Didn;t they loose their shirt on that crappy anti-Iraqi war movie starring the usual suspects? I can’t remember the name of it.
"They" may have lost their shirts, but "they" never includes the screenwriter, who gets his cash up front, plus residuals (if any).
Accounting is a funny thing in Hollywood. They will tank your film for spite and insure the bottom line of a protected filmmaker by writing off the loss against a smaller film.
Batman didn’t show a profit (the screenwriter was in for points of the profit) even after it took in $500,000 but it was succesful enough for them to authorize several more sequels based on the non-success of that first film.