As I took it, it was whether or not Universal made a profit on the project itself. You even said the studio would FIRE some executives for greenlighting the project.
Stretching from the time the movie was released, throughout its entire performance in the theatre (it was STILL the fourth biggest movie in the studio's history), all the way till now. The movie made a respectable if not ground-breaking amount in the box office, but then its DVD release WAS groundbreaking. Then factor in merchandising (I own the soundtrack), and "Kong" has made and is still making a vast fortune for the studio. I doubt anyone's going to be fired over this.
The original quote in post 45 is "and the box office says not that many people like Kong." Box office is theatrical.
When somebody greenlights spending $200 million on a movie and it only gets $200 million domestic gross that somebody gets fired. This is Hollywood, people get fired a lot, pick up their crap, head down the street, get another version of the same job, and probably get fired from that in 12 to 18 months. Hollywood is into rolling heads.
No, at $207 million for production and $32 million in advertising the movie did NOT make respectable box office. Respectable box office is profitable on domestic grosses alone. Had the movie cost under $100 million to make the $218 would have been respectable, with a $207 million budget the box office was best described by it's initials: BO. Sorry I garauntee somebody got fired opening weekend, once it opened at a pathetic (for the budget) $50 million it was obvious that the budget was too high for the real world revenue and that person got sh!t canned.