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Disney (and others) at the Box Office - Current State of Affairs

BrianLo

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
brideck said:
It'll be interesting to see how Soul does this upcoming holiday weekend. It's getting a surprisingly robust release, at least at the local theaters that I pay attention to, and it's playing with house money.
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Just to get ahead of the forthcoming breathless posts (sorry to using your post as a jump off). These three Pixar movies are already paid for. This is more akin to re-release and calculating profitability based on ‘the rules’ does not apply. I’d say they are hoping for several million dollars on these things. Certainly not more than very low 8 figures, definitely not hundreds. They are just taking advantage of the dearth of releases to make a quick buck and theaters will happily allow it because they also have nothing to show.
 
TP2000

TP2000

Well-Known Member
BrianLo said:
It’s interesting to note that the marketing rule does not apply correctly to Illumination films. Their budgets are often widely out of whack with their marketing spend.

For example Minions had a budget of 74 million but a marketing spend of 593 million. No that’s not a typo. Not what I’m accusing Migration of by any means, but 36 million seems awfully under-estimated. I’d imagine it is at least closer to Wish’s 100m. I think we all know Illumination campaigns rival or outstrip Disney.

Just to put an ‘asterisks’ besides the guess. Even Trolls 3 I’d assume spent more on marketing than the film was budgeted.
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I'm just using a general "Marketing budget is half of production budget". Unless there's reputable industry sources (Isabella Soares after she's done studying for mid-terms doesn't count) that note a different spend. For instance, The Little Mermaid was reported by Variety to have a marketing budget of $140 Million, so I used that instead of half the production budget which would have been $125 Million.

Minions spent nearly $600 Million on marketing? What did they do, give a free toaster to everyone who bought a ticket?
 
TP2000

TP2000

Well-Known Member
BrianLo said:
Just to get ahead of the forthcoming breathless posts (sorry to using your post as a jump off). These three Pixar movies are already paid for.
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How were they paid for? Can you give us an example of how the Soul production budget of $150 Million was already paid for?

Even with a miniscule overseas marketing budget of only $15 Million in 2021 (Probably more than that, but let's really lowball it)? Based on 40% overseas box office and a guesstimate of 50% of tepid DVD sales, my cocktail napkin math shows this...

Soul: Production $150, Marketing $15, Domestic B.O. Take $0, Overseas B.O. Take $47, DVD Take $6 = $112 Million Loss

Soul.jpg
 
Andrew C

Andrew C

You know what's funny?
It is interesting to me that box office duds and losses are now acceptable if there is at least an opportunity to make it up later through merch, streaming, etc. They cannot aim for box office success AND then reap even more benefits down the line that comes from that??
 
BrianLo

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
TP2000 said:
How were they paid for? Can you give us an example of how the Soul production budget of $150 Million was already paid for?
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The production costs were long picked up by streaming when they cancelled the theatrical release. Part of the reason D+ production costs skyrocketed under Chapek, he started shoveling 200 million dollar films to it.

Similarly to how the Mandalorian’s budget is paid for, despite never have entered a theater and likely never will. But if they had a ‘fan event’ to air some of the episodes in the theater, it wouldn’t need to justify or be accountable to the entire production costs. It’s a re-release of a ‘TV’ movie if you will.
 
Vegas Disney Fan

Vegas Disney Fan

Well-Known Member
Phroobar said:
Disney+ needs a section similar to old video store's adult section. It is another erosion of the family friendly brand name. Why not rename the service to something that isn't linked to Disney. Just call it Hulu+. It just seems strange watching Poor Things on Disney.

iu
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I’m torn on rated R movies on D+, I kind of agree it harms the brand because Disney is so associated with kid friendly but I also hate having to swap back and forth between D+ and Hulu when searching for something to watch.

A Hulu tab next to the Disney, Star Wars, Marvel, etc tabs would probably be an easy compromise, it’s still on D+ but set apart as more of an adult section.
 
