ID 4: Resurgence question

[Zontar]

The movie was estimated to need close to 1 billion dollars to break even

I'm just going to jump in here for this one. This isn't actually the case, the brake even mark was estimated to be in the 600 million area, but 1 billion was the lowest end of expectations for the movie to be considered a success, with 1.2 billion being the goal and 1.5 billion being hoped for.

 

[Zontar]

The movie was estimated to need close to 1 billion dollars to break even

I'm just going to jump in here for this one. This isn't actually the case, the brake even mark was estimated to be in the 600 million area, but 1 billion was the lowest end of expectations for the movie to be considered a success, with 1.2 billion being the goal and 1.5 billion being hoped for.

http://deadline.com/2016/03/batman-v-superman-tuesday-box-office-record-1201728459/
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-verdict-batman-v-889234
http://variety.com/2016/film/news/wb-batman-v-superman-faces-high-expectations-1201729887/

Yeah, I wasn't pulling that out of my ass.

Only variety makes mention of the billion mark as anything other then "it's unlikely to hit it", and they stated it would be considered a disappointment, not a loss. Which in entertainment are two very different things.

 

[Jingle Fett]

Was it that bad?

Financially it was. Only Alice 2 and TMNT 2 flopped harder than it, as of now. Verdicts still out on Ghostbusters. Star Trek 3 and Ice Age 5 are going to bury that one, hard.

What is ID4?

Independence Day. (4th of July. Fucking stupid title.)

Except financially it hasn't flopped? It's made $338 million at the boxoffice so far from a $165 million budget

I've had to explain this like 8 different times in the last 4 days. No, the number you see on BoxOfficeMojo is not the amount of money the studio making the movie gets. Theaters (as if this wasn't obvious), distributors and whatever other parties involved all get a cut from gross ticket sales. The studio at best gets half the money it made in ticket sales, usually less, and there are a lot of regional factors and other circumstances involved with how much money studios make off of each movie. The budget on BoxOfficeMojo also does not include marketing costs, which, for blockbusters, can easily be upwards of a 100 million dollars on top of production costs.

Suffice to say, a movie like Independence Day: Resurgence would need to make around 500 million dollars at the box office, before it starts making profit. Yes, you read that right. the thing would need close to 500 mill just to break even. It's also nearing the end of its run in theaters, it's already down to only a couple of showings in most places, and it has opened in all of its major regions already, so it'll have no legs whatsoever. As it stands, it's a flop.

Wrong. For a movie to be considered a success, the rule of thumb is that it has to make back its budget twice over. Meaning if the budget was $165 million, if it's able to make over $330 million then it's generally speaking considered a success. Maybe not as big a success as other movies that make more obviously, but certainly nowhere near a flop. And the budget shown DOES include marketing, generally speaking about 25-30% of the budget of a movie is allocated to marketing.

Nope. Every 'correction' you listed is horribly inaccurate. To the point where you don't actually seem to have a clue 'bout any of it. Maybe read the first paragraph of my comment again to see something that is in the ballpark of reflecting reality.

Let me break it down for you so that it's easily digestible, you seem to have ignored it the first time 'round:
- No, the number on BoxOfficeMojo is not the amount of money the studio makes, it is gross ticket sales, meaning it is the amount money people spent buying tickets
- No, the studio doesn't get all of it, theaters (and distribution partners in other regions, etc.) get atleast half the money listed, usually, it's even more than that
- No, the budget on BoxOfficeMojo doesn't include marketing budget. It is only the production budget. And yes, marketing for blockbusters numbers in the 100 million dollar sphere. On top of production costs. Movies are fucking expensive.

If you somehow can't parse these three, I'm sorry, but you won't be anywhere close to being correct about this. Atleast I'd like to ask you to stop spreading misinformation.

Oh, I almost forgot:
- Yes, Independence Day 2 is a flop. Not the biggest one this year(or season), but a big one nonetheless.

1- Show me where I said otherwise
2- Show me where I said otherwise
3- You're wrong. It does include the marketing budget. This is why blockbuster movies have gotten so expensive. Independent films might often list the P&A (Print and Advertising) separately or not at all because they rely on 3rd party distribution (hence independent). Hollywood studios on the other hand generally distribute their movies themselves so when they list the budget, it's the whole deal. If an indie studio was paying for its own P&A, it would be included as part of the budget.

As to the accuracy of my information, my dad has worked in the film industry for over 20 years both in the US and abroad and that's where I get my info from. Furthermore here's a separate source:

"A film's production budget includes all costs incurred during pre-production, filming, post-production and promotion. That includes buying the rights to the script, actor's salaries, production staff salaries, set construction, special effects, wardrobe, craft services, marketing, dog training -- everything!"

