Can somebody explain to me how $275m in costs requires $450-$500m in revenue to break even?
Supposedly much of the extra expense is "marketing costs". Though why it should cost that much money to bring a superhero blockbuster some "marketing" is beyond my understanding.
What the hell does "marketing" mean anyway?
I've made films before. Much smaller in scale and reach than any comic book movie, obviously. And a few months ago I published a book. I wish all of those had a bigger audience. Maybe that's where "marketing" comes into play? If so, I've no idea how to use it to my advantage.
But a superhero movie should sell itself, it seems. Especially a major comic book company's franchise. With little or even no "marketing".
When you buy a Pepsi at 7-11 for $2, does Pepsi get the whole $2?
Same with Movies, roughly half the ticket sales goes to the theater. So yeah, the movie studio has to double what the movie cost just to break even.
Also, marketing which can cost almost as much as the movie itself is not factored in, so in reality a movie has to make 3x what it they say it cost just to break even.
The theaters get half of the receipts of their audiences.
Theaters generally aren’t run by socialists. They’re run by people that have overhead to cover like rent, electricity, and employee pay. Add that to the production cost and marketing for the higher number.
General rule of thumb is that marketing costs (paying for advertising on TV and elsewhere) is usually around the same cost as production.
So if you pay $250 million in production, your marketing costs are going to be somewhere near there.
theaters get 50%
the theaters owners take about 50% of gross ticket sales ...