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.
“BTW, movies with very low box-office returns are often actually profitable.”
No, movies with low box office returns are not profitable. You’re conflating the theatrical distribution motion picture business with the direct-to-DVD business, which confuses the issue. These are two different business models.
You’re right that the sole purpose of putting films intended for direct-to-DVD release into five theaters for sixty seconds is to stay just this side on the bright shiny line of outright lying about whether a movie was released theatrically. But you’re mistaken about the reason for this limited release of a DVD film. It isn’t about “saving promotion or distribution costs” — it’s about direct-to-DVD distributors refusing to release films that haven’t played in at least a couple theaters.
Frankly, with three theaters under its belt, it’s disingenuous at best to call a film a theatrical release, especially when it was never intended for any theater showings, except for appearances’ sake. These films may go on to make money on DVD — lots of films made for DVD do fine — but saying that they recouped very little at the box office and still did fine is missing the point. You might just as well say “The film did very low box office at the Paris Opera, where there’s no screen and no projector, but it was still profitable on DVD.”
REAL theatrical films with REAL wide-scale theatrical distribution need to make money at the box office to see a profit. If they fail at the box office, they fail post box office.