“Hollywood accounting” is not just a euphemism, it is a financial tool. Many studios have been sued by directors and actors because of profit sharing clauses. The studios are in an odd space where sometimes, they need a movie to “lose” money so it can make money…if the movie loses money at open but performs well post box office, the studios retain more of the final profit. NYT did a really good op ed on this several years ago.
Then you have things like Black Widow where Scarlet was given a cut of profits but they dumped the movie on Disney+ so it didn't make as much as it otherwise could have, hence she sued them.
Huh, film studios using accountants to make an on-paper loss, but millions of $ magically ends up in the studios exec pockets?? Can I get a 'hava nagila'
The back-of-napkin equation I use is International Box Office - (Production*4) = Profit - If the International Box Office is more than 4x the Production, then it was successful. The full equation is a bit longer: (International Box Office/2) - (Production*2) = Profit This is because the marketing budget is made to match the production budget, to maximize profits. Alongside the International Box Office giving about half to cinemas.
A good example of movies making money beyond the Box Office is Pixar's "Cars" franchise. The movies had a somewhat low box office return for Pixar and a comparatively poor critical reaction. However, the movies were a merchandising gold mine. Estimates put the series as making $10 billion in merchandise sales, making it the second most profitable movie series by merchandise sales falling behind only Star Wars. This is why despite having a somewhat mixed reception among audiences that Cars spawned two sequels.
Why do you think they made a new Haunted Mansion and a new "upcoming" Tron when the first films all flopped? same with TMNT and How to Train your Dragon live action remake.
@@aishaalamoudi599TMNT is quite a highly-rated TV series on IMDb, and HTTYD is a critically acclaimed movie series. Plus the HTTYD films were all profitable, even if they didn't make as much money as a Disney or Illumination movie.
@@aishaalamoudi599Well,idk about the other franchises, but How to Train your Dragon was a.successful franchise in terms of Dreamworks, grossing over 1 billion dollars from the three films and being Dreamworks' fourth most successful franchise in box office.Furthermore,it is also probably the franchise that has the most expansive universe of all, as it can pretty well add new dragons in future projects, which may sell merchandise.
While I saw the NordVPN commercial coming, I will say that this was perhaps the BEST integration of a sponsorship into a video that I have EVER seen! You inserted that flawlessly into the section of your video where it would organically be placed! Bravo good sir...well done! Great video, very informative.
@@trollinape2697 I am not sure about the other 7 but 1 of them is the way he is counting a movie profit. Typically, you need to 2.5 a movie budget to break even before getting profit (you can check it at box office subreddit). Indy lost hundred of million, same with The Flash. TLM barely broke even.
Cheap subscription based streaming killed formerly significant rental and home video sales (be it online or on disc). Every studio saw Netflix subscriber numbers and thought that that's a goldmine. But it wasn't, and on top of that they taught their audience that they can get their movies quickly and all at once for a low monthly fee instead of buying them for $20 + individually.
genius of Netflix pretending they are a tech company making investor believe they can lose millions for a decade but at somepoint it will turn into billions because no one else will be able to provide a similar disruptive service. Except everybody started providing the same service.
I'm not convinced that that's true. Who buys movies? Did you ever buy a lot of movies? I think most people bought maybe 1-2 movies per year, went to the theatre for 2 more. Now all these people and also way more passive ones pay a subscription that costs as much as if they bought 6-8 movies per year. There's money there for sure - where is it going?
Streaming services should've stuck to hosting TV shows. Movies should be sold separately on a service like Amazon Prime or as DVDs or Blu-Rays. That way, movies would sell better. Although, they probably could also get away with selling higher-budget shows like Game of Thrones and Arcane separately. And lower-budget and older movies could remain on streaming platforms. The movie industry makes more from streaming services than they made from physical releases, but they also spend way more on movies and TV shows than they did back then. So margins are down.
Some of this has been stated in the video, but I just wanted to clarify something. The production costs and marketing are accounted for separately in the film industry. When you come across news articles, magazines, or social media sources reporting a movie's cost, they typically exclude marketing and advertising expenses. For example, the recent Indiana Jones movie had an estimated production cost of $295 million (though it is suspected to be higher). However, it also incurred separate advertising costs of around $150 million (Though reports suggest this might be higher too). So, the true total budget for the movie would be approximately $445 million. In industry terms, when they say a movie won't make a profit outside of auxiliary markets and merchandising, they typically mean it won't recoup its costs solely through box office earnings. This is bad because the theatrical release window is crucial for attracting major investors. Unless it's a franchise like The Little Mermaid, which has significant merchandise sales, most stakeholders focus on box office revenues rather than other financial source like streaming or auxiliary markets (Video-on-demand, DVDs, rentals, etc.), unless there are concrete figures attached. This is why the industry rarely discusses "flops" (that vernacular is more used by movie goers and gossip websites/news cites outside the industry) but instead distinguishes between "box office bombs" and "underperformers." The Little Mermaid, for instance, is considered an underperformer because it can break even or come close to it during its theatrical run. Any additional income from auxiliary markets, video-on-demand, and eventually streaming will contribute to its profitability, not to mention the substantial revenue expected from merchandise sales.
I saw a report that Indiana Jones 5 could cost as much as $330 million due to re-shoots. With an international box office of only $381 of which it will keep about half... 381/2 -330-150 = $-289.5 millions. Thats one of the biggest box office bombs in human history! Or at least comparable to the Flash.
@@chuckwood3426 That's suspected, but not in the "official" estimated projections. Hollywood loves cooking the books, so I wouldn't be surprised. The official earnings report (and potential lawsuit for fudging numbers) may bring more light to this.
It's intriguing that you bring up this issue, especially given Disney's complex financial practices. A few years ago, there was an incident involving a former executive (whose name I can't recall) who was terminated for hinting at Disney manipulating their numbers during Chapek's leadership of the Disney Parks devision (pre-CEO). She primarily focused on how revenue from the parks seemed to be used to boost other areas of the business-including using those finances to give out free movie theater tickets to inflate sales numbers. She even recommended an investigation to the CEO Igor, suggesting it might be approaching fraudulent territory. However, she allegedly got fired for raising these concerns, despite it being her role as part of the accounting team. I vaguely remember some related details, but I didn't look them up. Subsequently, Disney portrayed her as a disgruntled former executive. She threatened to escalate the matter to government authorities, but the story seemed to fade away, with media outlets discontinuing their coverage. Many speculated that Disney might have silenced everyone involved with hush money and swept it under the rug. This seemed to have reaches it's peak around the time of Captain Marvel's release. It's important to note that this isn't unique to Disney; it's a common practice in the industry. Disney, being a major player, often just gets the spotlight when controversies arise. This is also why studios resist releasing full financial details, especially to those entitled to residuals, as it would require a thorough examination of their real accounting to fairly compensate actors, writers, and other talent members, as well as investors in the streaming industry. It's a complex issue with many interconnected aspects. Sadly, I doubt the investigation will go anywhere this time either (I just don't have any faith that people won't be paid off, again). Either way it's all coming full circle.
@@lucariomew365 Not sure if it's the same case, Sandy Kuba was a senior financial analyst that filed with the SEC after she was fired. I remember following the case a couple years back.
This is one of the best informed breakdowns of film finance that I’ve seen. I have one clarification though: PVOD generally comes before EST, not after. A PVOD rental comes at a premium price because it’s happening while the film is still only 2-3 weekends into its theatrical run. Some studios are now also offering PEST (premium EST) where you can buy the film at an additional upcharge, for unlimited viewing during that premium window. The whole Mulan model PVOD is pretty much gone at this point. One other big box to consider is the airline industry, which also pays a decent premium to get films that are recently just out of cinemas.
That is actually the most relevant nordVPN ad placement i've ever seen. Genuinely related to the issue at hand versus awkwardly forced in by obligatory corporate mandate
If Blockbusters are busting, maybe studios could go to old fashioned storytelling with smaller budget films that don't need billions to break even. That would involve using real writers with original ideas, instead of trying to mine old IP for more money with AI scripts.
