“The theatre box-office numbers do not include other revenue streams — in particular, sales to pay-tv, streaming services, DVD, etc.”
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that “other revenue streams” turn failed films into financial successes. That’s just producer spin. Studio execs pitch this upside talk while trying to save their jobs when they’re called to account for failure in front of boards of directors.
Rule of thumb for Hollywood box office: if it fails at the box office, the film is a failure. Forever. Losses can be mitigated by TV, DVD, pay-per-view, and streaming... but RARELY recovered to the point of profitability. I know of one old exception: “The Wizard of Oz,” and one modern exception: “The Polar Express.”
Both those box office disappointments finally went into profit after their initial theatrical releases. But they are outliers, not representative of the typical film financial life cycle.
Please note that I never actually claimed that the other revenue streams would necessarily turn any of those failed films into financial successes. My point was, and remains, that the other revenue streams would have offset a considerable amount of the box-office losses. The total losses will be far less than the billion-dollars claimed in the article. Not enough to make a profit — but, less than a billion-dollar loss. I was lamenting that the losses wouldn’t actually be as great as the article claimed.
I don’t dispute your “producer spin” thing — the entire industry is continuously spinning. The “creative accounting” thing is part of that spin.
BTW, movies with very low box-office returns are often actually profitable. These movies receive very limited distribution — very few theatres, for very few screenings, then it’s off to video sales. Often, these are independent “films”, that get one day in a single theatre, at a film festival. The theatre distribution is just enough to call it a “movie”, rather than a “made-for-TV movie”. That saves the studios a ton of money on promotion and distribution costs — usually about half the total cost of the movie. Those cost savings go right to the bottom line — sometimes, the video sales are enough to put that into the black.
#29 The Sony emails that were hacked show various movies that were costing Sony money and they knew they would not make it back even before releasing the movie to the theater. I remember the George Clooney apologizing for one of his money losing films to a Sony exec.