"When calculating a marketing budget, the rule of thumb is to spend 50 percent of the rest of the production costs (pre-production, filming and post-production) [source: Vogel]. So if a movie costs $100 million to make, you'll need an additional $50 million to sell it."

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/movie-cost1.htm

But whatever man, you're clearly an expert so I defer to your authority.

Guy, I'm really happy for your dad. That doesn't make you not wrong. Here is the literal quote from BoxOfficeMojo:

Production Budget refers to the cost to make the movie and it does not include marketing or other expenditures.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/about/boxoffice.htm

Case closed, shut.

It's not as simple as that. Let me tell you about the movie Pixels and maybe you'll understand. Box Office Mojo lists the budget as $88 million. Wikipedia and the leaked Sony emails however list it as $129 million. So right off the bat, the Box Office Mojo stats aren't as clear cut as they seem.

But wait, $129 million was the gross budget, not the net budget. The net budget was $111 million. This is because the other $18 million came from a rebate from the Canadian government. Depending on where a movie was filmed, studios get grants, tax incentives, rebates, and more. Free money essentially, money that the studio doesn't have to pay back and can do whatever they want with. Product placements are another example, showing a Coca-cola logo in the movie gives a big chunk of free money right there.

The point is, while a studio may pay millions in advertising, they don't need to make it all back for the movie to make a profit. As far as the studio is concerned, the main number that matters when determining whether it flopped or not is the budget they publish. If it makes double its budget, it likely broke even--not a flop. In fact, sometimes studios actually want movies to flop because of all the free money, they can write it off as a "loss".
Box Office Mojo says it doesn't include it to play it safe because unless they're explicitly told the details they don't actually know (like whether it's the net or gross budget for example), even though other definitions say it is included.

Don't sell me that short, I know that each movie has several (well known) ways to mitigate costs/receive additional funds.

You're arguing semantics about the definition of 'production budget'. Since we are referencing BoxOfficeMojo numbers, we can assume their numbers don't include marketing costs, according to them.

Now, whether when any places that talk about budget include marketing in it or not is completely irrelevant to the current discussion, which pertains only to BoxOfficeMojo's reported numbers.

Well it seemed like you didn't know because you argued in your other posts that a movie has make triple its budget or more to break even and begin making a profit when that is simply not the case due to those factors. Specifically you said:

a movie like Independence Day: Resurgence would need to make around 500 million dollars at the box office, before it starts making profit.

Because of the free money they get, they likely don't have to make that much to make a profit. Unless you know whether the $165 million budget was the gross budget or net budget, you don't know how much of that money was free money or not. This is also why the rule of thumb is to stick to whatever the published budget is when determining whether it flopped or not. It might be $165 million + invisible free money (in which case it needs to double $165m to break even), or it might be $165 million including free money (in which case it makes a profit with less than double $165m).

It's also relevant because IMDB/BOM generally report the same numbers as wikipedia but not always. Problem is we don't always know if the listed number is the net budget or gross budget or something else entirely. It's whatever the studio chooses to say (or not say). Again, Pixels shows up as $88 million in both IMDB and BOM, but $129 million is the budget on its wikipedia page (while the net budget was $111 million). But on the other hand if you look at Force Awakens, IMDB and BOM show the production budget as $245 million (which is the net budget on wikipedia), but the gross budget was $306 million (meaning at least $61 million in free money).

It's inconsistent is what I'm saying and why BOM might say that it doesn't include advertising even though that's not necessarily true--because they might literally not know. They don't know if (for example) the studio planned 10% of the net budget allocated to advertising and then covered the rest using the free money. But since the majority of the relevant marketing money might come from the free money, it's relatively safe and easier to just say it doesn't include the advertising, even though it actually might include some (and usually does).

I didn't go into per movie 'ifs' and 'buts' because that wasn't the level of the conversation. And I was referring to blockbusters ala ID4R, not movies in general. Thanks for bringing it up, as the discourse shifted away from topic. What you described doesn't match in any way what confirmed and unconfirmed information sources say about about budgets and profits regarding movies.

Warcraft, for example, by your logic, is a smash hit. It made 432 million worldwide! Oh, actually the movie is set to lose 15 million dollars overall by the end of its run in theaters, as reported by HollywoodInsider. Fancy that. This movie is a similar calibre blockbuster to ID4R. (But it only had a budget of 160 million. How could it fail?)

