A alone is what you say then it was definitely a flop. I have no idea what actual P&A was, but there was no way it was less than 30M. I used a baseline assumption I saw from before that P&A costs for studio A-movies were equal to at least 50% of production costs (though not included in production costs), although I think there's a minimum of 50M. So my mistake when I said 30M+ for P&A for Baywatch.

 

21 minutes ago, Barnack said:

Do you mean if

(Dom rental + Intl rental)  < (Production cost + overhead + participation bonus at that moment in the movie still in theater + WW P&A)

 

If so about all movies are flops, Guardian of the Galaxy was a flop it didn't recoup is money just a the box office either.

 

A movie like Baywatch will have a total cost of what 150m if we do not consider residual, home entertainment release cost, before the bonus kick in, to make that from the box office alone, you need to make what around 340m ? So if a 70m movie does not make 340m at the box office (almost 5 times it's budget) it is a flop ?

Guardians of the Galaxy production budget: 170M

 

Baseline P&A assumption: 85M

 

Domestic Retention: 167M

 

International Retention (excl. China): 141.5M

 

China Retention: 21.5M

 

You tie home entertainment release cost with home entertainment release revenue obviously.

 

Overhead calculation is sketchy naturally it can be perceived as an excuse to not pay percentage of profits as stipulated in contracts.

[Barnack]

1 hour ago, Jay Beezy said:

Guardians of the Galaxy production budget: 170M

 

Baseline P&A assumption: 85M

 

Domestic Retention: 167M

 

International Retention (excl. China): 141.5M

 

China Retention: 21.5M

 

You tie home entertainment release cost with home entertainment release revenue obviously.

 

Overhead calculation is sketchy naturally it can be perceived as an excuse to not pay percentage of profits as stipulated in contracts.

Overhead is defined and agreed in advance on by people getting performance percentage and it is there for that very reason yes, calculate a realistic bonus on a realistic profit, the cost of running a studio must be took into a consideration in how much movies made at some level.

 

85m for a SH world release would be quite low.

 

To have a gross idea you can look here:

https://deadline.com/2015/03/guardians-of-the-galaxy-profit-box-office-2014-1201391217/

 

Theatrical World Rental:  around 338m

Net Production cost: 196m

Theatrical World release cost: 148m

 

Total cost: around 344m + overhead + participation on box office performance people had.

 

6m still in the red. Without even considering overhead&participation bonus that started to kick in a while ago.

 

And we are talking about a major giant hit making hundreds and hundreds of millions in profits, one of the biggest of the year (5th according to deadline), Imagine for the regular success hit. It is common for movies to make less in theater to the studio than what it cost the studio release a movie theater and still make a big profit.

 

If you look at studio annual financial report, you will see a minority of the revenues coming from the box office (30%-40%) for the movie division.

 

I am not exactly sure what you mean (could you just the clear math formula ?) but the fact that Guardian of the Galaxy could end up a flop with it should make an alarm sound.

 

Edited July 25, 2018 by Barnack

[KeepItU25071906]

1 hour ago, Jay Beezy said:

It's about Rock's inability to take a hit. 

that's true, big ego can't take it.

[AndyK]

1 hour ago, Heat Vision said:

Vin Diesel is the same but even he recognizes he's a one trick pony and sticks to Fast and Furious for the most part.

He is Groot

[Jay Beezy]

34 minutes ago, Barnack said:

Theatrical World Rental:  around 338m

Net Production cost: 196m

Theatrical World release cost: 148m

 

Total cost: around 364m + overhead + participation on box office performance people had.

 

25m still in the red. Without even considering overhead&participation bonus that started to kick in a while ago.

196 + 148 is 344, not 364.

Edited July 25, 2018 by Jay Beezy

[Barnack]

28 minutes ago, Jay Beezy said:

196 + 148 is 344, not 364.

Yeah I removed my bonus estimate into the course, but you get the point, 344m + ovearhead + participation it is still above 338m.

 

And that for a giant success, imagine moderate success, just ok, just not loosing money.... That just an extreme example to show how hard it is to just make production cost + world release cost from theater (without even counting overhead and participation, 2 aspect people seem to count has completely different cost).

 

Spectre for example was a movie that was rumored to have a chance to achieve that (Made 880m at the box office)

 

At 770m WW it would have not done it (200/570).

