Joker: Folie a Deux | October 4, 2024 | Lady Gaga is Harley Quinn in this 200M+ musical sequel

[ZeeSoh]

1 hour ago, UnapologeticKenny said:

Variety is having the time of their lives with this news:

 

 

I thought the break even point would be higher, honestly. In 500/600M range - but maybe they are considering that not all the money came from the studio.

Yeah I don't see how the breakeven is 450 with a 190m budget plus 100m advertising budget. Even with a 50/50 dom international split won't get you to that number, even with a generous 60% cut from domestic and 0 gross from China. The dom % would have to be insanely high for the above to make sense. 

 

By my calculations based on expected gross from Dom/Int/China Joker 2 would net about 95 or so million. Which should be a theatrical loss of about 200m. This of course would not be the final number and does not include other costs such as any interest payments on borrowing as well as payments to individuals involved (if people like Phoenix, Phillips or Gaga had a deal to get a cut of gross), as well as earnings from PVOD/DVD as well as whatever value they earn from streaming.

 

Different people will have different ways of calculating theatrical profits or losses but there is not a one fits all multiplier for every movie. Many people use the 2.5x multiplier to calculate breakeven but even that is a very crude way of doing things as different movies will have different dom/int/China split which will impact net revenue. Add in the fact that we do not not get the marketing budget number for most movies and it makes guessing even harder. But overall I tend not to trust the industry trades in their analyses as they tend to be biased towards the studios imo.

[Mad Max007]

 

[redfirebird2008]

39 minutes ago, ZeeSoh said:

Yeah I don't see how the breakeven is 450 with a 190m budget plus 100m advertising budget. Even with a 50/50 dom international split won't get you to that number, even with a generous 60% cut from domestic and 0 gross from China. The dom % would have to be insanely high for the above to make sense. 

 

By my calculations based on expected gross from Dom/Int/China Joker 2 would net about 95 or so million. Which should be a theatrical loss of about 200m. This of course would not be the final number and does not include other costs such as any interest payments on borrowing as well as payments to individuals involved (if people like Phoenix, Phillips or Gaga had a deal to get a cut of gross), as well as earnings from PVOD/DVD as well as whatever value they earn from streaming.

 

Different people will have different ways of calculating theatrical profits or losses but there is not a one fits all multiplier for every movie. Many people use the 2.5x multiplier to calculate breakeven but even that is a very crude way of doing things as different movies will have different dom/int/China split which will impact net revenue. Add in the fact that we do not not get the marketing budget number for most movies and it makes guessing even harder. But overall I tend not to trust the industry trades in their analyses as they tend to be biased towards the studios imo.

 

 

The best thing Warner can do is lump Joker 1 and 2 together as a single project. Makes the loss on Joker 2 look a lot better when you factor in the very large profit on the first movie. 

[MysteryMovieMogul]

32 minutes ago, ZeeSoh said:

Yeah I don't see how the breakeven is 450 with a 190m budget plus 100m advertising budget. Even with a 50/50 dom international split won't get you to that number, even with a generous 60% cut from domestic and 0 gross from China. The dom % would have to be insanely high for the above to make sense. 

 

By my calculations based on expected gross from Dom/Int/China Joker 2 would net about 95 or so million. Which should be a theatrical loss of about 200m. This of course would not be the final number and does not include other costs such as any interest payments on borrowing as well as payments to individuals involved (if people like Phoenix, Phillips or Gaga had a deal to get a cut of gross), as well as earnings from PVOD/DVD as well as whatever value they earn from streaming.

 

Different people will have different ways of calculating theatrical profits or losses but there is not a one fits all multiplier for every movie. Many people use the 2.5x multiplier to calculate breakeven but even that is a very crude way of doing things as different movies will have different dom/int/China split which will impact net revenue. Add in the fact that we do not not get the marketing budget number for most movies and it makes guessing even harder. But overall I tend not to trust the industry trades in their analyses as they tend to be biased towards the studios imo.

