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.
And to explain your comment a bit more, the production budget doesn’t include the very real costs of marketing, distribution, and any back-end royalties calculated from the gross. Plus generally speaking, the movie is financed by lenders and production companies that will need to be repaid with interest, too.
If you’ve got a $50 million movie and you spend $10 million on marketing/distribution and promised 10% of the gross to people, and the theaters are keeping 10% of the gross, getting a $75 million box office breaks even ($7.5 million to royalties, $7.5 million to theaters, $10 million to marketing/distribution). And that’s assuming nothing lost to interest/financing/inflation.
Side note: generally, theaters don’t get much in the first few weeks. It’s only when a movie shows longer than 3 weeks that the theater starts getting a bigger and bigger cut of the gross.