Fortunately studios like A24 exist. However, it's not just on the studios. People need to support those shows. It's good that we're punishing low quality derivative stuff, but most of the big hits are still sequels (Avatar 2, Top Gun Maverick, etc.) or otherwise mining established IP (Barbie, Super Mario).
Just a note - you said towards the beginning that most journalists don't account for costs other than box office - I follow several and I don't know any who DON'T include a guess at marketing, so that was a little disingenuous/unfair
It's attempting to debunk the arguments for "flops" and why a movie that makes $500m will be a flop when it costs in excess of $350m in production, due to screenings, reshoots and late VFX production, i.e. Dial of Destiny. A Movie like Indy Jones 5 Dial of Destiny has to make that money back... either in Theatrical or in streaming/box sales. And while Theatrical is the tip of the iceberg, it's also most of the iceberg. A movie rarely makes back the money in streaming/PVOD unless it has a cult audience or a long tail, i.e. Bundles, specials, memes, etc. Morbius isn't making the money back. Elemental, Snow White, Batgirl, etc. Blue Beetle might hit a better break-even, but it's not likely to sell 20x more online than would see it in theaters. Because if more people bought the movie online, than went to cinemas to watch it ... they would Definitely announce that, somehow. The problem is, Most of the News aggregators don't have to prove the arguments. They just have Clickbait and Misleading Headlines, because, it works. Hollywood knows what's going on when Press & News sites start to fight the popular opinion, it's Spin Doctoring. PR.
It's so much easier. We're paying for Disney+ and Netflix, but still often pirate shows available on them because it's a more straight forward process...
It's normal. Hollywood has really been in a creative crisis for a long time, only sequels, prequels, spinoffs, ripoffs and the like. In the last twenty years, foreign cinematography has produced far better films than American ones. For example Parasite, Old Boy, Life Of Others, The Great Beauty, Winter Sleep, Divorce, Leviathan, Ciudad De Deus, Tropa De Elite.
"foreign cinematography has produced far better films than American ones" Foreign cinematography has always produced gems and flops. The difference is in a digital age, with no "mainstream" that dictates the majority's tastes, these otherwise esoteric films are capable of gaining viral status and are therefore interesting for the American film establishment. The flipside is that without one dominant mainstream, studios are also required to make products that appeal to different demographics, which leads to saturation in general, as we are now seeing, especially since Hollywood can no longer rely on the confidence of blockbuster phenomena of the past - the reach of their films is more fractured, and as a result every film made is now riskier, leading to overreliance on established franchises, which however also manage to miss the point of what audiences seek.
@@weird-guy "people don’t even go see original movies " Well that's just a blatant lie. People don't go to see original films, because none are made. They few that are are actually very popular, like last year's Everything Everywhere All at Once, which -surprise- was a small picture without giant studio meddling. "Some of Hollywood problems is over dilution of popular franchises," No, Hollywood's problem is not trusting audiences to engage with new IP and stories, so they rehash old franchises until everyone becomes sick of them, like we have now seen with Marvel or Harry Potter. They recycle everything from characters to plots to settings just to rehash them, especially for merchandise sales.
too many movies are just old movies made new, and people like the older version better. making one move then following it with really the same story line for the second will just get boring.
In “Killing Priscilla”, the documentary about the making of “Eye of the Beholder”, we learn that the movie cost Us$18 million dollars to make, however, when you see the reported budget, it’s listed as US$35 million dollars. So, basically the cost of a film often has no relation to the reported costs at all
Wait, how is "product placement" not mentioned in this, let alone license fees for copyright kind of stuff (clips used in marketing for other things or possibly in other media creation)? Heck, we've all encountered movies that seemed like commercials for 2-3 products/brands.
Product placement is pretty small revenue in movies lately. It used to be a bigger deal in Bond movies or Mission Impossible, but it became a hindrance to immersion and made the experience less authentic. It still exist for some fashion and luxury brands, but only in a small % of films…and for a small amount of money.
@@Username18981exactly. Most studios are vastly under-reporting budgets because of this. Indiana Jones DoD had 4 different endings, and the one they were ultimately chose was still an awful mishmash.
wrong tree. You want revenue from the US military. remember that first Iron Man Film? Or the Transformers movies? Product placement is not automatically a paid thing, it can be for authenticity or even satire. The painfully obvious ones It can also be cross-promotion. James Bond wears our watch, we stick James bond on all our advertising.
There are negative factors like region-encoding of DVDs and BluRays (thankfully not 4K UHD) so that many movies are simply not practically available around the world. Even the digital versions may not be globally available as the distribution platforms will not accept payments from other countries ( a VPN doesn't help here). Since Disney has now stopped producing discs for anywhere in the southern hemisphere, options are reduced further. You also get players like Sony who encourage region-coding and are also one of the biggest manufacturers of region-free players. However I got caught in buying a region-free 4K player which handled BluRays from any region, but the region-coding remained for DVDs.
@Yorick257 BluRays have different regions. Luckily 4K has none. Region encoding is set up to f**** over all countries but US. Supposedly in place to stop release of films on disc before cinema release but it's done for all movies no matter how old.
Perhaps this is nitpicky, but I'm pretty certain that opening weekend is not mutually exclusive from international and domestic box offices and if you added all three together, you would be double counting the opening weekend. After all, it would be really weird to ignore the differences in the different markets for the first 3-4 days of a films release and then suddenly care about it a lot.
Yup. Opening weekend is definitely included in total box office figures. For some reason they tend to include Friday, which many will not is not in fact a weekend. They're also doing midnight +1 showings so you're realistically going Thursday night but of course they can count the figures on Friday. That has the added benefit of the uber fans going to see the film to avoid their moronic acquaintances spoiling it for them, but then they come into work the next day and enthusiastically talk it up.
Good video, but one thing you left out is "Hollywood accounting," as has been mentioned in other comments. According to the studios involved, both Forrest Gump and Return of the Jedi both made a loss. They shuffle around money in ingenious ways to hide profits and avoid tax, and this is standard procedure.
Interesting video, thx. I like TLDR business more and more. A little correction: Domestic box office gross does not only include the USA but also Canada.
Thanks for doing your best to demystify Hollywood Accounting 👍 No wonder most production companies are private (held by a conglomerate or bigger entity, at the very least). Else, Generally Accepted Accounting Procedures would apply... and we wouldn't have preposterous notions that Forest Gump flopped, just so they can not give out royalties/residuals/etc. More power to the writers and actors, make the production companies more transparent 👍👍
im an acountant and work for an anc cinema the general rule of thumb is 60% take for the first two weeks in case its a major studio then goes to 55% for the third and 4th week... until the cinema's take is 45%(cinemas do this cause they will make in popcurn and drink's sales) so for the movies when u take into account marketing u should multiply by around 3x its production to get a rough estimate of a break even though some cases its more like 2.5x if studio is more conscious with costs like distrubution and marketing
Being in the industry, I've always heard an off the napkin estimate is to multiply the budget by 2 to 3 to see if it at least breaks even. That's to account for, the budget, marketing costs, and that studios have to split profits with theaters. Also the US theatrical revenue includes US and Canada.
Studio rental rates also vary by type of theater. PLF theaters (Premium/Large Format) are the theaters (like IMAX) that have very large screens and many seats. Studios want these theaters so as to maximize ticket availability, so theaters demand lower rental rates for it…
Yes, the box office - budget is a over simplification but it massively errs on the side of the studio, since as you note it assumed 100% cut of the box office revenue and doesn't include marketing costs and alot of other stuff. While streaming on disney might be billed internally, for disney as a whole that's a zero sum game.. the only way disney or any other studio makes money off their own streaming service is if a movie drives (or atleast retains) subscriptions.
Why do you keep saying those movies made money when most everyone else say those movies lost many millions of dollars? Like with Dial of Destiny, people say it lost at least $100M, with some saying it is more like $200M in losses.