Batman V Superman: It made 870 million bucks, what a hit! Against a budget of 250 million. Oh, wait, the movies total budget when including marketing is estimated to be 410 million. Because the 250 million didn't include that. The movie was estimated to need close to 1 billion dollars to break even. The lowest estimate I could find was on the high end of 800 million.

Avatar: Remember Avatar? Highest-grossing movie ever? Yeah. Remember the hubbub about it costing 500 million grand total for Fox? And then a spokesman at 20CF came out and said it's bull. Because the actual budget of the movie was 237 million. Oh, and about a 150 mill extra for marketing. On top of that.

Seeing a trend? Blockbusters have upwards of a 100 million dollars in marketing on top of their ludicrous 100-200 million production budgets in all of my examples, and these were choice mind, not even close to all the cases I could bring up.

I'm sorry, but everything you wrote goes contrary to every verifiable source I could find. And eyeballing it based on those, yes, my statement about ID4R needing close to 500 mill to break even, is not only not farfetched, is within the ballpark of reality. Them's the breaks.

Yeah way to ignore what I said and completely miss the mark. In fact Avatar is actually a perfect example of what I literally just talked about in my previous post. Thanks for bringing it up and proving my point. $500 million or whatever was likely the gross budget while the $237 million was probably the net budget. Again, the studio doesn't necessarily have to make back that other $150 million to break even. And if the spokesman hadn't revealed the $237 million number, the $500 million is what what we'd be seeing in Box Office Mojo and you'd be saying it'd need to make a several billion to break even.

And Warcraft is a smash hit, contrary to what they're saying. Executives talk about movies "losing" money all the time and for many reasons. For example they maybe need it to perform higher to "compensate" for a previous movie underperforming--this is how a movie can be a complete success on its own merits yet still "flop". Or plenty of other ways. It's intentional and the reason is always the same--to pocket as much money as possible.
It's the same logic that allows Return of the Jedi to have "never gone into profit", despite making $475 million on a $32.5 million budget. The same way that My Big Fat Greek Wedding "lost" $20 million despite making $350 million on a $6 million budget (!). Or how Lord of the Rings trilogy made over $6 billion, but "made "horrendous losses" and no profit at all." (we swear, that's totally why we can't pay the Tolkien estate their share of the money!). It's called Hollywood Accounting and there are plenty of more examples in that link (such as Coming to America, Forrest Gump, Spiderman 2002).

And since the other stuff I've said apparently goes contrary to every verifiable source you can find, here's the source about Pixels and here's Force Awakens.

Regardless, you seem convinced that I'm wrong and nobody can tell you otherwise so continuing this discussion is pointless. You clearly know more about the film industry than people who do it for a living, that's quite an impressive feat so bravo.

 

[Jingle Fett]

Was it that bad?

Financially it was. Only Alice 2 and TMNT 2 flopped harder than it, as of now. Verdicts still out on Ghostbusters. Star Trek 3 and Ice Age 5 are going to bury that one, hard.

What is ID4?

Independence Day. (4th of July. Fucking stupid title.)

Except financially it hasn't flopped? It's made $338 million at the boxoffice so far from a $165 million budget

I've had to explain this like 8 different times in the last 4 days. No, the number you see on BoxOfficeMojo is not the amount of money the studio making the movie gets. Theaters (as if this wasn't obvious), distributors and whatever other parties involved all get a cut from gross ticket sales. The studio at best gets half the money it made in ticket sales, usually less, and there are a lot of regional factors and other circumstances involved with how much money studios make off of each movie. The budget on BoxOfficeMojo also does not include marketing costs, which, for blockbusters, can easily be upwards of a 100 million dollars on top of production costs.

Suffice to say, a movie like Independence Day: Resurgence would need to make around 500 million dollars at the box office, before it starts making profit. Yes, you read that right. the thing would need close to 500 mill just to break even. It's also nearing the end of its run in theaters, it's already down to only a couple of showings in most places, and it has opened in all of its major regions already, so it'll have no legs whatsoever. As it stands, it's a flop.

Wrong. For a movie to be considered a success, the rule of thumb is that it has to make back its budget twice over. Meaning if the budget was $165 million, if it's able to make over $330 million then it's generally speaking considered a success. Maybe not as big a success as other movies that make more obviously, but certainly nowhere near a flop. And the budget shown DOES include marketing, generally speaking about 25-30% of the budget of a movie is allocated to marketing.

Nope. Every 'correction' you listed is horribly inaccurate. To the point where you don't actually seem to have a clue 'bout any of it. Maybe read the first paragraph of my comment again to see something that is in the ballpark of reflecting reality.

