Ghostbusters heading for $70 million loss

[Zontar]

Snip

I'm aware of how Hollywood Accounting works, but that's for making something that grosses 1.5 billion still officially loose money, not for something that physically makes less money for a studio then it cost to make and market somehow in reality not be a flop.

While we don't know how much Beyond cost to market, it's simply not realistic that the marketing cost was anywhere near what it was for Ghostbusters by the simple virtue of Ghostbusters getting literally twice as many ads purchase for it, coupled with additional media marketing in the form of talk show and late show appearances that cost money for the studio.

While we'll never know the solid numbers, industry estimates are that for Ghostbusters was 100 million, and those estimates don't come from Hollywood Accounting.

had (according to you)insulting marketing, it had leaks that (according to you)revealed production problems, and it was made (in your personal opinion) by horrible people

Adding "(according to you)" to something does not invalidate a fact.

is doing about the same in box office as a movie that cost more to make and didn't have those same problems? That in itself is something interesting to talk about, don't you think?

It's not exactly a comparable situation when one looks beyond the hard numbers of revenue. Even ignoring the fact that Beyond came out a full week after Ghostbusters, Beyond's production history [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBwPQMcf40k] and place within its franchise and pop culture are very different from Ghostbusters, as one was rebooting a property while the other was the 3rd instillation in a franchise reboot that is 7 years old now that has been on a downward spiral.

 

[starbear]

Snip

I'm aware of how Hollywood Accounting works, but that's for making something that grosses 1.5 billion still officially loose money, not for something that physically makes less money for a studio then it cost to make and market somehow in reality not be a flop.

While we don't know how much Beyond cost to market, it's simply not realistic that the marketing cost was anywhere near what it was for Ghostbusters by the simple virtue of Ghostbusters getting literally twice as many ads purchase for it, coupled with additional media marketing in the form of talk show and late show appearances that cost money for the studio.

While we'll never know the solid numbers, industry estimates are that for Ghostbusters was 100 million, and those estimates don't come from Hollywood Accounting.

Those industry estimates are made by using Hollywood accounting. How do you think they came up with the 100 million estimate? As I've said: there is no primary source. Take the production cost and double it to get the break-even and then you estimate your marketing budget from there. Its the way its always been done.

Can you provide a cite that Ghostbusters had twice as many adverts placed for it please? The Star Trek cast were all over late night TV as well. Can you cite that there was a significant difference?

had (according to you)insulting marketing, it had leaks that (according to you)revealed production problems, and it was made (in your personal opinion) by horrible people

Adding "(according to you)" to something does not invalidate a fact.

It does actually. I don't think Ghostbusters was made by horrible people. I don't think the marketing was insulting in the slightest. I didn't see any major production problems behind the scenes that any other movie hasn't experienced.

is doing about the same in box office as a movie that cost more to make and didn't have those same problems? That in itself is something interesting to talk about, don't you think?

It's not exactly a comparable situation when one looks beyond the hard numbers of revenue. Even ignoring the fact that Beyond came out a full week after Ghostbusters, Beyond's production history [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBwPQMcf40k] and place within its franchise and pop culture are very different from Ghostbusters, as one was rebooting a property while the other was the 3rd instillation in a franchise reboot that is 7 years old now that has been on a downward spiral.

"Zontar declares Star Trek Franchise is on a downward spiral."

Ya see? Thats how clickbait headlines are made. And the Hollywood Reporter story is nothing but click-bait. The "sequel unlikely" is based on nothing more than speculation, the 70 million dollar loss is based on estimates made using Hollywood Accounting.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

snip

Because Star Trek's failure isn't nearly as entertaining to watch as Ghostbuster's.

 

[Zontar]

Take the production cost and double it to get the break-even and then you estimate your marketing budget from there. Its the way its always been done.

