I really don’t get it how it works. Making a movie costs a lot of money, even if it is not a blockbuster.
So many TERRIBLE movies are being released every month. How are all they making profit?
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Not all movies make a profit. Big successes pay for a lot of flops, and a big success can often be turned into a profitable sequel.
Making a good movie is hard, and a lot of good movies don’t sell super well either. So there’s really no way to only make good winners. It’s a risky biz.
Given all that there’s a lot of pressure to release a lot of content. Sometimes questionable movies turn out to be big hits. A flop is still payroll for actors and other professionals in the industry, and theaters need something to show every day of the week.
First, “bad” is a subjective evaluation.
For example, *you* may not enjoy or look forward to all the low-budget horror movies that are made (and there are a *lot* made), but there is a particular segment of horror fans that do.
Those films don’t have to be blockbusters; they just have to make enough profit from their niche audience to please their financial backers.
Second, from a distributor perspective, a studio is willing to fund the distribution and release of lot of these low-budget movies — particularly in genres like horror and action of sci-fi and to a lesser extent comedy or romance — because even if a bunch of them wind up not making significant money (or even losing money) for the studio that distributes them, 1 out of every 100 is going to turn out to be a surprise blockbuster. There are lots of examples like that returns 50 times or 100 times or a 1000 times its budget, like *Get Out* or *My Big Fat Greek Wedding* or *The Terminator.*
But there’s one particular low-budget film I’m thinking of that had no movie stars and was the 3rd feature film from a director whose 2nd film was one of the biggest flops in cinematic history. The early buzz on this particular film was *so* bad that theaters wouldn’t agree to run it. The studio had to literally *blackmail* theaters into showing it — telling them they couldn’t have the summer’s projected blockbuster unless they also put this low-budget flick on screens — because if they hadn’t, the studio wouldn’t have made anything back at all.
That little low-budget sci-fi film that everyone thought was destined for the trash heap was called *Star Wars*, and it went on to become the second-highest grossing film of all time and spawned a multimedia and merchandise franchise that’s worth tens of billions of dollars.
When *Star Wars* was released, George Lucas only had made two films, and, one, *THX-1138*, was a *massive* flop that the studio, Warner Brothers, lost money on. *Star Wars* had zero stars attached, except Alec “Obi-Wan” Guiness who wasn’t exactly well-known among the target audience. The pre-release buzz was so bad that few theaters were willing to put *Star Wars* on screen. 20th Century Fox feared Lucas had another *THX-1138*-level flop on his hands and, like Warner Bros. before them, they wouldn’t make *any* money back. So Fox conconcted a plan to force theaters into putting *Star Wars* on screens: Fox wouldn’t let theaters have *The Other Side of Midnight* — expected by everyone to be the big summer hit because it was based on a #1 best-selling novel — unless they *also* signed an agreement to show *Star Wars* on their screens. (Of course, no one even remembers *The Other Side of Midnight* — I remembered Fox had blackmailed theaters into showing *Star Wars*, but even I had to look up the film that they thought would be the hit.)
*Star Wars* opened meagerly; it did just okay, and the star-studded *Smokey and the Bandit* won the summer film crown. But . . . *Star Wars* gained momentum over time through word of mouth and drew more and more crowds. And then more crowds. And then *more* crowds. And … well, you know the rest.
TL;DR: what one person thinks is bad or good is a *really* atrocious measure of success.
overseas sales and post-cinema distribution rights. for instance annihilation was sold to netflix for international distribution right away and that made it instantly profitable even though it didn’t do that well in theaters (which is a damn shame because that movie works SO WELL on the big screen)
54% of Americans age 16-74 (130 million) can’t read beyond a 6th grade level. Enough of these people will throw money at painted rust (bad movies/tv/music) because they literally can’t comprehend anything more developed
It’s called “Spray and Pray”. They shit out content like shit through a goose to completely saturate the market. The sheer amount of population in the world that is unsuspecting if the content is good or simply don’t care is enough to make a profit overall. Some stuff makes money, some stuff doesn’t, but overall the companies makes money. Most of the content we’re exposed to is owned and distributed by a handful of massive media conglomeratea.
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