Disney's Live Action The Little Mermaid

[Casper Gutman]

Not that it will do much good, but:

‘Little Mermaid’ Swimming Against Strong Tides At Overseas Box Office, Leaving Break-Even In Question

In a rare situation for a Disney tentpole, particularly a live action title based on a treasured animated classic, 'The Little Mermaid' may lose money.

deadline.com

 

[Jlasoon]

This isn’t true. I’ve repeatedly posted articles with the actual numbers. TLM, at least, broke even. But folks here and in the other threads aren’t actually engaging in good faith conversation, they’re spewing repetitive garbage and then not engaging with alternative views or contradictory information. It’s political trolling

It's a 250M budget movie with a 140M advert budget.

These numbers aren't made up, they are from people who work at DIS. Studios don't get 100% take from box office receipts. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

 

[erasure fan1]

150M budget + 100M Advertising Budget & this movie breaks even with current box office numbers. Problem is, studios only get 50% of box office take in NA, 40% in Europe/rest of world, and roughly 20% from China.

Not only does the budget need to be slashed, so does marketing. Spending 100mil is still too much. If the budget was 150 and marketing was 75, you get 225 total. Disney gets more than 50% the first few weeks, just over 60% if I remember correctly. So the film would need somewhere around 450/60 to break even. It's at 526 right now, well within a profit if it was with the numbers I suggested.

 

[LittleBuford]

Also a flop by this revised definition: Cleopatra, which failed to make a profit upon its release despite being the highest-grossing film of 1963 and winning four Oscars.

 

[Casper Gutman]

It's a 250M budget movie with a 140M advert budget.

These numbers aren't made up, they are from people who work at DIS. Studios don't get 100% take from box office receipts. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

Did you read the article?

 

[Jlasoon]

Not only does the budget need to be slashed, so does marketing. Spending 100mil is still too much. If the budget was 150 and marketing was 75, you get 225 total. Disney gets more than 50% the first few weeks, just over 60% if I remember correctly. So the film would need somewhere around 450/60 to break even. It's at 526 right now, well within a profit if it was with the numbers I suggested.

CGI ain't cheep today, and this whole movie is CGI.

The losses accumulated by Strange World, Lightyear, Mermaid, Indiana, Elemental.... You could have build another theme park in Orlando.

 

[Jlasoon]

Did you read the article?

Do you know who runs deadline?

 

[Andrew C]

It's at 526 right now, well within a profit if it was with the numbers I suggested.

But who says it would sell the same number of tickets with a smaller production/marketing budget?

 

[Casper Gutman]

Do you know who runs deadline?

Why don’t you tell me - who?

 

[erasure fan1]

Did you read the article?

Yea, they have 250+140 marketing. Then they say 400mil makes money, and that's extremely wrong. The basic formula for a film has been listed many many times just in this thread alone.

CGI ain't cheep today, and this whole movie is CGI.

The losses accumulated by Strange World, Lightyear, Mermaid, Indiana, Elemental.... You could have build another theme park in Orlando.

I get it. I'm just saying they need to find a better way. Crazy budgets for just about everything need to get back inline.

But who says it would sell the same number of tickets with a smaller production/marketing budget?

No one. But there's no guarantee either way. But that's why I say they need to find better ways to do things. I firmly believe there is a lot of fat to trim on their production and marketing side. Everything Disney does, seems to cost A LOT more than their competition most of the time. Does anyone want to run out see a movie that everything they read says something like "on pace to lose xyz amount of money"? No, it can make the fence riders just wait for D+ because it's not must see. And true or not, that's the perception.

 

[Andrew C]

I firmly believe there is a lot of fat to trim on their production and marketing side.

Agreed. Just not sure current leadership is able to find that appropriate balance...

 

[MrPromey]

This isn’t true. I’ve repeatedly posted articles with the actual numbers. TLM, at least, broke even. But folks here and in the other threads aren’t actually engaging in good faith conversation, they’re spewing repetitive garbage and then not engaging with alternative views or contradictory information. It’s political trolling.

Not that it will do much good, but:

‘Little Mermaid’ Swimming Against Strong Tides At Overseas Box Office, Leaving Break-Even In Question

In a rare situation for a Disney tentpole, particularly a live action title based on a treasured animated classic, 'The Little Mermaid' may lose money.

deadline.com

The Deadline article from back in May seems a little wishy-washy with the wording:

"In a rare situation for a Disney tentpole, particularly a live-action title based on a treasured classic animated musical, The Little Mermaid looks to bank more at the domestic box office ultimately than overseas, with $300M-$350M U.S./Canada to $260M abroad.

