the scary calculations involving getting Serenity to profit
POSTED BY: ethan
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 3, 2006 20:01
VIEWED: 19463
PAGE 5 of 8
Underworld was good I thought, but then I'm probably talking to a bunch of Buffy fans. It was good for what it was. But you can't really compare Underworld to Firefly/Serenity... haha.
From what I understood the director of Underworld did the same thing the Matrix did- the studio (ScreenGems i believe) were brought an offer of a trilogy and decided to buy the rights of the first movie to see how it'd do. It did well enough, so if i'm not mistaken, 2 more movies are coming for sure (counting the one this month).
I suppose that's neither here nor there though, but just thought I'd mention it. It's all marketing... there's still a big market for mindless violence. Always will be. Heck, i bought a ticket... haha
Feanor
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I just couldn't get over the aforementioned "vampires/werewolves with guns" thing. It just rubbed me wrong. That, and there was nary a human to be seen. And it was always raining. It just struck me as a film that was trying so hard to be The Matrix that it took all of that film's surface assets and made them "teh extreme!!!"
That said, I think we would all be well served to just enjoy the stuff coming down the pipe, as well as, and I mean this honestly, support Wonder Woman as best we can. This can be the point where Joss gets the one thing that is actually more powerfully than money. Clout. Clout lets you re-make Psycho for no discernable reason and, to put it gently, wizz all over it. Clout lets you make a 3-hour King Kong movie.
If we can help Joss knock the Amazing Amazon's story out of the park, it might just give him a bit more weight to throw around. It's not as prevalent as it once was, but there is still the attitude in Hollywood that TV is the movies' bastard stepchild. Joss' best known film writing job is probably Alien Resurrection, and let's face it, that film was not that great. TV is seen as sort of the minor leagues. How many film actors have you seen go to a TV series, and your first thought is "How the mighty have fallen?" Heck, why is there even a distinction between film actor and TV actor? In any case, this is his big shot. We scratch his back, I bet he'll scratch ours.
He'd probably consider it a kindness.
Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal, Fox!
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I hold out hope that 'Serenity' sales alone aren't the key. Hopefully Firefly DVD and all the associated books, comics, etc. sales are looked at too. Not to mention the revitalized and growing fanbase. The Browncoats made the impossible happen once...refusing to let this 'verse die.
I was a fan of the show from the beginning, I liked the characters, setting and story, tho' the plot confused me a bit between episodes (thanks for the "creative" programming, FOX). I was completely unaware of the initial 'movement' to resurect our BDH's but am no longer. I'm pushing it on everyone I know, and I'm hoping all the newly converted are doing so as well.
The fact that Joss and the cast are still pushing hard in interviews and blogs for folks to buy Serenity gives me hope that they haven't given up hope (holding to the belief that their motives are not completely money-grubbing for residuals).
Were still flyin' for the moment, and that's something.
"See this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crochety. Breaks the heart."
-Mal
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
pouty hot ass-kicking British good vampire chick in spadex.
B]
You're not kidding there. This plus a very stylish production design won my rental dollars.
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Quote:
Originally posted by GatorMarc:
1) The Box office is at about $38.5 million now, not $35 million.
GatorMarc
Eat 'em up, chomp, chomp.
Assuming that you get your #s from the same source as I do (boxofficemojo.com...visit often...get Serenity back into the top 5 most popular!), it's worth noting that this figure does not include earnings post 11/17. Overseas is more up to date, and accounts for the slow trickle over the last 6 weeks.
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Quote:
Originally posted by cwnek:Quote:
Originally posted by GatorMarc:
1) The Box office is at about $38.5 million now, not $35 million.
GatorMarc
Eat 'em up, chomp, chomp.
Assuming that you get your #s from the same source as I do (boxofficemojo.com...visit often...get Serenity back into the top 5 most popular!), it's worth noting that this figure does not include earnings post 11/17. Overseas is more up to date, and accounts for the slow trickle over the last 6 weeks.
