I remember reading an article saying the movie had currently grossed over 300 million dollars. Seems to me it did pretty well although I didn’t go see it.
It cost more than $200 million to make it, but they were not able to cover the cost of making the 2nd and 3rd movies, that’s why they said NO.
I live in Hollywood and some of my friends are in the industry. One of my acquaintances worked on the set of Lord of the Rings, and Peter Jackson knew the gamble of making 3 movies back to back. If movie 1 flopped, Peter jackson was finished, plain and simple and he knew it based on the story I was told in a conversation.
Chris Weitz knew the odds were against him because you must be a complete idiot if you didn’t know what the story was about: the death of God. And New Line’s past flops from 2007 were one after the other: Shoot em up’ etc and the result is NO $$ for the next projects obviously.