 

Theatrical profit:

domestic rental: 102.74

intl rental: 235.89

Revenues:  338.63

 

Theatrical release cost:

Domestici: 62.06m

intl: 94.76m

Net production cost: 220m

Cost without overhead: 376.82

Cost with OH: 398.82m

Cost with OH and creative share: above 430m

 

 

Edited July 25, 2018 by Barnack

[dudalb]

2 hours ago, KeepItU25071906 said:

that's true, big ego can't take it.

And who else tweets a lot and has that trait?

 

I have lost a certain amount of respect for Johnson with his tweets; his attempts to prove that a flop or underperforming film is a big hit are pretty silly; he's not fooling anybody, really.

Edited July 26, 2018 by dudalb

[Jay Beezy]

2 hours ago, Barnack said:

Yeah I removed my bonus estimate into the course, but you get the point, 344m + ovearhead + participation it is still above 338m.

 

And that for a giant success, imagine moderate success, just ok, just not loosing money.... That just an extreme example to show how hard it is to just make production cost + world release cost from theater (without even counting overhead and participation, 2 aspect people seem to count has completely different cost).

 

Spectre for example was a movie that was rumored to have a chance to achieve that (Made 880m at the box office)

 

At 770m WW it would have not done it (200/570).

 

Theatrical profit:

domestic rental: 102.74

intl rental: 235.89

Revenues:  338.63

 

Theatrical release cost:

Domestici: 62.06m

intl: 94.76m

Net production cost: 220m

Cost without overhead: 376.82

Cost with OH: 398.82m

Cost with OH and creative share: above 430m

 

 

There must be some sort of loss threshold that would still allow for a sequel.

[vc2002]

44 minutes ago, dudalb said:

And who else tweets a lot and has that trait?

 

I have lost a certain amount of respect for Johnson with his tweets; his attempts to prove that a flop or underperforming film is a big hit are pretty silly; he's not fooling anybody, really.

 

Do you smell the saltyness The Rock is cooking.

[MrGlass2]

You can criticize The Rock for sometimes trashing negative articles on his social media, sending his tens of millions of followers against a poor journalist or blogger.

 

Having an over-optimistic outlook on his latest movie's financial prospects (and it was indeed #1 worldwide) is nothing out of the ordinary. Skyscraper will be a minor flop anyway.

[Barnack]

13 minutes ago, Jay Beezy said:

There must be some sort of loss threshold that would still allow for a sequel.

I am not sure if your are trolling or being serious.

 

What loss are you talking about exactly ?

[BadAtGender]

Saw it this evening. It delivered the mindless summer action fun I didn't know I needed today, and thus I enjoyed myself pretty much throughout.

[Jay Beezy]

10 hours ago, Barnack said:

I am not sure if your are trolling or being serious.

 

What loss are you talking about exactly ?

I'm talking about the maximum amount of money a movie could lose that the studio would still be willing to make a sequel.

[AndyK]

51 minutes ago, Jay Beezy said:

I'm talking about the maximum amount of money a movie could lose that the studio would still be willing to make a sequel.

Depends what you call a loss, most movies make a loss because of the accounting tricks that are used to avoid tax.

 

Usually they set each movie up as its own company, then they put huge charges on that company for distribution and other costs which stops it ever making a profit.

 

They also use that trick to avoid paying actors residuals.

[Jay Beezy]

2 hours ago, AndyK said:

Depends what you call a loss, most movies make a loss because of the accounting tricks that are used to avoid tax.

 

Usually they set each movie up as its own company, then they put huge charges on that company for distribution and other costs which stops it ever making a profit.

 

They also use that trick to avoid paying actors residuals.

That I know about very well.

[John Rambo]

Looks like Rocks very sensitive to flops. He has to learn a lot from Johnny Depp!!! 

 

He's a draw no doubt in that but doesn't necessarily mean all of his movies will/should do well!

[baumer]

For the record, @Jay Beezy...studios want to make as much as they can at the box office but none of them expect to turn a profit at the box office.  Films, in spite of what we nerds like to speculate on here, are made for the long haul.  They are made so that studios have a steady revenue stream 5-10-15 years down the road.  There's been many different articles where execs talk about this.  For example, when Titanic turned a profit at the theatre, producer Jon Landau said that it was the first time he had ever seen a picture go 100% black at the theatre.  Even though the HV market has taken a tumble, movies are still making money in all kinds of ways outside the theatrical release.  I'm not defending one movie over another, just saying that the theatrical take is still only part of the pie.