Why do we trust that the numbers that outlets like Variety and Deadline give are true? They're like Palpatine during the Clone Wars, they play both sides, so why do we take them at their word regarding budgets?

[BoxOfficeFangrl]

1 hour ago, MysteryMovieMogul said:

Why do we trust that the numbers that outlets like Variety and Deadline give are true? They're like Palpatine during the Clone Wars, they play both sides, so why do we take them at their word regarding budgets?

Studios generally deny it when the trades report overly high budget info for a movie. Last year, when Variety briefly said that Oppenheimer's budget was $180 million, Universal shut that down really fast and confirmed the earlier reports of $100 million. It would've been a hit regardless, but the lower budget makes for a better story in the media (and on the awards campaign trail).

 

For Joker 2, the $190+ million figure was not great PR for Warner Bros. Before it released, WB still thought the OW would still be $50M at least. Two weeks ago, nothing was stopping them from having a "source" tell the trades that actually JFAD's budget was only $140M or so...except, that was likely not the truth. The movie would be flopping either way but with a smaller number out there, the narrative isn't as bad: it's less of a bomb, the costs aren't as unreasonable, so the execs don't get dragged as much for greenlighting it with no oversight and Phillips doesn't get painted as "setting nearly $200M on fire to give a middle finger to the fans", etc.

 

Even if there's an argument that the trades are biased against Joker 2 and therefore reporting falsely inflated budget info, it would've been pretty easy for WB, Phillips, De Luca, Abdy, Zaslav and the rest to find a friendly outlet to get "the truth" about Joker 2 out there (especially in the age of media Substacks, blogs, movie YouTubers, etc).

Edited yesterday at 02:19 AM by BoxOfficeFangrl

[HummingLemon496]

On 8/19/2024 at 11:43 AM, James said:

Joker 2 is beating the first one WW. Mark this comment.

[XenoMorph]

 

[HummingLemon496]

Joker 1 did $100M more than Captain Marvel WW if you exclude China where it wasn't released. $335M DOM + $739M OS = $1074M WW for Joker vs $426M DOM + $548M OS = $974M WW for CM.

 

Joker 2 WW-China will roughly equal CM2 WW-China

 

 

Edited yesterday at 06:24 AM by HummingLemon496

[ListenHunnyUrOver]

9 hours ago, Mad Max007 said:

 

The same Paul Schrader who said Parasite shouldn't have won Best Picture because it's not an American film? We don't care what he says.

[lookingformovies255]

3 hours ago, XenoMorph said:

 

Yes, it is very prudent to spend half a billion on movies that are not supposed to please their core audience. I'm very smart and portentous. 

Edited yesterday at 10:08 AM by lookingformovies255

[lookingformovies255]

So, Variety has confirmed that this will lose up to $200M. This will be one of the biggest bombs of all time. Where are all the "you don't know how this works" commentators? 

[efialtes76]

2 hours ago, lookingformovies255 said:

So, Variety has confirmed that this will lose up to $200M. This will be one of the biggest bombs of all time. Where are all the "you don't know how this works" commentators? 

The Marvels lost 237M and i haven't seen so doom and gloom...

 

[PlatnumRoyce]

 

14 hours ago, ZeeSoh said:

Yeah I don't see how the breakeven is 450 with a 190m budget plus 100m advertising budget. Even with a 50/50 dom international split won't get you to that number, even with a generous 60% cut from domestic and 0 gross from China. The dom % would have to be insanely high for the above to make sense. 

 

By my calculations based on expected gross from Dom/Int/China Joker 2 would net about 95 or so million. Which should be a theatrical loss of about 200m. This of course would not be the final number and does not include other costs such as any interest payments on borrowing as well as payments to individuals involved (if people like Phoenix, Phillips or Gaga had a deal to get a cut of gross), as well as earnings from PVOD/DVD as well as whatever value they earn from streaming.

