Movie budgets are a mythical thing for most of us. We hear some blurb about tens or hundreds of millions for a budget and let it wash over us. Then we hear experts claim movies lost hundreds of millions of dollars. How do they know?
The Math Doesn’t Work
I stumbled onto this website the other day looking for something else. I liked John Carter; I mean it was made for kids and was mostly an action movie with a tiny bit about the princess finding her true love thrown in for the girls so it couldn’t be great. Setting it in a desert allowed them to have the princess as scantily clad as possible for the kid-safe rating they wanted. The violence couldn’t be epic with oceans of blood and gore, the rating told you that. More importantly, since the site ranked it as the loosingest of all time (so far!) how did they come up with the number?
Take a look at the table at the link. It’s missing a column. Makes one think they generated the table like this:
If they want me to believe a studio spent $263.7 million making John Carter then another $200+ million marketing it, they need to show the actual marketing costs they used.
Explains the free cable channels though
I was on-site out of state for a contract and the cable in my corporate housing had a few channels that kept playing the same movies every weekend. Haven’t been on-site in years and don’t remember the stations. I’m a Roku user now!
It does explain why John Carter was on so much. Had to cut a deal for some of the advertising revenue to replenish the coffers so they could have more movie budgets.
Come on, look at the list. Mortal Engine? I liked that show. Watched it a few times. I think I actually own a copy of Battleship. Stealth was great. I watched that back with my dad when he was alive. Gods of Egypt! You’ve all probably seen that a dozen times on free movie channels. Now you know why! Honestly, it wasn’t a bad movie.
We shall see more
Honestly I think we are going to see many move movies like these. Why? The above are all good “booze and takeout food” movies. A comfort film of predictable content. Today’s “modern” theaters are putting in big recliners and bringing food to your table. Not the kind of environment for “edge of your seat” mysteries or thrillers, especially when you have people ordering food, clinking glasses, and scraping plates.
Hell, I quite going to theaters because there are so damned many people in the audience who feel compelled to talk through the entire movie. Other assholes refuse to power off their phones. They also feel compelled to answer and talk on them during the movie.
The real reason though can be found here. Scroll down to Paint Your Wagon. I saw that movie in the theater as a kid. Three hours was a long time to not pee. Twenty million dollars in 1969 was a whole lot of money. Losing almost six million on a movie hurt. Then God invented the rental market.
I guess there is still a rental market with streaming? More importantly, if your content isn’t on film (i.e. been converted to digital format) you don’t have to worry about losing it. This month streaming channel Tubi has it. Next month you cut a deal with Roku, Netflix, Plex, etc.
The dirty little secret is even a bad movie has fans. You just have to budget accordingly.
Battlefield Earth is a cult classic. It’s been on a whole lot of channels, and it has been in the rental market. Eventually there will be a sequel. Computer generated special effects get cheaper all the time. Eventually someone will think they can get it done for $14 million and it will happen, especially if John Travolta opts to work for a percentage.
