“Fair Game” made $217,000 on Thanksgiving. Say it holds up like that all weekend — that’s still less than $900,000 over the biggest movie-going four-day weekend till Christmas.
It cost $22 million to produce. Using the standard Hollywood matrix of one and a half times the budget back to earn a profit, it must hit $54 million to ever get in the black.
If 3 or even 4 million people see this movie around the world at ten bucks per, it still does not earn its money back. That is the definition of a bomb.
How do you see it ever earning out?
You’re failing to understand the difference in how arthouse movies work. This movie isn’t in a real national release, it’s only in 396 theaters. So it’s not necessarily going to peak this weekend. This isn’t like a big release, those need to hit hard and fast because their theater and screen counts just dwindle, every week out is less and less money. Arthouse movies meander around the country for months. Like I said earlier, this movie probably won’t even get to Tucson (where I live) until March, for us it’ll be new then.
Completely ignore the “standard Hollywood matrix”, this isn’t a Hollywood movie. Arthouse movies don’t slice up the revenues with the theater the same, they don’t spend as much on advertising, none of the math is the same. The math that counts is that this is the #1 revenue arthouse movie two weeks in a row, and looks like it’s going to hold the title for a third weekend. The fact that this arthouse movie actually managed to crack the top 10 is impressive.
Also remember that’s 3 to 4 million people in this country, and so far it’s doing matching revenue abroad. So if it pulls off $40 million in revenue here and continues its pattern that’ll be a total of $80 million. Even if the “standard Hollywood matrix” applied that would be +36 million dollars, not a bomb by any definition.