Great video, but let's face it, movie studios are THE experts in creative accounting where they need to pay royalties from the amount of money that is stated in the profit line in accounting. The closer they get that amount to zero, the less taxes and royalty costs and the more money for them (ie. Movie studio owns the gear rental company that then rents all the gear for the movie project with inflated prices or movie studios offshore financing subsidiary finances part of the movie with a loans and hefty interest that must be paid back before any profit is accounted for) Not to mention the SAD fact that majority of western movie cinemas are now owned by the Chinese (something I wish you would make a video about so us consumers could start supporting actual local cinemas not influenced by a communist party 5000-12000 km away)
While it is true that the box office isn't the be all and end all, it is a good indicator for how hungry an audience is for a movie, which in turn will inspire investors to give money to the studio that made it. If Disney, the biggest studio on the planet, can throw its full weight behind The Little Mermaid and only barely be writing a profit by the end of its theatrical run, that is not going to make investors very confident that spending money on their movies is a good idea. Not when just five or six years ago, big tentpole releases like that would have been writing huge profit numbers after just a month in theaters.
not cool man, u made me sit through your entire video with the expectation that you were going to give me an estimation, not concreate but an estimation on how much the studios actually made whether it be profit or loss, but you ended up just giving me a vague explanation on their budgeting and expenses which most people would probably already know. maybe you could make a part 2 with numbers and estimation on numerous movies about their loss/profit
I think people forget about other media when it comes to the box office. A perfect example of movies being more successful outside of the theaters is the Austin Powers movies.
Most people are sophisticated enough now to know that the studios make money from streaming services, TV etc. The funny thing about the Austin Powers trailers for their theatrical release was a version that looked very Star Wars in style. "If you see one film this season......then see Star Wars. But if you see two movies watch Austin Powers". It was funny. They knew that they couldn't compete with the mega hit, but could still do fairly well in the original theatrical release.
Oof, watching this was like watching a modern movie, lots of build up, no payoff. He didn't even provide ball park figures for the two movies in question as an example.
Oooh, thank you for this video. The entire subject of box office vs. budget, etc. came up recently with the Michael Oher/Blind Side kerfuffle. Many people were looking at the box office, subtracting the budget, then figuring out that the Tuohy family was raking in millions. Never mind that the Tuohy's arrangement was for net points, not gross, the way in which people were guessing the Tuohys' earn was quite a bit off. This video breaks down the stuff I couldn't explain very well.
All the streaming and park costs are good and all, but they don’t really contribute to the whole "Theatrical flop" thing. They contribute to how the film does *beyond* the theateical flops.
Thank You for explaining why ZERO of the live action remakes of Disney animated classics still help make money through the parks and merchandising despite being universally acknowledged as awful films
You left out two big ones. Tax credits. Example many marvel movies are made in xyz state because of tax Grant's they get by doing business there and not elsewhere. And insurance... most movies are insured due to huge price tag to make. If it doesn't make it, and insurance paid they will get a good percentage back.
A few months ago I bought a copy of a German film that I want to sit down and watch. I couldn't find it on any of the streaming services and even if I had it might have been removed from the catalogue before I made the time to watch it.
Uwe Boll famously (and almost truthfully) claimed that he never lost money on a movie. The recipe is simple: film cheap, really cheap, a couple million will have to suffice. Find a well known, perhaps somewhat fading star and ring them up, offer them a few million, but the shooting is in 2 weeks. Other movies will arrange their cast half a year in advance, so if they pick up at all, this means the star doesn't have anything lined up for the next half a year; at which point they might as well wedge in a little extra income even if it pays 10 times less than they're normally paid. In return they're allowed to just phone it in as badly as they dare. Then there's no marketing and only a symbolic box office. Of course since it's shown at the lot of 2 theatres, the movie is losing money on paper. A few weeks later, it lands in a discount bin of a DVD store, with a fake MSRP slashed down. Familiar name (licensed from a videogame), ideally one that people can't remember anything specific about, but jut at the back of their brain. Familiar face on a cover from a superstar actor. Maybe worth dropping $15 on? How bad could it really be? Most people never heard of Boll in particular. Then there was some sort of funds magic that i don't understand any longer, but thought i did at one point. Anyway the claim is that he has all these investors, and they invest and thus he has money to make movies because he generates return on investment. And yet his production company did go bankrupt one or two times didn't it. But for the most part, by all reason he really did end up making money, but also found ways to not pay any taxes on it.
You included a lot of things on the revenue side, like merch, parks, and online streaming. Out of these Merchandise yield only licence fees if not then there is manufacturing, distributing and warehouse costs. Parks reak in a lot of money but also cost a lot to maintain and operate. While you gave us a really great income side covering direct and indirect sources, you severely under budgeted the expenditure side by including only the direct cost of making and advertising, and omitted the indirect cost of some of the related revenue sources.
things are bit strange in places like south korea because of the local regulations force companies to place a certain amount of content on local streaming platforms.
1:19 'Many people are too lazy to actually bother calculating these things properly.' Many people don't even know what those things you mentioned mean.
Someone please make a universal streaming app that "borrows" films and series from individual streaming services and pay them on one subscription account instead.
Another reason Little Mermaid lost money is that it separated “original Ariel” from “new Ariel”. It created unnecessary polarization among its fan base. “Ariel” merchandise now had to come in 2 versions, which destroys the production economics of both. Retailers worry that only carrying “old Ariel” will appear insensitive or racist, while carrying only “new Ariel” would offend classic Disney fans. Yet, carrying both makes no economic sense because they compete with each other. So…they elect to carry neither and avoid all of the controversy. This has occurred at retailers like Claire’s.
For the last time, that had little to do with it. The Little Mermaid still made its money back with a slim profit in terms of the theatrical window. This culture war ass reason isn't that impactful, there are a number of other factors that all have far more impact then the mermaid being Black
@@sunnybear178 you are wrong. “For the last time”. YOU SUCK AT MATH. Current global gross is $561M. This is $280M in revenue. The production budget was $250M, plus $140M in marketing, which is $390M in costs. That totals to -$110M dollars. YOU ARE NOT SMART.😂😂😂
@@sunnybear178 you are also wrong if you think Disney’s intentional and cynical “race controversy marketing” strategy is not at fault. They knew this would anger some fans of the old movie, and they knew they could call bad reviews of the film racist. They do it intentionally. Disney is run by incompetent, awful humans.
Also worth noting the original Lion king release generated @ $750 Million in ticket sales and $1 Billion in merch that’s 1/4 Billion MORE in merch than box office
If Disney wants to create a Little Mermaid experience at its parks, which Ariel do they use? If they choose only one, they offend a large portion of their audience. If they choose both…it potentially muddles the experience. You cannot have the same song sung twice…or it must be done creatively. If you display one version’s merch more prominently…it offends someone. Existing experiences have to suddenly be re-engineered around this new cultural land mine they invented for themselves. It was one of the DUMBEST decisions ever. They should have just created a new mermaid character and story for Hallie Bailey. She and Ariel could have been friends and had adventures together. It could have been amazing. Disney really are stepping on their own land mines lately…
Emma Watson doesn't look exactly like the original Belle (her hair is much lighter than the OG Belle). Same goes for many live action remakes. In general Disney just goes with the animated version for the park because you really can't have someone going around wearing an Emma Watson mask.
You would expect that certain movies can't and won't be made from a cost perspective: if the actor or actress asks more than they bring to the table or if they hire a premium director who totally f**s up the screenwriting, you could estimate that the movie probably will not make back its money. Like Buffett says, actors are the ones who are making the profits in this industry, not streaming platforms or studios. So it would be rational to sometimes call off a project (say a new instalment of Indiana Jones) because the actors tied to it are too expensive to make the project profitable. I think executives may feel like it is a safe bet to make big budget movies, but it is actually less risky to spread the $200 million budget over 4 small/medium sized movies and have one perform bad, two perform average and have one perform excellent.