Let me break it down for you so that it's easily digestible, you seem to have ignored it the first time 'round:
- No, the number on BoxOfficeMojo is not the amount of money the studio makes, it is gross ticket sales, meaning it is the amount money people spent buying tickets
- No, the studio doesn't get all of it, theaters (and distribution partners in other regions, etc.) get atleast half the money listed, usually, it's even more than that
- No, the budget on BoxOfficeMojo doesn't include marketing budget. It is only the production budget. And yes, marketing for blockbusters numbers in the 100 million dollar sphere. On top of production costs. Movies are fucking expensive.

If you somehow can't parse these three, I'm sorry, but you won't be anywhere close to being correct about this. Atleast I'd like to ask you to stop spreading misinformation.

Oh, I almost forgot:
- Yes, Independence Day 2 is a flop. Not the biggest one this year(or season), but a big one nonetheless.

1- Show me where I said otherwise
2- Show me where I said otherwise
3- You're wrong. It does include the marketing budget. This is why blockbuster movies have gotten so expensive. Independent films might often list the P&A (Print and Advertising) separately or not at all because they rely on 3rd party distribution (hence independent). Hollywood studios on the other hand generally distribute their movies themselves so when they list the budget, it's the whole deal. If an indie studio was paying for its own P&A, it would be included as part of the budget.

As to the accuracy of my information, my dad has worked in the film industry for over 20 years both in the US and abroad and that's where I get my info from. Furthermore here's a separate source:

"A film's production budget includes all costs incurred during pre-production, filming, post-production and promotion. That includes buying the rights to the script, actor's salaries, production staff salaries, set construction, special effects, wardrobe, craft services, marketing, dog training -- everything!"

"When calculating a marketing budget, the rule of thumb is to spend 50 percent of the rest of the production costs (pre-production, filming and post-production) [source: Vogel]. So if a movie costs $100 million to make, you'll need an additional $50 million to sell it."

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/movie-cost1.htm

But whatever man, you're clearly an expert so I defer to your authority.

Guy, I'm really happy for your dad. That doesn't make you not wrong. Here is the literal quote from BoxOfficeMojo:

Production Budget refers to the cost to make the movie and it does not include marketing or other expenditures.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/about/boxoffice.htm

Case closed, shut.

It's not as simple as that. Let me tell you about the movie Pixels and maybe you'll understand. Box Office Mojo lists the budget as $88 million. Wikipedia and the leaked Sony emails however list it as $129 million. So right off the bat, the Box Office Mojo stats aren't as clear cut as they seem.

But wait, $129 million was the gross budget, not the net budget. The net budget was $111 million. This is because the other $18 million came from a rebate from the Canadian government. Depending on where a movie was filmed, studios get grants, tax incentives, rebates, and more. Free money essentially, money that the studio doesn't have to pay back and can do whatever they want with. Product placements are another example, showing a Coca-cola logo in the movie gives a big chunk of free money right there.

The point is, while a studio may pay millions in advertising, they don't need to make it all back for the movie to make a profit. As far as the studio is concerned, the main number that matters when determining whether it flopped or not is the budget they publish. If it makes double its budget, it likely broke even--not a flop. In fact, sometimes studios actually want movies to flop because of all the free money, they can write it off as a "loss".
Box Office Mojo says it doesn't include it to play it safe because unless they're explicitly told the details they don't actually know (like whether it's the net or gross budget for example), even though other definitions say it is included.

Don't sell me that short, I know that each movie has several (well known) ways to mitigate costs/receive additional funds.

You're arguing semantics about the definition of 'production budget'. Since we are referencing BoxOfficeMojo numbers, we can assume their numbers don't include marketing costs, according to them.

Now, whether when any places that talk about budget include marketing in it or not is completely irrelevant to the current discussion, which pertains only to BoxOfficeMojo's reported numbers.

Well it seemed like you didn't know because you argued in your other posts that a movie has make triple its budget or more to break even and begin making a profit when that is simply not the case due to those factors. Specifically you said:

a movie like Independence Day: Resurgence would need to make around 500 million dollars at the box office, before it starts making profit.

Because of the free money they get, they likely don't have to make that much to make a profit. Unless you know whether the $165 million budget was the gross budget or net budget, you don't know how much of that money was free money or not. This is also why the rule of thumb is to stick to whatever the published budget is when determining whether it flopped or not. It might be $165 million + invisible free money (in which case it needs to double $165m to break even), or it might be $165 million including free money (in which case it makes a profit with less than double $165m).