At that level, per finance sources, off a reported $250M production cost and $140M global marketing spend, The Little Mermaid could very well break-even. However, anything in the low $400M global threshold and this fish is apt to be sinking to a loss of around $20M."

They're saying it might break even if it can make the estimated $560 to $610 million they think it could at that pont.

It looks like they hit the the bottom of that estimation so maybe it's breaking even?

The reason I'm questing it is that second part where they go on to talk about anything below $400 million as making it lose $20 million dollars.

I'm not pretending to be a math wizard here but doesn't 560 - 400 = 160?

If so what happened to the other $140 million?

I'm not trying to come across as political or engage in any sort of conversation out of good faith but that sounds like someone just making up numbers to me.

So at this point, it comes to who's numbers seem more credible?

I tried looking around on Google and can't seem to find anything more concrete than anyone is talking about here although, funny enough, i did find an article talking about how Asteroid City is Wes Anderson's biggest opening weekend movie with a whopping $8.5 million dollars.

I know it's apples to chain saws but I find it funny we're debating on if these movies making hundreds of millions of dollars are profitable or not while ol' Wess is probably doing a happy dance at breaking his own highest record which is barely even a blip in Hollywood business terms.

 

[lazyboy97o]

CGI ain't cheep today, and this whole movie is CGI.

The losses accumulated by Strange World, Lightyear, Mermaid, Indiana, Elemental.... You could have build another theme park in Orlando.

You think they’ve lost more than $6 billion on these movies?

 

[MrPromey]

The concern for too many is not really about Disney's financial performance. Many Disney movies now considered classics did not perform well at the box office. It's just more "wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean". It should be obvious when people going on about legacy and Walt are also unknowingly suggesting that Disney outsource significant chunks of the animation for the feature films. It's all contradiction because it's not a true concern.

I know you're speaking vaguely intentionally but I'm not sure I follow all of it.

I think where you lost me was at the part about unknowingly suggesting they outsource significant chunks of the the animation for the feature films.

 

[erasure fan1]

Agreed. Just not sure current leadership is able to find that appropriate balance...

Oh I have no doubt the current group and their clown show wouldn't be able to fix it. There's a better chance of the real millennium falcon landing in galaxys edge than Iger fixing things. Lol

 

[lazyboy97o]

I know you're speaking vaguely intentionally but I'm not sure I follow all of it.

I think where you lost me was at the part about unknowingly suggesting they outsource significant chunks of the the animation for the feature films.

A big part of the reason other studios’ animated features are cheaper than Disney and Pixar’s is because they offshore and outsource animation work. Disney following the lead of others to reduce their costs would mean a dramatic culling of Walt’s animation studio.

 

[MrPromey]

Do you know who runs deadline?

Looks like Penske Media Corporation?

I'm not pickin' up what you're puttin' down.

 

[MrPromey]

A big part of the reason other studios’ animated features are cheaper than Disney and Pixar’s is because they offshore and outsource animation work. Disney following the lead of others to reduce their costs would mean a dramatic culling of Walt’s animation studio.

Okay - gotcha.

That's a tricky one, though, because Disney's no stranger to offshoring their feature animation.

It doesn't seem as bad to be taking advantage of French subsidies to have animation done at the home of the Louvre as it does to be sending work to countries where I would assume, working conditions are far worse and people have no choice but to work at well below their market value but I'm guessing Disney would still likely be doing what they were if they hadn't abandoned hand drawn animation.

I'm not exactly sure anyone's hands are clean when it comes to that but in the general sense of how people making the work are treated and valued, reports about how Across the Spiderverse was made are concerning and in animation Disney seems to be better but maybe no so much in VFX.

It feels messy.

 

[Casper Gutman]

OK, so now we don’t trust industry news, that has actual, meaningful numbers. And we still want to play with the vague, inaccurate equation as though it’s particularly useful.

Maybe I’m wrong. Would someone like to cite a reliable industry or academic source highlighting the reliability of the box office/ budget equation?

 

[erasure fan1]

The Deadline article from back in May seems a little wishy-washy with the wording:

That's because it is. They aren't factoring in that the studio doesn't keep all of the box office. As of now, Disney has probably taken home about 260mil. So with deadlines numbers, that's about 130mil loss give or take.