Chi84
Premium Member
Humanity may be a broader characterization than I intended.
Last edited:
-
Welcome to the WDWMAGIC.COM Forums!
Please take a look around, and feel free to sign up and join the community.
Disney (and others) at the Box Office - Current State of Affairs
- Thread starter Disney Analyst
- Start date
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Or in many cases it's done to further the on-topic discussion on a discussion forum.
The only main discrepancy in the "math" is that some folks ascribe to a belief that a studio should only have to be charged half or less for marketing than what they are likely spending; the 25% of the production budget formula, instead of counting 50% of the marketing budget which is the reality the big studios are routinely spending on their tentpoles.
Heck, several Disney movies have gone well over the 50% mark in recent years; the $140 Million that Variety reported was spent on The Little Mermaid (against a production budget of $250 Million) and the $100 Million that Variety just reported was spent on Lilo & Stitch (against its bargain basement production budget of $100 Million).
Allegedly, we're going to be following up a year or more from now on all those 25% guesstimates here when posttheatrical financials are reported in future fiscal quarters.
But I'm not going to wait around for a post that may never arrive in 2026 about Snow White or Thunderbolts. This thread is about the box office now, and what Disney is making (or more often losing) at the box office against their giant production budgets and expensive global marketing campaigns.
We have access to reliable current data on production budgets, and widely accepted industry estimates of marketing budgets, plus daily updates on global box office. So let's talk about it now!
Tony the Tigger
Well-Known Member
It’s to the point I can’t even bother to read responses to certain people. Scroll, scroll, scroll…What does it mean when you keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result?
TP2000
Well-Known Member
With the recent talk of Moana 2 and Mufasa box office, it's probably best to summarize them and wrap it into a total for 2024, even though the bulk of their box office came in the Winter of '25. So here's the 8 big movies from various Disney studios in 2024.
Top line data is that Disney spent $1.09 Billion in production costs for those eight movies in '24, and likely spent another $545 Million on their marketing budgets. Combined, those movies did $2.376 Billion at the domestic box office, and another $3.384 Billion at the overseas box office. Disney's 60% take of the domestic box office was $1.426 Billion, and their 40% take of the overseas box office was $1.354.
Disney took in $2.780 Billion at the global box office, against production and marketing costs around $1.635 Billion. For a net profit of about $1.145 Billion for calendar year 2024! It's easy to see that was all made possible by two or three movies; Inside Out 2, Moana 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine. The others were money losers or eeked out a small profit.
The question for 2025 then becomes; what are the next two or three Billion Dollar movies after Lilo & Stitch to ensure Disney ends '25 in the black? That stain on the carpet that Rachel Zegler left is still there, remember.
thenumbers.com
Top line data is that Disney spent $1.09 Billion in production costs for those eight movies in '24, and likely spent another $545 Million on their marketing budgets. Combined, those movies did $2.376 Billion at the domestic box office, and another $3.384 Billion at the overseas box office. Disney's 60% take of the domestic box office was $1.426 Billion, and their 40% take of the overseas box office was $1.354.
Disney took in $2.780 Billion at the global box office, against production and marketing costs around $1.635 Billion. For a net profit of about $1.145 Billion for calendar year 2024! It's easy to see that was all made possible by two or three movies; Inside Out 2, Moana 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine. The others were money losers or eeked out a small profit.
The question for 2025 then becomes; what are the next two or three Billion Dollar movies after Lilo & Stitch to ensure Disney ends '25 in the black? That stain on the carpet that Rachel Zegler left is still there, remember.
The Numbers - Where Data and the Movie Business Meet
The Numbers provides detailed movie financial analysis, including box office, DVD and Blu-ray sales reports, and release schedules.
thenumbers.com
Chi84
Premium Member
I’m sure your attention was noted and appreciated
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
Just noticed that a good bit of back and forth abort the status of seats not available at booking?
Seems rather trivial on the whole
As far as the rest…no jokes whatsoever
Disney Irish
Premium Member
That is not at all what was discussed and is a broad mischaracterization of why the 25% number was suggested, and I think you know it. If you don't want to use the calculation suggested fine, but don't mischaracterize why it was suggested in the first place, that is just down right rude and insulting to @BrianLo and others who have tried in good faith to provide more accurate numbers for discussion.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
So what is "back to normal" in your post suppose to mean if not a joke?
