Basically, the only modern studio consistently putting out stop motion animation movies, is Laika Studios. And yet, Laika has only had one financially successful movie, Coraline from 2009, while all their other movies have under performed.
However, Laika is currently led and owned by Travis Knight, son of Phil Knight, the owner of Nike. This has enabled Knight to continually bank roll Laika whenever they under perform, essentially making the entire stop motion animation film industry a nepo baby’s pet project.
That being said, this is actually a positive story, and reminiscent of how artists previously would be financially supported by wealthy benefactors.
It’s more that if a movie costs $100 million to make, it’s usually $100 million in marketing. So it would need to make $200 million to break even. Making $180 million means someone lost $20 million dollars, so I wouldn’t really call it greedy. If the movies are not making the money then they’d need to just start reducing scope or just hope someone will keep bank rolling them.
That’s what studios publicly lament about without going into detail. Between streaming, retail and merchandising alone, they’re making their money back.
Marketing campaigns are not bankrupting movie profits.
If a studio makes 180 box office on a 100 million dollar production and they say they’ve lost 80 mil through marketing, they are pulling your leg.
“ah yeah, first quarter my team only made 23 points, oh well, thats the game.”
No, there are three other quarters that the studio isn’t talking about because it reduces their future negotiating leverage.
Of course studios want more money, but studios aren’t losing money on movies that get close but don’t tip the magic number of “double the budget”
If you want to count a whole year, then yes it can technically be made up by other movies down the line for the whole studio, but it won’t change the fact that the movie would have been a failure, that’s how budgets work. The same goes for pretty much any business that has projects or quarters.
They aren’t talking about it being made to by other movies, they’re saying the movie continues to make money for a long time after it’s first week. To give a famous example: in the 90s the Kevin Costner movie Waterworld was declared to be a massive financial flop based on its first week(s) performance in US cinemas, but once you account for worldwide figures and VHS sales it was actually one of the most profitable movies of the decade.
That is very true, but won’t that happen way after the release? That’s usually when these headlines happen.
no, classifying a picture that makes an $80 million dollar profit as a “failure” is factually incorrect, albeit a useful tactic for studios and headline writers.
making an 80% profit is a success in any business, and a triumph in most businesses; that’s how budgets wotk.
i want to note for the nonfinancial types: that’s profit, not revenue. profit is what you have left of your revenues after your costs.
Any picture that makes any profit (and that profit can be someone buying you tacos once because they liked your film on youtube, so long as they’ve bought you enough tacos) is a success.
Hell, any film that gets a screening outside the filmmakers’ social circles is a success. That means someone liked it enough to share it. Have I moved the goalposts enough that I can consider myself a film success because I do, I’m just playing badminton rather than football.