No one cares about second windowing (SVOD, PVOD) you need to make money in the first window. Second and third windows goes through different benchmarks and has its own sets of distribution costs
This is probably one of the best VPN adds in youtube, because it explains why those streaming services have certain content on specific countries, it fitted extremely well into the video.
It’s weird that TLDR business makes a 20 minute video about how Hollywood is not doing well financially, and barely mentions the historical strike of the writers and actors which came from being underpaid and exploited. Painting it all as If, the ones who are struggling and loosing, are these *poor* mega-corporations and their *poor* shareholders.
Personally I will never go to a cinema again. I've regretted the last 5 times I did. They are dirty and expensive and I no longer get the value proposition. My OLED screen is just too good to pretend the cinema is just unreachable in quality, and I can watch a whole nother movie in the time it takes me to get to the cinema and do all of the non-watching parts you need to do there. And I don't think I am the only one. I certainly know a lot of people who are watching movies at least a few times a week, but haven't been in a cinema since before COVID happend. To measure a movie by its "box office" i.e. cinema revenue is becomming quite stupid on that notion. There are good and successful movies that never made it to cinema and were still made in full awareness of that fact.
Mermaid didn’t “flop” because it went woke; it “flopped” because like all of the Disney live action remakes it wasn’t that compelling to sit through in the cinema .. I was bored out of my mind and mermaid is one of my all time favorite films that I’ve watched over and over .. Make. Better. Films. Worth noting your list of films towards the end with big budgets, by far the cheapest budget was Barbie which was a massive success, because unlike the far more expensive films you listed it was actually a good movie - zero of the other films you listed were enjoyable to sit through, and no amount of visual effects can fix a bad story in fact many would argue too many effects hurt the story
I remember “The 10 Commandments “ movie was played every year for 30 years in order to try and recover the money that original studio spent in the 60s, but they didn’t care of the length of time to make a profit!!!!!!
There just has to be so many kick back schemes in place it boggles the mind. Effects, Production, and Marketing black boxes that produce work of questionable value selected on the decision making of very few with massive amounts of money being transferred from corporate accounts to corporate accounts with who know what kind of oversight...
Don't also forget Disney actively lie about how much a movie actually costs Indiana jones shows tax credits for a film costing 350m yet the budget is 300m.
And those tax credits are for the end of pre-prod and principal photography. Post production, reshoots and a lot of VFX still get to be factored in. If it weren't for the UK accounting requirements for the tax credits (and the transparency requirements) some of these values would be quite a bit more opaque.
@@tcortez Truth is only the studio knows how much and even them, they define budgets differently. Studios usually don't say anything to keep themselves shielded from future lawsuits "we never made that claim". Truth is budgets are very fluid: do you include overhead? do you include executives salaries? do you include credits? do you include the long time it was in preproduction??? Pixar includes all of that, Spiderverse doesn't. So Disney can claim a Pixar film cost 150mil or 200mil and it would be right both ways. Is Sony lying by not including studio overhead
They didn't lie. You think Disney forgot about the UK filings??? according to some UK filings the last 2 Jurassic World cost 850mil, did Universal also lie? did WB lie when they claimed production of the Flash was 190mil only??? over 10 years????
Yes but at least they pay their authors for the books they're publishing, and don't try and say, not pay Alan Dean Foster (and many others) because they bought the rights but not the responsibilities of the publishing contract (note, this is not a thing, and a jaundiced observer might think that Disney are run by the most immoral, despicable sociopaths in business).
“Charging yourself” SVOD fees is not in fact a way to boost a films profits : its the exact opposite. It’s a charge AGAINST the profit of the movie, thus further diluting the amount of profit a participant (director, writer, star, producer) gets. Also, don’t forget the rather insidious “amortisation” tricks , wherein a studio can offset the profits of one movie against the losses of another again ensuring there is “no profit to share”.
The budget is not the actual cost of the film, it's what the studio plans on spending on it. Almost every movie goes over budget. Sometimes by considerably more than you'd think. There was a Forbes article recently on the Avengers Infinity War and Endgame budgets. According to them those films actually cost $1.3 billion to make. The reported budgets for those films were $800 million at the highest end. So it cost at least half a billion dollars more to make them than reported. They aren't legally required to report the actual costs but it would be helpful to shareholders so they can make an informed investing decision.
That was a generally quite interesting and different look at things. My own thoughts on the little mermaid would be that with the attention span of kids and their likelihood of rewatching multiple times, that is as much of a money maker if not more than their cinema incomes.
your overall numbers are off as they have cost millions - the production cost you use doesn't include the marketing and PR etc. which is almost always double hte production cost.
you have to take in to account the LOSS of Russia movie earnings. that No American movies are really earning anything in that market which will have an effect on sales and earning of any movie coming out
“Hollywood accounting” is not just a euphemism, it is a financial tool.
Many studios have been sued by directors and actors because of profit sharing clauses. The studios are in an odd space where sometimes, they need a movie to “lose” money so it can make money…if the movie loses money at open but performs well post box office, the studios retain more of the final profit. NYT did a really good op ed on this several years ago.
Then you have things like Black Widow where Scarlet was given a cut of profits but they dumped the movie on Disney+ so it didn't make as much as it otherwise could have, hence she sued them.
Huh, film studios using accountants to make an on-paper loss, but millions of $ magically ends up in the studios exec pockets?? Can I get a 'hava nagila'
The back-of-napkin equation I use is
International Box Office - (Production*4) = Profit
- If the International Box Office is more than 4x the Production, then it was successful. The full equation is a bit longer:
(International Box Office/2) - (Production*2) = Profit
This is because the marketing budget is made to match the production budget, to maximize profits. Alongside the International Box Office giving about half to cinemas.
@@nintendokingswhy did you have to make it antisemetic
Fk Hollywood
A good example of movies making money beyond the Box Office is Pixar's "Cars" franchise. The movies had a somewhat low box office return for Pixar and a comparatively poor critical reaction. However, the movies were a merchandising gold mine. Estimates put the series as making $10 billion in merchandise sales, making it the second most profitable movie series by merchandise sales falling behind only Star Wars.
This is why despite having a somewhat mixed reception among audiences that Cars spawned two sequels.
Why do you think they made a new Haunted Mansion and a new "upcoming" Tron when the first films all flopped? same with TMNT and How to Train your Dragon live action remake.
That's so true. Even though the movie came out when I was a kid, my 3 year old nephew has a ton of cars toys, and McQueen themed stuff
@@aishaalamoudi599TMNT is quite a highly-rated TV series on IMDb, and HTTYD is a critically acclaimed movie series. Plus the HTTYD films were all profitable, even if they didn't make as much money as a Disney or Illumination movie.
@@aishaalamoudi599Well,idk about the other franchises, but How to Train your Dragon was a.successful franchise in terms of Dreamworks, grossing over 1 billion dollars from the three films and being Dreamworks' fourth most successful franchise in box office.Furthermore,it is also probably the franchise that has the most expansive universe of all, as it can pretty well add new dragons in future projects, which may sell merchandise.
Lmao I saw that VPN ad coming from ten miles away, I was like "is it here yet? Is it here yet?"
While I saw the NordVPN commercial coming, I will say that this was perhaps the BEST integration of a sponsorship into a video that I have EVER seen! You inserted that flawlessly into the section of your video where it would organically be placed!
Bravo good sir...well done!
Great video, very informative.
I came to comment this. I want to sign up for NORD VPN just because of how impressed I was with this segway lmao
Dang I was hoping a Brilliant sponsorship given the math theme.
for real
By the time I noticed it was an ad, it was too late.
@@MRLONG758 it was very sneaky!
That was the most telegraphed incoming NordVPN ad break I've ever witnessed and it deserves applause. 👏
That was probably the slickest and most contextually relevant ad slipped in for NordVPN ive seen
This is one of the best TLDR Business video's that you've released, loved the detail and that it was a bit longer than usual.