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
I wouldn’t be surprised if it gains more ground overseas via word of mouth. I’m not sure if Stitch is as well known internationally as he is in the US, and the whole Millennial nostalgia thing might not apply globally. Even so, it’s an adorable movie and people who were puzzled by posters of a drooling blue alien early on might be won over as they hear more about it.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
As I remember, the concept of only counting 25% of production costs for marketing was suggested because it pushes the marketing costs out into future years for a sort of pre-marketing for future potential streaming rentals.
My point is they spent the money now to market the movies now, so that's what it cost them now. 50% of production costs on marketing is not something invented in 2018 for the new streaming model. An assumption that a movie studio spends 50% of its production budget on marketing goes back decades.
Although, if it were still 1995, maybe you could make the claim that you could pretend they only spent 25% on marketing because the rest will help future VHS rentals next year at Blockbuster?
He's an adult and a genuinely nice person, and we've enjoyed each other's online discussions for many, many years now. I have read his opinion on why Disney spending $100 Million on marketing Lilo & Stitch in May, 2025 should only be counted as $25 Million (25% of its $100 Million production budget), but it just gets too wonky for me to factor in to the daily numbers in a discussion about box office profit now, not a year or two from now.
Plus, there's the fact there's no real ability to circle back 18 months from now and see what rental income came in on it.
So I'm just going to stick with the industry standard practice of assuming 50% of the production budget was spent on marketing, unless Disney or reputable sources say otherwise, like they have recently with $140 Million spent marketing The Little Mermaid and $100 Million on Lilo & Stitch.
If it weren't for the Variety article saying Burbank just spent $100 Million on it, I'd consider it a $50 Million marketing spend.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Well, that would certainly help.
When you look at Lilo & Stitch compared to recent live action tentpoles, it's overseas box office is much weaker than it should be compared to its relatively strong domestic take thus far. Based on its holiday weekend haul in the USA of $182 Million, it should have done at least $225 Million overseas as of yesterday. On its way to an overseas total of at least $600 or $700 Million, to bolster the $500+ Million it will likely do in the USA.
Instead, it has only made $178 Million overseas so far.
Let's get all those foreigners talking about this movie in their funny accents, and then buying tickets with their weird money!
Disney Irish
Premium Member
The idea is and continues to be that the marketing spend of a movie is for the life of the movie NOT just theatrical. So its ad buys for now AND the future, and not all is spent NOW.
So really if you want to get technical, the 25% is the floor of what they would spend ONLY during theatrical not the entire life of the movie, its to isolate out a more realistic number on average and remove any post-theatrical ad buys that would occur as the movie is wrapping up it theatrical release. And that is not to say that a studio can't and doesn't spend more a lot of times, but its the average of JUST the theatrical space.
You guys don't want to count any post-theatrical revenue because you consider it future revenue (which actually isn't the case many times as was also previous discussed since those contracts are figured out head of time), so why try to count the entire marketing cost to the front-end? Its over inflating the costs for no reason.
Its not a hard concept to understand if you're really wanting to get as close to the real profit/loss of a movie only during theatrical. But I don't think you really do.
Last edited:
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
Not really. It’s that there’s a usually a 1.25X relationship between production costs, box office and ultimate profit. I don’t assume marketing at all, because it’s elastic and not a fixed variable one can calculate reliably.
I was trying to frame it in a way that you’d maybe get, that *some* costs are already pre-covered by back end deals.
I actually ran a 3X multiple for Stitch incidentally, for you. I wasn’t running against 25% but rather 50%. For the record, I made this post before Deadline, which maybe suggests I’m not always out to lunch here with my logic! You are trying to run a 4X multiple now though… which is not a relationship I have ever seen demonstrated with any single film production.
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
If we want to be more specific, so that I’m not mis-quoted in the future as ever having said the marketing budget was 25M, here’s my rough predictions. Acknowledging I don’t really know the final endpoint.
Production costs - 100
Marketing - 140
Residuals - 40
Interest and overhead - 25
Participation - 25
Television and Streaming - 175-200
Home Entertainment - 125
Box Office ~500 (from 1B of box office)
I also think Stitch is a huge success no matter how you cut it - and all this semantics about it needing to make up money for other productions is moving more goalposts.