Given how it would require a marketing cost of 0$ to possibly lead to brake even given how much of the domestic and foreign gross the studio takes, the fact a single 30 second ad spot costs between 40,000 and 80,000 USD on a single network/broadcaster, and the fact there where both twice as many adds as a typical blockbuster gets for Ghostbusters and the fact they had additional costs of talk show and late show appearances, the universal estimate of 300-400 million needed for brake even (with most leaning closer to 400) it's pretty hard to argue that the industry insiders are wrong about something that using your own methodology doesn't disprove.

It does actually. I don't think Ghostbusters was made by horrible people. I don't think the marketing was insulting in the slightest. I didn't see any major production problems behind the scenes that any other movie hasn't experienced.

So threatening people with lawsuits for not appearing in a movie they want no part of as a legal means of harassment isn't something a terrible person would do (and let's not even pretend this isn't the case when the Sony hack chiselled it is stone as a fact that is so cemented it will outlive us both)? Openly stating that the fanbase of your product are terrible people like Feige and the cast went out of their way to do isn't insulting? And the last one was not what I said.

"Zontar declares Star Trek Franchise is on a downward spiral."

Ya see? Thats how clickbait headlines are made. And the Hollywood Reporter story is nothing but click-bait. The "sequel unlikely" is based on nothing more than speculation, the 70 million dollar loss is based on estimates made using Hollywood Accounting.

Stating the Star Trek franchise is on a downward spiral is a numerically demonstrable fact when one looks at the gross of the three reboot movies each being less then the one before it.

And the 70 million estimate, the lowest estimate anyone is throwing around, uses a methodology much more realistic then the one you proposed that only cares about production costs without taking marketing into consideration. If the Hollywood Reporter was the only one observing that it's been a spectacular flop, then it would be one thing, but they aren't. In fact the only ones not pretending it's a flop are those with no connection to the industry whatsoever.

 

[starbear]

Take the production cost and double it to get the break-even and then you estimate your marketing budget from there. Its the way its always been done.

Given how it would require a marketing cost of 0$ to possibly lead to brake even given how much of the domestic and foreign gross the studio takes, the fact a single 30 second ad spot costs between 40,000 and 80,000 USD on a single network/broadcaster, and the fact there where both twice as many adds as a typical blockbuster gets for Ghostbusters and the fact they had additional costs of talk show and late show appearances, the universal estimate of 300-400 million needed for brake even (with most leaning closer to 400) it's pretty hard to argue that the industry insiders are wrong about something that using your own methodology doesn't disprove.

So no cites huh? Just listen and believe? No thanks.

Can you provide a cite that Ghostbusters had twice as many adverts placed for it please? The Star Trek cast were all over late night TV as well. Can you cite that there was a significant difference?

It does actually. I don't think Ghostbusters was made by horrible people. I don't think the marketing was insulting in the slightest. I didn't see any major production problems behind the scenes that any other movie hasn't experienced.

So threatening people with lawsuits for not appearing in a movie they want no part of as a legal means of harassment isn't something a terrible person would do (and let's not even pretend this isn't the case when the Sony hack chiselled it is stone as a fact that is so cemented it will outlive us both)? Openly stating that the fanbase of your product are terrible people like Feige and the cast went out of their way to do isn't insulting? And the last one was not what I said.

The "hack" shows that no-one was actually threatened with a lawsuit. And the people that launched misogynistic attacks of Feige and the cast were terrible people.

"Zontar declares Star Trek Franchise is on a downward spiral."

Ya see? Thats how clickbait headlines are made. And the Hollywood Reporter story is nothing but click-bait. The "sequel unlikely" is based on nothing more than speculation, the 70 million dollar loss is based on estimates made using Hollywood Accounting.

Stating the Star Trek franchise is on a downward spiral is a numerically demonstrable fact when one looks at the gross of the three reboot movies each being less then the one before it.

And yet no-one has started this particular narrative, and no-one wants to make it stick. Why not?

