Comment on The Biggest Box Office Bombs of 2024

• ohulancutash@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  You’re missing a few bits of knowledge that will help make sense of their comment:

  • BO numbers are the total takings, and of course the exhibitors take a cut of that. For a big tentpole it starts maybe a 70/30 split in favour of the distributor, but by the end of the run it will be much less. As a rough rule of thumb, we divide the box office by two to get roughly how much gets back to the studio.

  • When media and fans (and Wikipedia) quote a film’s “budget” they’re actually referring to the negative cost. This is the cost incurred in development, production and post-production, up to the point that the film exists in a full version ready for distribution (the negative). It does not include marketing and distribution costs (prints & advertising), such as posters, premieres, trailers, junkets, billboards, media campaigns, but also dubbing, subtitles and getting the files to the Theater (usually via costly satellite time). The rule of thumb for a major release is to say they spent at least the same again as the negative cost on P&A.

  So if Madame Web had a budget around $100m, it cost the studio at least $200m. if it made $100m BO, then the studio got back $50m. So its a loss of around $150m.

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  • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Well, whatever metric you’re using isn’t what this article is using because the budget and box office earnings of Kraven on Wikipedia match. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraven_the_Hunter_(film) It doesn’t seem right to use a different metric just for Madame Web.

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    • ohulancutash@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Again, those figures are the negative cost.

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      • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        So you think they should include Madame Web in their list and use a different metric for it than the others? Or what?

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