Production costs - 100
Marketing - 140
Residuals - 40
Interest and overhead - 25
Participation - 25
Television and Streaming - 175-200
Home Entertainment - 125
Box Office ~500 (from 1B of box office)
I also think Stitch is a huge success no matter how you cut it - and all this semantics about it needing to make up money for other productions is moving more goalposts.
Last edited:
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Thank you! This should be fun, at least for me during my nightcap...
Yup!
How do you figure? Variety says they only spent $100 Million on global marketing for Lilo & Stitch.
Uh... I've heard that phrase before, but have no idea what it means in a financial sense. Should I Google?
Okay, I at least know what that is: Bank fees and interest on loans, plus the cost of chair massages and Sushi chefs and free Tesla chargers for Burbank's cubicle drones.
What is that? And don't tell me I get a trophy for that. I'm too old for that trophy crap.
Okay, so now I guess we're into financial gains? The estimated future profit from streaming rentals into 2030, right?
How does that differ from streaming? It's a big number, so what is it and how is it different than the above?
Check! That pencils out for me. Although, Lilo & Stitch could over index on that because it's strong domestically, but not that hot overseas. The domestic box office is more profitable at about 60% of the take, on average.
I would agree that it's a huge success. Burbank needed this. That it was farmed out to an outside group over the hill from Burbank and thus done for the relatively cheap cost of $100 Million makes it even better.
The issue of making up for the losses incurred thus far in '25, mostly from the historical bomb and financial sinkhole of Snow White, is just a side thread as we near the halfway point of the year. We'll want to tally it all up six months from now, naturally.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
I probably could have prevented 12 posts if TP knew I didn’t use 25% but 50%.
Sorry that was not clear!
No worries, I'm sure it's not your fault. I'm likely to blame as much as anyone as I skimmed and caught up on this thread randomly for 20 or 30 minutes at a time over the long holiday weekend, while salads chilled and coals heated up and I tried to remember if the next event was Adults Only for my sanity.
If you are okay with the traditional 50% of the production budget going to marketing, instead of somehow amortizing that over some unknown number of years into the future and thus pegging the marketing costs as only 25% of production now, that works for me.
I fully get it, Disney is marketing these movies to cement them into pop culture memory banks so they get streamed and rented for years into the future. But that doesn't erase the fact they spent that marketing budget now in 2025 while the things were in actual theaters. Like studios have done since before they added sound in 1927.
That said, for the past few years on Disney's ridiculously huge, bloated budgets, I would generally cap the marketing budget at $100 Million no matter what the production budget was. For example, Snow White cost them $270 Million (that we know of so far), but I only pegged their marketing at $100 Million instead of $135 for accounting purposes. The exceptions are when reputable sources quote the marketing spend as higher than 50% of production, like Variety has done for the $140 Million spent on The Little Mermaid or the $100 Million spent on Lilo & Stitch.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Random Thought Post-Nightcap; That little girl who they cast as Lilo is adorable! I've only seen her in the ads obviously, but she's spot on perfect for the live action remake and a total sweetheart! What a cutie! 
I put a few snarky comments above about children crashing some Memorial Day events, so I feel a little guilty. But I really do like children, especially when they are safely on a movie screen and can't smear their grimy hands on things I own or interrupt my sometimes-impure dinner party conversation with their innocent thoughts and comments.
The little Hawaiian girl they cast as Lilo is truly adorable!
I put a few snarky comments above about children crashing some Memorial Day events, so I feel a little guilty. But I really do like children, especially when they are safely on a movie screen and can't smear their grimy hands on things I own or interrupt my sometimes-impure dinner party conversation with their innocent thoughts and comments.
The little Hawaiian girl they cast as Lilo is truly adorable!
Nevermore525
Well-Known Member
TV and Streaming is just revenue from licensing to TV channels to air or various streaming services.
Home entertainment is digital/physical sales of the film. So any collector type or someone who still buys dvds or someone who buys a digital copy of the movie instead of watching it on a streaming service.
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
Now that I think of it, I wonder if Memorial Day being a US holiday had an impact. It would have been an average two day weekend in May for most of the world, not typically prime moviegoing time.