And the 70 million estimate, the lowest estimate anyone is throwing around, uses a methodology much more realistic then the one you proposed that only cares about production costs without taking marketing into consideration.

And what methodology was that? And when you apply that methodology to Star Trek what do you get?

If the Hollywood Reporter was the only one observing that it's been a spectacular flop, then it would be one thing, but they aren't. In fact the only ones not pretending it's a flop are those with no connection to the industry whatsoever.

It hasn't been a spectacular flop. It is a flop though. With merchandising and DVD sales etc added on the movie will make its money back at the very least.

 

[Metalix Knightmare]

snip

Star Trek hasn't been in stasis for the past 30 years. Star Trek has been CONSTANTLY shooting out movies, TV shows, games, etc, and it's had it's fair share of flops and missteps.

Edit: Added bonus in that, last I heard, the latest Trek movie hasn't hit China yet which could make up the difference.

In comparison, Ghostbusters hasn't really had crap going on. It had the games released back in I think 09, and the comic series, but beyond that nothing. This movie was the biggest thing to happen with it in frigging YEARS!

Star Trek will survive a movie doing badly. Heck, this isn't even the first time a Trek movie did badly. But Ghostbusters? Not so much.

With merchandising and DVD sales etc added on the movie will make its money back at the very least.

Yep. It SUUUURE will. After all the tie in videogame sure sold well! And a number of stores haven't been putting the toys in the discount bins!

Seriously, if people didn't go to see it in theaters enough to make back the budget, what on EARTH makes you think they're gonna buy enough home copies to make up the difference!?

 

[Saetha]

Star Trek is barely doing better than Ghostbusters, and arguably (compared to its production budget) doing much worse. Yet no-one is arguing that the numbers mean "the death of the Star Trek Franchise." No one is arguing that Star Trek's bad numbers were caused by its male dominated cast and the producers "making things political." No one is even arguing that Star Trek is a bad movie or suffered from poor marketing. No one is claiming that Star Trek has made a $100 million dollar loss, even though it would need to make approximately $340 million to [hollywood accounting]break even[/hollywood accounting].

Well, as I recall there was an article on this very website declaring the newest Star Trek to be a flop, so if it's pulling in similar numbers and had a similar budget to Ghostbusters, I think we can conclude that GB is also a flop.

Also, you complain about people making a big deal about Ghostbusters by... coming into a Ghostbusters thread to make a big deal about Ghostbusters. The only reason people are frothing at the mouth over this movie and not Star Trek is precisely because of what you're doing - because people decided it was controversial.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

How do you think they came up with the 100 million estimate?

Well, when the director says the film needs to make $500 million to break even at a low estimate you can generally assume thats a reliable source.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

Star Trek is barely doing better than Ghostbusters, and arguably (compared to its production budget) doing much worse. Yet no-one is arguing that the numbers mean "the death of the Star Trek Franchise." No one is arguing that Star Trek's bad numbers were caused by its male dominated cast and the producers "making things political." No one is even arguing that Star Trek is a bad movie or suffered from poor marketing. No one is claiming that Star Trek has made a $100 million dollar loss, even though it would need to make approximately $340 million to [hollywood accounting]break even[/hollywood accounting].

I'm going to ignore the next six or so posts you made, because it seems like you got into a back-and-forth that I don't want any part of, and say:

There are differences between the Star Trek and Ghostbusters franchises. Star Trek has produced, what...a dozen films? Ghostbusters has produced two films, with the last one in 1989.

To secure people's confidence in another film, Ghostbusters '16 had to be a clear success. Even a barely-adequate success, like BvS, probably would've been enough. But it's kind of tanked, fairly unambiguously. When the first film in a planned franchise tanks, the franchise itself is usually stillborn.

By comparision, ST:B has a dozen Trek films behind it as well as the two mostly-solid reboot films. I'm not sure if they'll make another film with the reboot's cast, but they'll definitely make another Star Trek film at some point in the future.