Keep in mind, it is because he got about 8 other videos wrong on this point…
@@mandoreforger6999 true, they did put out a lot of simple/naive statements about film 'flops'. But they actually did some research here
@@mandoreforger6999what stuff did he get wrong with evidence pls?
@@trollinape2697 I am not sure about the other 7 but 1 of them is the way he is counting a movie profit. Typically, you need to 2.5 a movie budget to break even before getting profit (you can check it at box office subreddit).
Indy lost hundred of million, same with The Flash. TLM barely broke even.
The best video of a Government collasping liar?
Cheap subscription based streaming killed formerly significant rental and home video sales (be it online or on disc). Every studio saw Netflix subscriber numbers and thought that that's a goldmine. But it wasn't, and on top of that they taught their audience that they can get their movies quickly and all at once for a low monthly fee instead of buying them for $20 + individually.
The goldmine was getting paid for decades old content. But oh no, they all want their own tv chann... erh, streaming service.
genius of Netflix pretending they are a tech company making investor believe they can lose millions for a decade but at somepoint it will turn into billions because no one else will be able to provide a similar disruptive service. Except everybody started providing the same service.
I'm not convinced that that's true. Who buys movies? Did you ever buy a lot of movies? I think most people bought maybe 1-2 movies per year, went to the theatre for 2 more. Now all these people and also way more passive ones pay a subscription that costs as much as if they bought 6-8 movies per year. There's money there for sure - where is it going?
Streaming services should've stuck to hosting TV shows. Movies should be sold separately on a service like Amazon Prime or as DVDs or Blu-Rays.
That way, movies would sell better.
Although, they probably could also get away with selling higher-budget shows like Game of Thrones and Arcane separately.
And lower-budget and older movies could remain on streaming platforms.
The movie industry makes more from streaming services than they made from physical releases, but they also spend way more on movies and TV shows than they did back then. So margins are down.
Not entirely, spiderverse is doing amazing on digital right now
Some of this has been stated in the video, but I just wanted to clarify something. The production costs and marketing are accounted for separately in the film industry. When you come across news articles, magazines, or social media sources reporting a movie's cost, they typically exclude marketing and advertising expenses.
For example, the recent Indiana Jones movie had an estimated production cost of $295 million (though it is suspected to be higher). However, it also incurred separate advertising costs of around $150 million (Though reports suggest this might be higher too). So, the true total budget for the movie would be approximately $445 million.
In industry terms, when they say a movie won't make a profit outside of auxiliary markets and merchandising, they typically mean it won't recoup its costs solely through box office earnings. This is bad because the theatrical release window is crucial for attracting major investors. Unless it's a franchise like The Little Mermaid, which has significant merchandise sales, most stakeholders focus on box office revenues rather than other financial source like streaming or auxiliary markets (Video-on-demand, DVDs, rentals, etc.), unless there are concrete figures attached.
This is why the industry rarely discusses "flops" (that vernacular is more used by movie goers and gossip websites/news cites outside the industry) but instead distinguishes between "box office bombs" and "underperformers." The Little Mermaid, for instance, is considered an underperformer because it can break even or come close to it during its theatrical run. Any additional income from auxiliary markets, video-on-demand, and eventually streaming will contribute to its profitability, not to mention the substantial revenue expected from merchandise sales.
I saw a report that Indiana Jones 5 could cost as much as $330 million due to re-shoots. With an international box office of only $381 of which it will keep about half... 381/2 -330-150 = $-289.5 millions. Thats one of the biggest box office bombs in human history! Or at least comparable to the Flash.
@@chuckwood3426
That's suspected, but not in the "official" estimated projections. Hollywood loves cooking the books, so I wouldn't be surprised. The official earnings report (and potential lawsuit for fudging numbers) may bring more light to this.
Yeah Disney is getting sued for dodgy accounting, so hopefully we'll see.
It's intriguing that you bring up this issue, especially given Disney's complex financial practices. A few years ago, there was an incident involving a former executive (whose name I can't recall) who was terminated for hinting at Disney manipulating their numbers during Chapek's leadership of the Disney Parks devision (pre-CEO). She primarily focused on how revenue from the parks seemed to be used to boost other areas of the business-including using those finances to give out free movie theater tickets to inflate sales numbers. She even recommended an investigation to the CEO Igor, suggesting it might be approaching fraudulent territory. However, she allegedly got fired for raising these concerns, despite it being her role as part of the accounting team.
I vaguely remember some related details, but I didn't look them up. Subsequently, Disney portrayed her as a disgruntled former executive. She threatened to escalate the matter to government authorities, but the story seemed to fade away, with media outlets discontinuing their coverage. Many speculated that Disney might have silenced everyone involved with hush money and swept it under the rug. This seemed to have reaches it's peak around the time of Captain Marvel's release.
It's important to note that this isn't unique to Disney; it's a common practice in the industry. Disney, being a major player, often just gets the spotlight when controversies arise. This is also why studios resist releasing full financial details, especially to those entitled to residuals, as it would require a thorough examination of their real accounting to fairly compensate actors, writers, and other talent members, as well as investors in the streaming industry. It's a complex issue with many interconnected aspects. Sadly, I doubt the investigation will go anywhere this time either (I just don't have any faith that people won't be paid off, again). Either way it's all coming full circle.
@@lucariomew365 Not sure if it's the same case, Sandy Kuba was a senior financial analyst that filed with the SEC after she was fired. I remember following the case a couple years back.
This is one of the best informed breakdowns of film finance that I’ve seen. I have one clarification though: PVOD generally comes before EST, not after. A PVOD rental comes at a premium price because it’s happening while the film is still only 2-3 weekends into its theatrical run. Some studios are now also offering PEST (premium EST) where you can buy the film at an additional upcharge, for unlimited viewing during that premium window.
The whole Mulan model PVOD is pretty much gone at this point. One other big box to consider is the airline industry, which also pays a decent premium to get films that are recently just out of cinemas.
Good points! I completely forgot about the airline angle
I always wonder how airlines got their movies
That is actually the most relevant nordVPN ad placement i've ever seen. Genuinely related to the issue at hand versus awkwardly forced in by obligatory corporate mandate
This is the best youtube video i've seen in months. I mean, the animation, your research, the editing, it all comes together so nice. Great work man.
Money does not matter to the fking movies
What I learned is that I will never watch movies on the opening weekend again, gotta support local cinemas
The ad transition certainly was not a flop.
If Blockbusters are busting, maybe studios could go to old fashioned storytelling with smaller budget films that don't need billions to break even. That would involve using real writers with original ideas, instead of trying to mine old IP for more money with AI scripts.
Fortunately studios like A24 exist. However, it's not just on the studios. People need to support those shows. It's good that we're punishing low quality derivative stuff, but most of the big hits are still sequels (Avatar 2, Top Gun Maverick, etc.) or otherwise mining established IP (Barbie, Super Mario).
i'd take AI written film rather than disney.
@@whitygooseso you'd choose the color tangerine over orange
Just a note - you said towards the beginning that most journalists don't account for costs other than box office - I follow several and I don't know any who DON'T include a guess at marketing, so that was a little disingenuous/unfair
It's attempting to debunk the arguments for "flops" and why a movie that makes $500m will be a flop when it costs in excess of $350m in production, due to screenings, reshoots and late VFX production, i.e. Dial of Destiny.
A Movie like Indy Jones 5 Dial of Destiny has to make that money back... either in Theatrical or in streaming/box sales. And while Theatrical is the tip of the iceberg, it's also most of the iceberg. A movie rarely makes back the money in streaming/PVOD unless it has a cult audience or a long tail, i.e. Bundles, specials, memes, etc.
Morbius isn't making the money back. Elemental, Snow White, Batgirl, etc. Blue Beetle might hit a better break-even, but it's not likely to sell 20x more online than would see it in theaters.
Because if more people bought the movie online, than went to cinemas to watch it ... they would Definitely announce that, somehow.
