Comment on conditional probability
Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world 2 weeks agoPlease quit with this tax write off misinformation.
They cut their losses. We don’t know the details why, but for some reason they decided it would cost too much in money or reputation to continue with marketing and release.
Not everything is a billionaire conspiracy. Sometimes they just realise they made a film too shit to release, or some person in a suit just wanted to spite someone.
Piemanding@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Never said it was a write off. The video I watched on it did say that someone who worked on the film said it was for tax reasons. It’s a single source that might be incorrect, though.
booly@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
There’s no legitimate reason to intentionally take losses (or refuse to take revenue) for tax reasons, though.
If you lose $1000 and get a tax benefit worth $200 on those losses, it’s still a net loss of $800, so you should rather get at least some money back. Getting $500 back might mean that you lose $500 and then get $100 back in tax benefits, so that your net loss is $400 instead. That’s an improvement over losing $800, so it’s worth doing.
More likely, the contracts around the movie had them needing to pay rightsholders, actors/writers/directors, and producers based on certain formulas on the gross revenue, or would be contractually obligated to spend a minimum on marketing and promotion if there was going to be a release, etc.
Taxes just alleviate the degree of losses (or reduce the amount of profit), which can change behavior around risk taking, but it wouldn’t make sense to abandon a finished movie solely for tax reasons.