So even though ST:B and Ghostbusters got mostly the same response from audiences ("Meh"), only one of them is going to kill their franchise. That's why the Ghostbusters story gets more attention, I guess. That, and the gender war nonsense.

And if you want people bitching about ST:B...they're out there. There was so much salty hate in the air when the trailers launched that it made my skin all dry and flaky. In general, I don't see how comparing this to ST:B is going to work as a defence of the film or...whatever point it is you're trying to make, I'm honestly not sure. Your posts after the quoted one are kind of a mess of split-up quotes, [citations needed], and arguing about a person's methodology. I really don't wanna stick my hand in there.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

Yep. It SUUUURE will. After all the tie in videogame sure sold well! And a number of stores haven't been putting the toys in the discount bins!

Seriously, if people didn't go to see it in theaters enough to make back the budget, what on EARTH makes you think they're gonna buy enough home copies to make up the difference!?

Dude even Waterworld broke even on VHS. A movie not making it's money back on home video pretty much never happens.

Everyone who thinks they know how this stuff works should read Mark Kermode's The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex.

Home media sales are a very important element of a film's total gross profit that never seems to get mentioned in the immediate aftermath of a film's release; probably because it takes years for that money to trickle in. When it does, though, DVD sales and streaming/television rights can match or exceed the entire theatrical take of a film. Though the exact rate of return seems to vary wildly [https://www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/2rss6d/how_much_money_do_movies_usually_make_off_of/] depending on the region you're talking about.

Ghostbusters tanked, but not so hard that it won't eventually make its money back. Maybe hard enough to hold off hopes for a sequel, though.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

At this point Hollywood should just lower the box office standard. Stop expecting every movie to be a billion dollar maker.

And stop bloating Marketing and use cheaper methods of marketing.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

At this point Hollywood should just lower the box office standard. Stop expecting every movie to be a billion dollar maker.

And stop bloating Marketing and use cheaper methods of marketing.

I agree totally with the second point, but there's some background stuff working to prevent the first;

Spoiler: Background Stuff

- Studios take much a smaller cut of the first-week ticket sales than they used to, due to a number of theatre chains folding in the 2000s. For example, when Phantom Menace came out, some theatres got to keep literally about 1% of the ticket price during the first week. Nowadays, the deals with theatre chains are more egalitarian (it seems to average at about a 50% split), which is good for theatres and theoretically good for customers of theatres, but means that a film has to make twice as much box office gross as it did in 1999 in order to reach the same profit.

- Films are becoming more expensive to make, for much the same reason that AAA video game releases are - the special effects technology advances, and so does the manpower cost and amount of post-production work required to get the film looking up-to-par.

- While home media has been super important for the past couple decades, DVD sales have been declining in favour of cheaper streaming services, and there's always the looming spectre of internet piracy and/or some technological advancement shaking everything up again; that all combines to make studios more keen on the fast, "guaranteed" box office haul instead of a slow, less-predictable home media profit over ~10 years.

So, yeah. Major franchise films with a $1 bllion target number aren't going away anytime soon.

I do think that these films have a problem with inflated marketing budgets, mainly because no-one should have to spend $150 million dollars [http://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2016/04/06/was-the-400-million-warner-bros-paid-for-batman-v-superman-a-good-investment/#54beb7a47d67] marketing a film where Batman fights Superman, for Christ's sake. This is what the internet is for.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

At this point Hollywood should just lower the box office standard. Stop expecting every movie to be a billion dollar maker.

And stop bloating Marketing and use cheaper methods of marketing.

I agree totally with the second point, but there's some background stuff working to prevent the first;

Spoiler: Background Stuff

- Studios take much a smaller cut of the first-week ticket sales than they used to, due to a number of theatre chains folding in the 2000s. For example, when Phantom Menace came out, some theatres got to keep literally about 1% of the ticket price during the first week. Nowadays, the deals with theatre chains are more egalitarian (it seems to average at about a 50% split), which is good for theatres and theoretically good for customers of theatres, but means that a film has to make twice as much box office gross as it did in 1999 in order to reach the same profit.