The problem is, Most of the News aggregators don't have to prove the arguments. They just have Clickbait and Misleading Headlines, because, it works.
Hollywood knows what's going on when Press & News sites start to fight the popular opinion, it's Spin Doctoring. PR.
i prefer the good ol' pirating
everything is free when you sail the high seas
I sail my own USS VPN Torrent as well!
#Flud
It's so much easier. We're paying for Disney+ and Netflix, but still often pirate shows available on them because it's a more straight forward process...
I give you a torrent of applause 👏
I thought that recent Disney productions were not even worth pirating...
It's normal. Hollywood has really been in a creative crisis for a long time, only sequels, prequels, spinoffs, ripoffs and the like. In the last twenty years, foreign cinematography has produced far better films than American ones. For example Parasite, Old Boy, Life Of Others, The Great Beauty, Winter Sleep, Divorce, Leviathan, Ciudad De Deus, Tropa De Elite.
Cidade de Deus is a 21-year-old movie
"foreign cinematography has produced far better films than American ones" Foreign cinematography has always produced gems and flops. The difference is in a digital age, with no "mainstream" that dictates the majority's tastes, these otherwise esoteric films are capable of gaining viral status and are therefore interesting for the American film establishment. The flipside is that without one dominant mainstream, studios are also required to make products that appeal to different demographics, which leads to saturation in general, as we are now seeing, especially since Hollywood can no longer rely on the confidence of blockbuster phenomena of the past - the reach of their films is more fractured, and as a result every film made is now riskier, leading to overreliance on established franchises, which however also manage to miss the point of what audiences seek.
@@weird-guy "people don’t even go see original movies " Well that's just a blatant lie. People don't go to see original films, because none are made. They few that are are actually very popular, like last year's Everything Everywhere All at Once, which -surprise- was a small picture without giant studio meddling.
"Some of Hollywood problems is over dilution of popular franchises," No, Hollywood's problem is not trusting audiences to engage with new IP and stories, so they rehash old franchises until everyone becomes sick of them, like we have now seen with Marvel or Harry Potter. They recycle everything from characters to plots to settings just to rehash them, especially for merchandise sales.
too many movies are just old movies made new, and people like the older version better.
making one move then following it with really the same story line for the second will just get boring.
Hey, great job about NOT ANSWERING the F’ING question that you yourself posed! Brilliant!
In “Killing Priscilla”, the documentary about the making of “Eye of the Beholder”, we learn that the movie cost Us$18 million dollars to make, however, when you see the reported budget, it’s listed as US$35 million dollars. So, basically the cost of a film often has no relation to the reported costs at all
Wait, how is "product placement" not mentioned in this, let alone license fees for copyright kind of stuff (clips used in marketing for other things or possibly in other media creation)?
Heck, we've all encountered movies that seemed like commercials for 2-3 products/brands.
Also, reshoots are not included in the budget as a cost.
Product placement is pretty small revenue in movies lately. It used to be a bigger deal in Bond movies or Mission Impossible, but it became a hindrance to immersion and made the experience less authentic. It still exist for some fashion and luxury brands, but only in a small % of films…and for a small amount of money.
@@Username18981exactly. Most studios are vastly under-reporting budgets because of this. Indiana Jones DoD had 4 different endings, and the one they were ultimately chose was still an awful mishmash.
wrong tree. You want revenue from the US military. remember that first Iron Man Film? Or the Transformers movies?
Product placement is not automatically a paid thing, it can be for authenticity or even satire. The painfully obvious ones It can also be cross-promotion. James Bond wears our watch, we stick James bond on all our advertising.
@@Interitus1Where did I say it was all revenue generating?
Keep fighting those imaginary demons, one day you'll win a comfy padded room.
There are negative factors like region-encoding of DVDs and BluRays (thankfully not 4K UHD) so that many movies are simply not practically available around the world. Even the digital versions may not be globally available as the distribution platforms will not accept payments from other countries ( a VPN doesn't help here). Since Disney has now stopped producing discs for anywhere in the southern hemisphere, options are reduced further.
You also get players like Sony who encourage region-coding and are also one of the biggest manufacturers of region-free players. However I got caught in buying a region-free 4K player which handled BluRays from any region, but the region-coding remained for DVDs.
Region coding of DVDs, WTF.
You learn something new everyday
@Yorick257 BluRays have different regions. Luckily 4K has none. Region encoding is set up to f**** over all countries but US. Supposedly in place to stop release of films on disc before cinema release but it's done for all movies no matter how old.
Perhaps this is nitpicky, but I'm pretty certain that opening weekend is not mutually exclusive from international and domestic box offices and if you added all three together, you would be double counting the opening weekend. After all, it would be really weird to ignore the differences in the different markets for the first 3-4 days of a films release and then suddenly care about it a lot.
Yup. Opening weekend is definitely included in total box office figures. For some reason they tend to include Friday, which many will not is not in fact a weekend. They're also doing midnight +1 showings so you're realistically going Thursday night but of course they can count the figures on Friday. That has the added benefit of the uber fans going to see the film to avoid their moronic acquaintances spoiling it for them, but then they come into work the next day and enthusiastically talk it up.
Good video, but one thing you left out is "Hollywood accounting," as has been mentioned in other comments. According to the studios involved, both Forrest Gump and Return of the Jedi both made a loss. They shuffle around money in ingenious ways to hide profits and avoid tax, and this is standard procedure.
Interesting video, thx. I like TLDR business more and more. A little correction: Domestic box office gross does not only include the USA but also Canada.
Thanks for doing your best to demystify Hollywood Accounting 👍 No wonder most production companies are private (held by a conglomerate or bigger entity, at the very least). Else, Generally Accepted Accounting Procedures would apply... and we wouldn't have preposterous notions that Forest Gump flopped, just so they can not give out royalties/residuals/etc. More power to the writers and actors, make the production companies more transparent 👍👍
It’s honestly sad how relieved I am to hear you says maths and not math. Thank you!!
im an acountant and work for an anc cinema the general rule of thumb is 60% take for the first two weeks in case its a major studio then goes to 55% for the third and 4th week... until the cinema's take is 45%(cinemas do this cause they will make in popcurn and drink's sales) so for the movies when u take into account marketing u should multiply by around 3x its production to get a rough estimate of a break even though some cases its more like 2.5x if studio is more conscious with costs like distrubution and marketing
Being in the industry, I've always heard an off the napkin estimate is to multiply the budget by 2 to 3 to see if it at least breaks even. That's to account for, the budget, marketing costs, and that studios have to split profits with theaters. Also the US theatrical revenue includes US and Canada.
Studio rental rates also vary by type of theater. PLF theaters (Premium/Large Format) are the theaters (like IMAX) that have very large screens and many seats. Studios want these theaters so as to maximize ticket availability, so theaters demand lower rental rates for it…
Yes, the box office - budget is a over simplification but it massively errs on the side of the studio, since as you note it assumed 100% cut of the box office revenue and doesn't include marketing costs and alot of other stuff. While streaming on disney might be billed internally, for disney as a whole that's a zero sum game.. the only way disney or any other studio makes money off their own streaming service is if a movie drives (or atleast retains) subscriptions.
Why do you keep saying those movies made money when most everyone else say those movies lost many millions of dollars? Like with Dial of Destiny, people say it lost at least $100M, with some saying it is more like $200M in losses.
Great video, but let's face it, movie studios are THE experts in creative accounting where they need to pay royalties from the amount of money that is stated in the profit line in accounting.
The closer they get that amount to zero, the less taxes and royalty costs and the more money for them (ie. Movie studio owns the gear rental company that then rents all the gear for the movie project with inflated prices or movie studios offshore financing subsidiary finances part of the movie with a loans and hefty interest that must be paid back before any profit is accounted for)
Not to mention the SAD fact that majority of western movie cinemas are now owned by the Chinese (something I wish you would make a video about so us consumers could start supporting actual local cinemas not influenced by a communist party 5000-12000 km away)
Typically you have to make at least 2.5 times the budget for it to be profitable…this vid was a good explanation why
You definition of Domestic Box Office is roughly 90% correct. That is because domestic box office is defined as USA AND Canada.