Yep. And that also never calculated in the revenue that Universal brought in from the pre-screenings of the movie over the summer.
GatorMarc
Eat 'em up, chomp, chomp.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Yojimbo:
I CANT FIND ANY USEFULL INFORMATION IN THIS NEGATIVE THREAD..THE TITLE ALONE IS TROLL COUNTRY WORTHY..PLEASE PUT IT TO DEATH QUICKLY..
IT DOES HAVE SOME FUZZY MATH,HEARSAY,AND SOME BLIND SPECULATION TO BE POSITIVE
On the contrary I think this thread has generated constructive discussion/information and much that is in the positive vein.
Your 'see no evil' mentality isn't in the independent spirit me thinks. Communism much?
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Quote:
Originally posted by ethan:
I like to be as positive as the next person about getting Serenity to profitability. But after talking to a friend in the film industry, I realized that may be far more difficult than I originally thought. Consider the following.
Serenity made about 35 million USD worldwide. Theaters keep roughly half the box office receipts. So that leaves about 17.5 mil for Universal.
DVD sales average 9 dollars in profit for the studios, but 20% of that profit is distributed to actors and film crew as royalties. Big name stars and directors sometimes leverage higher royalty rates but I don't think this is the case with Serenity. Rounding down, Universal will pocket 7 dollars for every DVD sold.
If Serenity cost 40 million to make (let's just assume marketing is included)then after it's theatrical run it was still 22.5 million USD in the red. At the rate of 7 bucks profit per Serenity DVD, roughly 3.3 million units will have to be sold before Universal breaks even on original production. We don't even know how much was spent on additional marketing for the DVD.
My friend conjectures Serenity will in the end need to earn at least 30 million in pure profits just to even trigger consideration for a sequel. That's another 4.4 million dvds.
All told, 7.7 million DVD's have to be sold for us to hope for a sequel. If Browncoat's ever needed to get the impossible done, now's the time...
All and all, your estimates seem a little high for a 50 million dollar movie. That means almost no movies are profitable, because although other movies make more money they tend to have a higher production and marketing budgets.
How can the movie theater get so much of the profit when they simply distribute the movie? They don't invest in the prodution of the film? The amount the actors and crew receive depends on their individual contract.
These calculations do not make sense to me from a business perspective. This means the studios make very little although they put up most of the money. The theaters make most of the profit, but invest very little. However, in the past few years many theater chains were close to bankruptcy.
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Quote:
Originally posted by harshcritic:
All and all, your estimates seem a little high for a 50 million dollar movie. That means almost no movies are profitable, because although other movies make more money they tend to have a higher production and marketing budgets.
How can the movie theater get so much of the profit when they simply distribute the movie? They don't invest in the prodution of the film? The amount the actors and crew receive depends on their individual contract.
These calculations do not make sense to me from a business perspective. This means the studios make very little although they put up most of the money. The theaters make most of the profit, but invest very little. However, in the past few years many theater chains were close to bankruptcy.
To be honest a lot of these numbers seemed odd to me too harshcritic, but they are as they were when related to me from an industry source. This particular person isn't prone to hyperbole or speaking out of turn. But I'll throw what he says out to the firefly community as so much more cannon fodder. The theater's take does seem hard to swallow.
According to him, Spiderman didn't even make any money until hitting DVD sales.
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I'm not sure about the figures, I have no clue about how the breakdown of money in Hollywood works. But personally, I have a hard time imagining that the BDHs got that big a cut now that I think about it. High residuals are generally reserved for names, and the cast don't really qualify. At the very least, I figure that those numbers are probably a bit lower than those your source reported.
And I just can't picture Spider-Man not making money until DVD. According to rottentomatoes, it made about 400 million in the US. No studio would greenlight a half a million dollar budgeted film, especially a "comic book movie." Plus, you've got to take into account the foreign grosses.
Of course, that's an outsider talking. Your friend might be completely right, ethan.
Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal, Fox!
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