- Films are becoming more expensive to make, for much the same reason that AAA video game releases are - the special effects technology advances, and so does the manpower cost and amount of post-production work required to get the film looking up-to-par.

- While home media has been super important for the past couple decades, DVD sales have been declining in favour of cheaper streaming services, and there's always the looming spectre of internet piracy and/or some technological advancement shaking everything up again; that all combines to make studios more keen on the fast, "guaranteed" box office haul instead of a slow, less-predictable home media profit over ~10 years.

So, yeah. Major franchise films with a $1 bllion target number aren't going away anytime soon.

I do think that these films have a problem with inflated marketing budgets, mainly because no-one should have to spend $150 million dollars [http://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2016/04/06/was-the-400-million-warner-bros-paid-for-batman-v-superman-a-good-investment/#54beb7a47d67] marketing a film where Batman fights Superman, for Christ's sake. This is what the internet is for.

Streaming is the devil incarnete. People complain about Games being Always Online DRM yet they can put up with Streaming movies/shows?

What makes Youtube different because it is FREE so we can put up with occasional lag and internet issue resulting in disconnects.

And lets not forget that streaming services are so fucking picky with Netflix just having a constantly back and forth cataloge because publishers just willy nilly remove and put back certain movies.

Star Trek movies in Netflix for example has been constantly coming and going. Today Star Trek Nemesis is here, but 4 months from now it will be removed than another 4 months later they bring it back.

 

[Shiver Me Tits]

If these numbers check out, then someone's in it really, really deep.

Cool infographic! Can you make one for Star Trek Beyond? That would be AWESOME!

Hell I don't even know what Beyond's marketing budget was outside of the fact it was significantly lower then Ghostbusters.

...what makes you think that?

The infographic makes it quite clear that the Ghostbusters Marketing Budget is estimated: which translates to "pulled out of thin air." It looks like it uses the "Traditional Hollywood Accounting" formula to come up with the $100 million figure: so Star Trek would have had a marketing budget between $100-150 million.

Estimates should be different than guesses, in that estimates are based on history and usually some kind of formula. Sadly, "Estimate" is often the term used by practitioners of the Guess. The test isn't to dismiss it though, but to ask for the basis of the estimate.

I've given the basis for the estimate. Hollywood Accounting.

Well yeah, but I was wondering about the basis for Zontar's estimate, I already get that you're understandably unimpressed by it.

 

[Shiver Me Tits]

At this point Hollywood should just lower the box office standard. Stop expecting every movie to be a billion dollar maker.

And stop bloating Marketing and use cheaper methods of marketing.

I agree totally with the second point, but there's some background stuff working to prevent the first;

Spoiler: Background Stuff

- Studios take much a smaller cut of the first-week ticket sales than they used to, due to a number of theatre chains folding in the 2000s. For example, when Phantom Menace came out, some theatres got to keep literally about 1% of the ticket price during the first week. Nowadays, the deals with theatre chains are more egalitarian (it seems to average at about a 50% split), which is good for theatres and theoretically good for customers of theatres, but means that a film has to make twice as much box office gross as it did in 1999 in order to reach the same profit.

- Films are becoming more expensive to make, for much the same reason that AAA video game releases are - the special effects technology advances, and so does the manpower cost and amount of post-production work required to get the film looking up-to-par.

- While home media has been super important for the past couple decades, DVD sales have been declining in favour of cheaper streaming services, and there's always the looming spectre of internet piracy and/or some technological advancement shaking everything up again; that all combines to make studios more keen on the fast, "guaranteed" box office haul instead of a slow, less-predictable home media profit over ~10 years.

So, yeah. Major franchise films with a $1 bllion target number aren't going away anytime soon.

