I saw an article that the movie “I.S.S.” made 1.2 million this opening weekend. I’m no movie expert but I’m guessing it cost a lot more than that to make.
Not trying to make an argument about whether they’re good or not, but it seems that the last 4 or 5 WB/DC Super Hero movies bombed hard, too. How does WB continue to make movies if each one makes less than it cost??
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Might or might not be the case, but when companies say they have lost 1M$, sometimes they mean they expected 5M$ in profit and only got 4.
two reasons.
first of all the movies that are good and successful make so much money that any bad movie is covered by that.
beside this these companies also do some very shady accounting.
For every single movie they will create a separate company that technically produces the movie and pays licensing fees and stuff to the mother company.
That company will on paper never make any profit at all which also means Actors and everyone else involved in this movie will not see more money that their initial payments while usually they collect royalties for years to come from the movies being sold and licensed to other companies.
A great example of this is Harry Potter, officially the entire movie series never made any profit at all despite being massively successful, but of course that only applies to the production company that was created for that purpose, the mother company made hundreds of millions.
Opening weekend in one country does not equal total revenue – not by a long shot. You’ve got the rest of its cinematic run, you’ve got overseas revenue from theaters, and then you’ve got revenue from streaming and other sales/rentals. Also, I.S.S. made 1.2 million its first *day.* Across the whole opening weekend it made 3 million. And that’s on a budget of $13.8 million.
“Bomb” is relative. From a critical or popular culture perspective, a movie may be described as a flop, in that it didn’t live up to expectations, or was just a bit *meh*. But lots of movies like that actually do end up making money, or at least breaking even. You mention DC super hero movies. Well, I had a look at their 2023 line-up and all of their movies made a profit:
* Shazam! Fury of the Gods: $125 million budget, $134 million box office
* The Flash: $220 million budget, $271 million box office
* Blue Beetle: $125 million budget, $130 million box office
* Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom: $215 million budget, $396 million box office
So that’s nearly $250 million in profit. Of course, most of that profit is due to the Aquaman and Flash movies, but still. And even if some movies had made a loss, that’s still fine. Movies are always an uncertain bet. If movie studios knew exactly which movies would fail to make a profit, they wouldn’t make those movies. But in reality, it’s hard to predict what will be a hit and what will bomb (especially in the early stages), so you make many movies and let the hits cover up for the flops.
(Of course, you may figure out during production that a movie isn’t turning out well and will likely not be a great success, but then the best course of action may nevertheless be to finish that movie in order to still recoup most of your investment. If you’ve already spent $50 million and you can finish the movie for another $30 million with expected earnings of $70 million, then you’re better off finishing the movie than throwing it in the bin.)
It made 1.2 million dollars *this opening weekend.* It still has as full month or so in cinemas, plus it only premiered in the US and even after it’s not in theaters anymore, it will be in on-demand streaming, then it will be in subscription streaming, then it will go on TVs, which keeps making money directly and trough rights.
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