It's also relevant because IMDB/BOM generally report the same numbers as wikipedia but not always. Problem is we don't always know if the listed number is the net budget or gross budget or something else entirely. It's whatever the studio chooses to say (or not say). Again, Pixels shows up as $88 million in both IMDB and BOM, but $129 million is the budget on its wikipedia page (while the net budget was $111 million). But on the other hand if you look at Force Awakens, IMDB and BOM show the production budget as $245 million (which is the net budget on wikipedia), but the gross budget was $306 million (meaning at least $61 million in free money).

It's inconsistent is what I'm saying and why BOM might say that it doesn't include advertising even though that's not necessarily true--because they might literally not know. They don't know if (for example) the studio planned 10% of the net budget allocated to advertising and then covered the rest using the free money. But since the majority of the relevant marketing money might come from the free money, it's relatively safe and easier to just say it doesn't include the advertising, even though it actually might include some (and usually does).

I didn't go into per movie 'ifs' and 'buts' because that wasn't the level of the conversation. And I was referring to blockbusters ala ID4R, not movies in general. Thanks for bringing it up, as the discourse shifted away from topic. What you described doesn't match in any way what confirmed and unconfirmed information sources say about about budgets and profits regarding movies.

Warcraft, for example, by your logic, is a smash hit. It made 432 million worldwide! Oh, actually the movie is set to lose 15 million dollars overall by the end of its run in theaters, as reported by HollywoodInsider. Fancy that. This movie is a similar calibre blockbuster to ID4R. (But it only had a budget of 160 million. How could it fail?)

Batman V Superman: It made 870 million bucks, what a hit! Against a budget of 250 million. Oh, wait, the movies total budget when including marketing is estimated to be 410 million. Because the 250 million didn't include that. The movie was estimated to need close to 1 billion dollars to break even. The lowest estimate I could find was on the high end of 800 million.

Avatar: Remember Avatar? Highest-grossing movie ever? Yeah. Remember the hubbub about it costing 500 million grand total for Fox? And then a spokesman at 20CF came out and said it's bull. Because the actual budget of the movie was 237 million. Oh, and about a 150 mill extra for marketing. On top of that.

Seeing a trend? Blockbusters have upwards of a 100 million dollars in marketing on top of their ludicrous 100-200 million production budgets in all of my examples, and these were choice mind, not even close to all the cases I could bring up.

I'm sorry, but everything you wrote goes contrary to every verifiable source I could find. And eyeballing it based on those, yes, my statement about ID4R needing close to 500 mill to break even, is not only not farfetched, is within the ballpark of reality. Them's the breaks.

Yeah way to ignore what I said and completely miss the mark. In fact Avatar is actually a perfect example of what I literally just talked about in my previous post. Thanks for bringing it up and proving my point. $500 million or whatever was likely the gross budget while the $237 million was probably the net budget. Again, the studio doesn't necessarily have to make back that other $150 million to break even. And if the spokesman hadn't revealed the $237 million number, the $500 million is what what we'd be seeing in Box Office Mojo and you'd be saying it'd need to make a several billion to break even.

And Warcraft is a smash hit, contrary to what they're saying. Executives talk about movies "losing" money all the time and for many reasons. For example they maybe need it to perform higher to "compensate" for a previous movie underperforming--this is how a movie can be a complete success on its own merits yet still "flop". Or plenty of other ways. It's intentional and the reason is always the same--to pocket as much money as possible.
It's the same logic that allows Return of the Jedi to have "never gone into profit", despite making $475 million on a $32.5 million budget. The same way that My Big Fat Greek Wedding "lost" $20 million despite making $350 million on a $6 million budget (!). Or how Lord of the Rings trilogy made over $6 billion, but "made "horrendous losses" and no profit at all." (we swear, that's totally why we can't pay the Tolkien estate their share of the money!). It's called Hollywood Accounting and there are plenty of more examples in that link (such as Coming to America, Forrest Gump, Spiderman 2002).

And since the other stuff I've said apparently goes contrary to every verifiable source you can find, here's the source about Pixels and here's Force Awakens.

Regardless, you seem convinced that I'm wrong and nobody can tell you otherwise so continuing this discussion is pointless. You clearly know more about the film industry than people who do it for a living, that's quite an impressive feat so bravo.

And that's that. Y'know, it's quite nice of you to bail on the part that was showing you how wrong you were. (And again, the 500 mill included marketing costs even back then, wikipedia had 300 mill on it most of the time. Cheers.)

Thank you for your time.

Of course I'm bailing man, you're obviously the expert in this room! Your logic is impeccable and nobody's knowledge or experience of the film industry can compare to yours, I'm being truly sincere too.