I do think that these films have a problem with inflated marketing budgets, mainly because no-one should have to spend $150 million dollars [http://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2016/04/06/was-the-400-million-warner-bros-paid-for-batman-v-superman-a-good-investment/#54beb7a47d67] marketing a film where Batman fights Superman, for Christ's sake. This is what the internet is for.

Streaming is the devil incarnete. People complain about Games being Always Online DRM yet they can put up with Streaming movies/shows?

Do you come from an alternate reality where most people bought their TV shows outright, and value owning them for long periods of time? I guess you're at least a Millenial, to not realize that the history of television is a history of BROADCAST.

Games have a very different history, so we have a rare moment here, and that is a non-fallacious invocation of the "Apples and Oranges" confusion.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

At this point Hollywood should just lower the box office standard. Stop expecting every movie to be a billion dollar maker.

And stop bloating Marketing and use cheaper methods of marketing.

I agree totally with the second point, but there's some background stuff working to prevent the first;

Spoiler: Background Stuff

- Studios take much a smaller cut of the first-week ticket sales than they used to, due to a number of theatre chains folding in the 2000s. For example, when Phantom Menace came out, some theatres got to keep literally about 1% of the ticket price during the first week. Nowadays, the deals with theatre chains are more egalitarian (it seems to average at about a 50% split), which is good for theatres and theoretically good for customers of theatres, but means that a film has to make twice as much box office gross as it did in 1999 in order to reach the same profit.

- Films are becoming more expensive to make, for much the same reason that AAA video game releases are - the special effects technology advances, and so does the manpower cost and amount of post-production work required to get the film looking up-to-par.

- While home media has been super important for the past couple decades, DVD sales have been declining in favour of cheaper streaming services, and there's always the looming spectre of internet piracy and/or some technological advancement shaking everything up again; that all combines to make studios more keen on the fast, "guaranteed" box office haul instead of a slow, less-predictable home media profit over ~10 years.

So, yeah. Major franchise films with a $1 bllion target number aren't going away anytime soon.

I do think that these films have a problem with inflated marketing budgets, mainly because no-one should have to spend $150 million dollars [http://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2016/04/06/was-the-400-million-warner-bros-paid-for-batman-v-superman-a-good-investment/#54beb7a47d67] marketing a film where Batman fights Superman, for Christ's sake. This is what the internet is for.

Streaming is the devil incarnete. People complain about Games being Always Online DRM yet they can put up with Streaming movies/shows?

Do you come from an alternate reality where most people bought their TV shows outright, and value owning them for long periods of time? I guess you're at least a Millenial, to not realize that the history of television is a history of BROADCAST.

Games have a very different history, so we have a rare moment here, and that is a non-fallacious invocation of the "Apples and Oranges" confusion.

I lived through TV for a long time now. And I am mostly thinking of DVD/Home Media and that streaming is killing it.

 

[Shiver Me Tits]

At this point Hollywood should just lower the box office standard. Stop expecting every movie to be a billion dollar maker.

And stop bloating Marketing and use cheaper methods of marketing.

I agree totally with the second point, but there's some background stuff working to prevent the first;

Spoiler: Background Stuff

- Studios take much a smaller cut of the first-week ticket sales than they used to, due to a number of theatre chains folding in the 2000s. For example, when Phantom Menace came out, some theatres got to keep literally about 1% of the ticket price during the first week. Nowadays, the deals with theatre chains are more egalitarian (it seems to average at about a 50% split), which is good for theatres and theoretically good for customers of theatres, but means that a film has to make twice as much box office gross as it did in 1999 in order to reach the same profit.

- Films are becoming more expensive to make, for much the same reason that AAA video game releases are - the special effects technology advances, and so does the manpower cost and amount of post-production work required to get the film looking up-to-par.