 

Different people will have different ways of calculating theatrical profits or losses but there is not a one fits all multiplier for every movie. Many people use the 2.5x multiplier to calculate breakeven but even that is a very crude way of doing things as different movies will have different dom/int/China split which will impact net revenue. Add in the fact that we do not not get the marketing budget number for most movies and it makes guessing even harder. But overall I tend not to trust the industry trades in their analyses as they tend to be biased towards the studios imo.

 

Why wouldn't 450M work (I think they mean lifetime not theatrical)? That means something like 220/230M in "theatrical rental revenue" which would leave you something like 65M in the hole under "skinny" cost assumptions (budget + P&A). Wouldn't that basically be more than covered by the imputed license fee to HBO Max based on deadline articles are/or generic assumptions about such values. Of course you have ~50M in (2 years of) interest + overhead (15% of production budget) and to deal with but net Home Entertainment and extra SVOD valuation should roughly cover that and post-theatrical residuals.

Edited yesterday at 01:36 PM by PlatnumRoyce

[PlatnumRoyce]

3 hours ago, ListenHunnyUrOver said:

The same Paul Schrader who said Parasite shouldn't have won Best Picture because it's not an American film? We don't care what he says.

"Sequel to a film which arguably ripped off/paid homage to Paul Schrader's most famous work" is at least an organic hook to cite Paul Schrader. Of course, whatever your thoughts on Paul Schrader, the generic reason his facebook posts are aggregated is just because they create engagement.

Edited yesterday at 12:42 PM by PlatnumRoyce

[wattage]

12 minutes ago, efialtes76 said:

The Marvels lost 237M and i haven't seen so doom and gloom...

 

Were you under a rock last year? There was much glee and thinkpieces about that movies failure and losses. For reasons. 

Edited yesterday at 12:46 PM by wattage

[Mad Max007]

27 minutes ago, efialtes76 said:

The Marvels lost 237M and i haven't seen so doom and gloom...

 

People still use it to claim as to why Marvel is dead.

[ZeeSoh]

48 minutes ago, PlatnumRoyce said:

 

 

Why wouldn't 450M work (I think they mean lifetime not theatrical)? That means something like 220/230M in rentals which would leave you something like 65M in the hole under "skinny" cost assumptions (budget + P&A). Wouldn't that basically be more than covered by the imputed license fee to HBO Max based on deadline articles are/or generic assumptions about such values. Of course you have ~50M in (2 years of) interest + overhead (15% of production budget) and to deal with but net Home Entertainment and extra SVOD valuation should roughly cover that and post-theatrical residuals.

Because it literally says theatrical in the headline, and in the article. And when you say 220/230 in rentals, do you mean VOD rentals?

Because if yes then a movie making 220/230 in VOD and other rentals is a pipe dream, especially a movie like this. There was a NY Times article last year interviewing Universal execs (I'll see if I can find it) that mentioned that even billion dollar movies like Mario and Jurassic World Dominion make far less (75m+ and 50m+ respectively). I have no doubts this will make even less.

 

But these points are moot because the original discussions pertains theatrical loss not overall and because reliable figures for VOD and streaming revenues are impossible to get (even estimates at that as opposed to Prod. and advertising budgets).

[Mandatory]

1 hour ago, PlatnumRoyce said:

"Sequel to a film which arguably ripped off/paid homage to Paul Schrader's most famous work" is at least an organic hook to cite Paul Schrader. Of course, whatever your thoughts on Paul Schrader, the generic reason his facebook posts are aggregated is just because they create engagement.

Most other countries with an annual film award ceremony don't even have a Best Foreign Film category, and the vast majority of the ones that do give out such an award (all the ones I've previously checked out, anyway) have rules that films submitted in that category or films made by other countries can't compete for their version of Best Picture. So, just about every country in the world with an annual major film festival of some kind--South Korea included--shares Paul Schrader's opinion that only movies made with enough of their country's hand at the wheel in the filmmaking process should be eligible for the top prize. Seems like a pretty worldwide perspective that's not exactly a controversial take, but I guess some take issue.

 

 

Just a few thoughts on the matter.