While it is true that the box office isn't the be all and end all, it is a good indicator for how hungry an audience is for a movie, which in turn will inspire investors to give money to the studio that made it. If Disney, the biggest studio on the planet, can throw its full weight behind The Little Mermaid and only barely be writing a profit by the end of its theatrical run, that is not going to make investors very confident that spending money on their movies is a good idea. Not when just five or six years ago, big tentpole releases like that would have been writing huge profit numbers after just a month in theaters.
Yep. Disney is over you guys. No one will ever invest in this worldwide psuedo-monopoly ever again..
@@futurestoryteller I can appreciate sarcasm, but any empire can fall if they get too careless or complacent, and right now, Disney is both.
@@SRFriso94 There was a time when "too big to fail" was not a phrase in the lexicon. If you haven't noticed that time has passed.
not cool man, u made me sit through your entire video with the expectation that you were going to give me an estimation, not concreate but an estimation on how much the studios actually made whether it be profit or loss, but you ended up just giving me a vague explanation on their budgeting and expenses which most people would probably already know.
maybe you could make a part 2 with numbers and estimation on numerous movies about their loss/profit
watch on 2x speed like me. if something interesting pops up ill turn down the speed.
I think people forget about other media when it comes to the box office. A perfect example of movies being more successful outside of the theaters is the Austin Powers movies.
Most people are sophisticated enough now to know that the studios make money from streaming services, TV etc. The funny thing about the Austin Powers trailers for their theatrical release was a version that looked very Star Wars in style. "If you see one film this season......then see Star Wars. But if you see two movies watch Austin Powers". It was funny. They knew that they couldn't compete with the mega hit, but could still do fairly well in the original theatrical release.
That has tobe the most elaborate Nord VPN plug I've ever seen.
That Nord vPN wind up felt like this was a video about Nord
In general with all what you said, a movie has to take in around 2,5 Times its publicly known budget just to break even😅
Oof, watching this was like watching a modern movie, lots of build up, no payoff. He didn't even provide ball park figures for the two movies in question as an example.
That sponsor segue was pretty smooth tbf
12:41 That was quite possibly the most natural NordVPN segway I have ever seen, and I have seen quite a few over the years.
Oooh, thank you for this video. The entire subject of box office vs. budget, etc. came up recently with the Michael Oher/Blind Side kerfuffle. Many people were looking at the box office, subtracting the budget, then figuring out that the Tuohy family was raking in millions. Never mind that the Tuohy's arrangement was for net points, not gross, the way in which people were guessing the Tuohys' earn was quite a bit off. This video breaks down the stuff I couldn't explain very well.
I mean I saw the ad coming but that was a seamless Nord dengent 12:50
All the streaming and park costs are good and all, but they don’t really contribute to the whole "Theatrical flop" thing. They contribute to how the film does *beyond* the theateical flops.
The 2023 Haunted Mansion is by far superior to the disaster that was Eddie Murphy's Haunted Mansion.
Not if no one watched it. To release a Halloween movie in the middle of summer was next level stupid.
This is why I just watch movies for free. All the price gouging everywhere is as bad as government who cheat their plebians.
You forgot about physical media sales 4K DVD and Blu Ray. Yes people still buy those.
Basically its needs to make 2.5 its budget
To make any money
this is a weird number to come to when really to make profit you just need to cover all costs in the movie life time
When you got into SVOD, I can see that NordVPN ad segment coming a whole kilometer away 😂
Just waiting for the inevitable segway to drop 🤣
You forgot the marketing budget and product placement.
Thank You for explaining why ZERO of the live action remakes of Disney animated classics still help make money through the parks and merchandising despite being universally acknowledged as awful films
Your comment is unclear. Please reread it.
You had me going in the beginning. I thought you actually thought Indiana Jones made money lol
Good stuff 👍
that was the smoothest sponsor transition i've ever seen
The problems of fully min-maxing entertainment sectors.
youtube’s best vpn sponsorship transition lol
Thank you so much or making these videos. This is the only channel on the internet delving so accurately in important topics
Yeah, my copy of ‘Dr. Strangelove’ is on DVD!
Fantastic video, may be the most comprehensive look at the revenue cycle of the film industry.
You left out two big ones. Tax credits. Example many marvel movies are made in xyz state because of tax Grant's they get by doing business there and not elsewhere.
And insurance... most movies are insured due to huge price tag to make. If it doesn't make it, and insurance paid they will get a good percentage back.
I prefer to have the physical media because then i have it even if they close down the means of access or go out of business and such.
A few months ago I bought a copy of a German film that I want to sit down and watch. I couldn't find it on any of the streaming services and even if I had it might have been removed from the catalogue before I made the time to watch it.
Uwe Boll famously (and almost truthfully) claimed that he never lost money on a movie. The recipe is simple: film cheap, really cheap, a couple million will have to suffice. Find a well known, perhaps somewhat fading star and ring them up, offer them a few million, but the shooting is in 2 weeks. Other movies will arrange their cast half a year in advance, so if they pick up at all, this means the star doesn't have anything lined up for the next half a year; at which point they might as well wedge in a little extra income even if it pays 10 times less than they're normally paid. In return they're allowed to just phone it in as badly as they dare.
Then there's no marketing and only a symbolic box office. Of course since it's shown at the lot of 2 theatres, the movie is losing money on paper. A few weeks later, it lands in a discount bin of a DVD store, with a fake MSRP slashed down. Familiar name (licensed from a videogame), ideally one that people can't remember anything specific about, but jut at the back of their brain. Familiar face on a cover from a superstar actor. Maybe worth dropping $15 on? How bad could it really be? Most people never heard of Boll in particular.
Then there was some sort of funds magic that i don't understand any longer, but thought i did at one point. Anyway the claim is that he has all these investors, and they invest and thus he has money to make movies because he generates return on investment. And yet his production company did go bankrupt one or two times didn't it. But for the most part, by all reason he really did end up making money, but also found ways to not pay any taxes on it.
You included a lot of things on the revenue side, like merch, parks, and online streaming. Out of these Merchandise yield only licence fees if not then there is manufacturing, distributing and warehouse costs. Parks reak in a lot of money but also cost a lot to maintain and operate.
While you gave us a really great income side covering direct and indirect sources, you severely under budgeted the expenditure side by including only the direct cost of making and advertising, and omitted the indirect cost of some of the related revenue sources.
things are bit strange in places like south korea because of the local regulations force companies to place a certain amount of content on local streaming platforms.
Thanks for finally doing the maths. Leaving out the marketing budget in the last few videos had me wondering
1:19 'Many people are too lazy to actually bother calculating these things properly.'
Many people don't even know what those things you mentioned mean.
Someone please make a universal streaming app that "borrows" films and series from individual streaming services and pay them on one subscription account instead.
Thank you for confirming that I'm a smart person. Finally, someone is not afraid to acknowledge it out loud.
Another reason Little Mermaid lost money is that it separated “original Ariel” from “new Ariel”. It created unnecessary polarization among its fan base. “Ariel” merchandise now had to come in 2 versions, which destroys the production economics of both. Retailers worry that only carrying “old Ariel” will appear insensitive or racist, while carrying only “new Ariel” would offend classic Disney fans. Yet, carrying both makes no economic sense because they compete with each other. So…they elect to carry neither and avoid all of the controversy. This has occurred at retailers like Claire’s.