- While home media has been super important for the past couple decades, DVD sales have been declining in favour of cheaper streaming services, and there's always the looming spectre of internet piracy and/or some technological advancement shaking everything up again; that all combines to make studios more keen on the fast, "guaranteed" box office haul instead of a slow, less-predictable home media profit over ~10 years.

So, yeah. Major franchise films with a $1 bllion target number aren't going away anytime soon.

I do think that these films have a problem with inflated marketing budgets, mainly because no-one should have to spend $150 million dollars [http://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2016/04/06/was-the-400-million-warner-bros-paid-for-batman-v-superman-a-good-investment/#54beb7a47d67] marketing a film where Batman fights Superman, for Christ's sake. This is what the internet is for.

Streaming is the devil incarnete. People complain about Games being Always Online DRM yet they can put up with Streaming movies/shows?

Do you come from an alternate reality where most people bought their TV shows outright, and value owning them for long periods of time? I guess you're at least a Millenial, to not realize that the history of television is a history of BROADCAST.

Games have a very different history, so we have a rare moment here, and that is a non-fallacious invocation of the "Apples and Oranges" confusion.

I lived through TV for a long time now. And I am mostly thinking of DVD/Home Media and that streaming is killing it.

DVD/Home media. You mean the multi-billion dollar empire that ended up being mostly Blockbuster?

Oh how liberating. I wish I could get rid of my giant library of content and go back to renting it by the one or two, along with abusive late fees.

No offense, but between this and your passion for various studio dog eggs on release, I have to wonder how green is your astroturf?

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

At this point Hollywood should just lower the box office standard. Stop expecting every movie to be a billion dollar maker.

And stop bloating Marketing and use cheaper methods of marketing.

I agree totally with the second point, but there's some background stuff working to prevent the first;

Spoiler: Background Stuff

- Studios take much a smaller cut of the first-week ticket sales than they used to, due to a number of theatre chains folding in the 2000s. For example, when Phantom Menace came out, some theatres got to keep literally about 1% of the ticket price during the first week. Nowadays, the deals with theatre chains are more egalitarian (it seems to average at about a 50% split), which is good for theatres and theoretically good for customers of theatres, but means that a film has to make twice as much box office gross as it did in 1999 in order to reach the same profit.

- Films are becoming more expensive to make, for much the same reason that AAA video game releases are - the special effects technology advances, and so does the manpower cost and amount of post-production work required to get the film looking up-to-par.

- While home media has been super important for the past couple decades, DVD sales have been declining in favour of cheaper streaming services, and there's always the looming spectre of internet piracy and/or some technological advancement shaking everything up again; that all combines to make studios more keen on the fast, "guaranteed" box office haul instead of a slow, less-predictable home media profit over ~10 years.

So, yeah. Major franchise films with a $1 bllion target number aren't going away anytime soon.

I do think that these films have a problem with inflated marketing budgets, mainly because no-one should have to spend $150 million dollars [http://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2016/04/06/was-the-400-million-warner-bros-paid-for-batman-v-superman-a-good-investment/#54beb7a47d67] marketing a film where Batman fights Superman, for Christ's sake. This is what the internet is for.

Streaming is the devil incarnete. People complain about Games being Always Online DRM yet they can put up with Streaming movies/shows?

Do you come from an alternate reality where most people bought their TV shows outright, and value owning them for long periods of time? I guess you're at least a Millenial, to not realize that the history of television is a history of BROADCAST.

Games have a very different history, so we have a rare moment here, and that is a non-fallacious invocation of the "Apples and Oranges" confusion.

I lived through TV for a long time now. And I am mostly thinking of DVD/Home Media and that streaming is killing it.

DVD/Home media. You mean the multi-billion dollar empire that ended up being mostly Blockbuster?

Oh how liberating. I wish I could get rid of my giant library of content and go back to renting it by the one or two, along with abusive late fees.

No offense, but between this and your passion for various studio dog eggs on release, I have to wonder how green is your astroturf?

Your saying you don't buy and collect Home Media?