[wattage]

14 minutes ago, Mandatory said:

Most other countries with an annual film award ceremony don't even have a Best Foreign Film category, and the vast majority of the ones that do give out such an award (all the ones I've previously checked out, anyway) have rules that films submitted in that category or films made by other countries can't compete for their version of Best Picture. So, just about every country in the world with an annual major film festival of some kind--South Korea included--shares Paul Schrader's opinion that only movies made with enough of their country's hand at the wheel in the filmmaking process should be eligible for the top prize. Seems like a pretty worldwide perspective that's not exactly a controversial take, but I guess some take issue.

 

 

Just a few thoughts on the matter.

Doesn't take a genius to know that the much smaller local filmmaking markets and their awards bodies have a very obvious reason for wanting to specifically make sure domestic films are the ones being given the spotlight and accolades and why that's different than the awards body of one of the biggest and most powerful movie making markets on the planet. The Oscar's mission statement is to celebrate motion pictures. Not American motion pictures, just motion pictures.

 

America and Hollywood takes up a very large global footprint, and many awards bodies in other countries are well aware that if they're not strict about it then a film from a other country with more reach and more money and the marketing and the might of a multi billion dollar corporations will just take awards any and everywhere. Conversely the Oscars governing body is well aware and always has been that they're upheld as one of the most prestigious awards bodies globally and have to do their best to take in all films from everywhere and judge them accordingly with the power and reach they have. And they often fail to do even that, so complaining about a couple foreign films winning awards is going to be seen as exactly what it is. 

Edited yesterday at 02:06 PM by wattage

[PlatnumRoyce]

22 hours ago, ZeeSoh said:

Because it literally says theatrical in the headline, and in the article. And when you say 220/230 in rentals, do you mean VOD rentals?

I edited the post to clarify (just mean "theatrical revenue that goes to distributor") but yeah, somehow I glossed over that word in a way that just made me completely misread your comment. Sorry about that.

 

Still, I think this is deadline using an awkward definition not them claiming an insane studio share. It seems like "break even theatrically is just used inconsistently. For example variety said  Ant-Man3 needed 600M to break even theatrically with a 200M budget (lol) and $100M P&A campaign. 450M v. 600M is just a direct contradiction. However, look at what Deadline said about TLM

 

Quote

Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” rounded out the top five with $11.6 million in its fourth weekend in theaters. The live-action remake has amassed $253 million in North America and $466 million to date, which would have been a good result… had the movie not cost $250 million to produce. At this rate, “The Little Mermaid” is struggling to break even in its theatrical run.

Now look at Deadlin'es "TLM to breakeven at 560M WW here's how" piece which said at 560M WW, Mermaid would gross  "267M in global theatrical film rentals" (implicitly ~55% domestic box office rentals). "Struggling to break even" at 466M WW looking at a low 500M WW ending doesn't make any conceptual sense if they're comparing film rentals to "Budget + P&A" (250+140); however, it does make sense under a "P/L within x years" argument. 

It's possible Deadline's using a "box office rentals = film budget" definition of theatrical run breakeven but I think it's more likely they're just using an awkward term for something like "P/L within [small number of years] of theatrical release" / "at box office level to be generically profitable without needing to overindexing post-theatrically." 

 

Variety said IF "cost $110 million to produce, so it needed to gross more like $275 million to break even in its theatrical run" and 275M gets you to 140M in box office rentals using an optimistic 55/45 rate assumption (using IF's 60% domestic). I don't know what IF had in P&A but it was more than 30M (said by many to be a minimal base marketing spend for a major studio wide release) but perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps there's a difference in how Deadline-guy uses it and variety-guy uses the term? 

 

Quote

and because reliable figures for VOD and streaming revenues are impossible to get

If you poke around online you can find e.g. SNL Kagan's model outputs posted online and you'll get producers on podcasts roughly laying out their ultimate revenue scenarios.  

Edited 9 hours ago by PlatnumRoyce
small formatting fixes