BrianLo

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
Andrew C said:
It is interesting to me that box office duds and losses are now acceptable if there is at least an opportunity to make it up later through merch, streaming, etc. They cannot aim for box office success AND then reap even more benefits down the line that comes from that??
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They aren’t, really. It just isn’t so white and black. Some are disappointing, but will still make money. Some are just outright flops.

Disney historically had a lot of white last decade, but this year there was a lot of black AND a lot of grey. We’re just trying to onboard people what grey actually means.

The company is also pivoting to streaming and in Iger’s mild defense the aggressive pivot wasn’t really his move, it was Chapek (emboldened by the pandemic).
 
TP2000

TP2000

Well-Known Member
BrianLo said:
The production costs were long picked up by streaming when they cancelled the theatrical release. Part of the reason D+ production costs skyrocketed under Chapek, he started shoveling 200 million dollar films to it.
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But during the fiscal quarter that Soul was released on Disney+, Q2 of Fiscal '21, Disney+ lost over $250 Million in just those 90 days that Soul was being offered "for free!" on Disney+.

So Disney already lost $250 Million while streaming Soul on Disney+ back in the winter of 2021. That doesn't "pay" for the movie that was supposed to go to theaters, it means Pixar failed to recoup their production budget of $150 Million. And on top of that, Disney lost a lot more doing it that way on Disney+.

chart.png
 
BrianLo

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
Andrew C said:
Grey isn't sustainable. Grey looks like they are not even trying....or they are trying but just really suck at what they do.

Also, its gray...stop trying to make me Canadian again. :)
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No, it isn’t sustainable. Nor is it a studio closing crisis (ironically Pixar is the only one that probably can be called a success this year). They don’t want more 2023’s.

I event corrected myself to ‘theater’ a few posts ago, with the express purpose of providing translation. It caused me pain to do so. This is how you can tell I’m not exclusively GPT. 😂
 
Wendy Pleakley

Wendy Pleakley

Well-Known Member
Andrew C said:
It is interesting to me that box office duds and losses are now acceptable if there is at least an opportunity to make it up later through merch, streaming, etc. They cannot aim for box office success AND then reap even more benefits down the line that comes from that??
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Studios obviously want both.

It might be different for smaller films. I think it was Kevin Smith who said the theatrical releases for his movies were basically advertisements for the home video release.

I don't think it's a case of studios not caring about theatrical profits. They may, however, have a good idea how much money a film will typically take in from other revenue sources.

That could be a factor in a film's budget and influence the level of "risk" they're taking. If they know a middle of the road Marvel movie like Ant-Man for example earns X amount of dollars from home video, digital purchases, merch, streaming, etc. they might green light a sequel or other Marvel movie at a similar budget, knowing that will likely see X dollars from all sources.
 
Phroobar

Phroobar

Well-Known Member
DKampy said:
Just so you know Pulp Fiction is Technically a Disney Movie
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I'll bite. What is the link? I know it was distributed by Miramax.
I found the link.;)

Bender brought the script to Miramax, the formerly independent studio that had recently been acquired by Disney. Harvey Weinstein – co-chairman of Miramax, along with his brother Bob – was instantly enthralled by the script and the company picked it up.[78] Pulp Fiction, the first Miramax project to get a green light after the Disney acquisition, was budgeted at $8.5 million.[a] It became the first movie that Miramax completely financed.[79]

I'll never look at a Quarter Pounder with Cheese the same again.
 
Disney Irish

Disney Irish

Premium Member
TP2000 said:
But during the fiscal quarter that Soul was released on Disney+, Q2 of Fiscal '21, Disney+ lost over $250 Million in just those 90 days that Soul was being offered "for free!" on Disney+.

So Disney already lost $250 Million while streaming Soul on Disney+ back in the winter of 2021. That doesn't "pay" for the movie that was supposed to go to theaters, it means Pixar failed to recoup their production budget of $150 Million. And on top of that, Disney lost a lot more doing it that way on Disney+.

chart.png
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That loss is not attributed to Soul specifically, or any other particular piece of content for that matter. That is a loss for all operational expenses which also includes content spend.

So it was paid for by the subscription fees, whether you want to accept that or not.
 

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