For the last time, that had little to do with it. The Little Mermaid still made its money back with a slim profit in terms of the theatrical window. This culture war ass reason isn't that impactful, there are a number of other factors that all have far more impact then the mermaid being Black
@@sunnybear178 you are wrong. “For the last time”. YOU SUCK AT MATH. Current global gross is $561M. This is $280M in revenue. The production budget was $250M, plus $140M in marketing, which is $390M in costs. That totals to -$110M dollars. YOU ARE NOT SMART.😂😂😂
@@sunnybear178 you are also wrong if you think Disney’s intentional and cynical “race controversy marketing” strategy is not at fault. They knew this would anger some fans of the old movie, and they knew they could call bad reviews of the film racist. They do it intentionally. Disney is run by incompetent, awful humans.
@@sunnybear178 it's hilarious that they think they know if movies bombed or not when it's more complicated than reading one article
Also worth noting the original Lion king release generated @ $750 Million in ticket sales and $1 Billion in merch that’s 1/4 Billion MORE in merch than box office
Very good video, awesome channel. Greetings from 🇨🇴. Toy sales are huge if the movie got a good box office
If Disney wants to create a Little Mermaid experience at its parks, which Ariel do they use? If they choose only one, they offend a large portion of their audience. If they choose both…it potentially muddles the experience. You cannot have the same song sung twice…or it must be done creatively. If you display one version’s merch more prominently…it offends someone. Existing experiences have to suddenly be re-engineered around this new cultural land mine they invented for themselves. It was one of the DUMBEST decisions ever. They should have just created a new mermaid character and story for Hallie Bailey. She and Ariel could have been friends and had adventures together. It could have been amazing. Disney really are stepping on their own land mines lately…
Emma Watson doesn't look exactly like the original Belle (her hair is much lighter than the OG Belle). Same goes for many live action remakes. In general Disney just goes with the animated version for the park because you really can't have someone going around wearing an Emma Watson mask.
A box office flop doesn’t necessarily equate to a bad film.
You would expect that certain movies can't and won't be made from a cost perspective: if the actor or actress asks more than they bring to the table or if they hire a premium director who totally f**s up the screenwriting, you could estimate that the movie probably will not make back its money. Like Buffett says, actors are the ones who are making the profits in this industry, not streaming platforms or studios. So it would be rational to sometimes call off a project (say a new instalment of Indiana Jones) because the actors tied to it are too expensive to make the project profitable. I think executives may feel like it is a safe bet to make big budget movies, but it is actually less risky to spread the $200 million budget over 4 small/medium sized movies and have one perform bad, two perform average and have one perform excellent.
No one cares about second windowing (SVOD, PVOD) you need to make money in the first window. Second and third windows goes through different benchmarks and has its own sets of distribution costs
This is probably one of the best VPN adds in youtube, because it explains why those streaming services have certain content on specific countries, it fitted extremely well into the video.
It’s weird that TLDR business makes a 20 minute video about how Hollywood is not doing well financially, and barely mentions the historical strike of the writers and actors which came from being underpaid and exploited. Painting it all as If, the ones who are struggling and loosing, are these *poor* mega-corporations and their *poor* shareholders.
Thank you for your wonderful video ❤❤❤❤🎉🎉🎉
Ok the Dr Strangelove reference was awesome!
Personally I will never go to a cinema again. I've regretted the last 5 times I did. They are dirty and expensive and I no longer get the value proposition. My OLED screen is just too good to pretend the cinema is just unreachable in quality, and I can watch a whole nother movie in the time it takes me to get to the cinema and do all of the non-watching parts you need to do there. And I don't think I am the only one. I certainly know a lot of people who are watching movies at least a few times a week, but haven't been in a cinema since before COVID happend. To measure a movie by its "box office" i.e. cinema revenue is becomming quite stupid on that notion. There are good and successful movies that never made it to cinema and were still made in full awareness of that fact.
Mermaid didn’t “flop” because it went woke; it “flopped” because like all of the Disney live action remakes it wasn’t that compelling to sit through in the cinema .. I was bored out of my mind and mermaid is one of my all time favorite films that I’ve watched over and over .. Make. Better. Films. Worth noting your list of films towards the end with big budgets, by far the cheapest budget was Barbie which was a massive success, because unlike the far more expensive films you listed it was actually a good movie - zero of the other films you listed were enjoyable to sit through, and no amount of visual effects can fix a bad story in fact many would argue too many effects hurt the story
I remember “The 10 Commandments “ movie was played every year for 30 years in order to try and recover the money that original studio spent in the 60s, but they didn’t care of the length of time to make a profit!!!!!!
that nordvpn commercial was smooooth
There just has to be so many kick back schemes in place it boggles the mind. Effects, Production, and Marketing black boxes that produce work of questionable value selected on the decision making of very few with massive amounts of money being transferred from corporate accounts to corporate accounts with who know what kind of oversight...
Tax rebates can be 25% of a production budget, then there are brand deals that are in the 10s of millions
I'm overwhelmed by how underwhelming modern movies are
Don't also forget Disney actively lie about how much a movie actually costs Indiana jones shows tax credits for a film costing 350m yet the budget is 300m.
And those tax credits are for the end of pre-prod and principal photography. Post production, reshoots and a lot of VFX still get to be factored in. If it weren't for the UK accounting requirements for the tax credits (and the transparency requirements) some of these values would be quite a bit more opaque.
F. U. C. K THE 2020'S
@@tcortez
Truth is only the studio knows how much and even them, they define budgets differently. Studios usually don't say anything to keep themselves shielded from future lawsuits "we never made that claim". Truth is budgets are very fluid: do you include overhead? do you include executives salaries? do you include credits? do you include the long time it was in preproduction??? Pixar includes all of that, Spiderverse doesn't. So Disney can claim a Pixar film cost 150mil or 200mil and it would be right both ways. Is Sony lying by not including studio overhead
They didn't lie. You think Disney forgot about the UK filings??? according to some UK filings the last 2 Jurassic World cost 850mil, did Universal also lie? did WB lie when they claimed production of the Flash was 190mil only??? over 10 years????
Yes but at least they pay their authors for the books they're publishing, and don't try and say, not pay Alan Dean Foster (and many others) because they bought the rights but not the responsibilities of the publishing contract (note, this is not a thing, and a jaundiced observer might think that Disney are run by the most immoral, despicable sociopaths in business).
“Charging yourself” SVOD fees is not in fact a way to boost a films profits : its the exact opposite. It’s a charge AGAINST the profit of the movie, thus further diluting the amount of profit a participant (director, writer, star, producer) gets. Also, don’t forget the rather insidious “amortisation” tricks , wherein a studio can offset the profits of one movie against the losses of another again ensuring there is “no profit to share”.
The new 2023 haunted mansion movie was a boxoffice flop to but the original haunted mansion movie from 2003 wasn't a boxoffice flop.
I preferred the ads at the end tbh
The budget is not the actual cost of the film, it's what the studio plans on spending on it. Almost every movie goes over budget. Sometimes by considerably more than you'd think.
There was a Forbes article recently on the Avengers Infinity War and Endgame budgets. According to them those films actually cost $1.3 billion to make. The reported budgets for those films were $800 million at the highest end. So it cost at least half a billion dollars more to make them than reported. They aren't legally required to report the actual costs but it would be helpful to shareholders so they can make an informed investing decision.
That was a generally quite interesting and different look at things. My own thoughts on the little mermaid would be that with the attention span of kids and their likelihood of rewatching multiple times, that is as much of a money maker if not more than their cinema incomes.
Problem are the studios.
They keep thinking we want superhero movies after 20yrs
And the disaster behind warner bros....
Well those DC movies suck so hard because they were in production while Warner and discovery merged.
your overall numbers are off as they have cost millions - the production cost you use doesn't include the marketing and PR etc. which is almost always double hte production cost.
Glad you decided to make this video since you got caught manipulating the statistics for the “get woke go broke” video.
I love tldr business channel. Great analysis
China is said to take as much as 80 percent of the money
EXACTLY that's why Little Mermaid LOSS 100+ million
you have to take in to account the LOSS of Russia movie earnings. that No American movies are really earning anything in that market which will have an effect on sales and earning of any movie coming out
In the future will live without money but no provety