D&D Movie/TV New D&D Movie: July 23rd 2021

oknazevad · Dec 28, 2017

Yes. The break even for the film is estimated at $750 million. See https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2017/11/24/justice-league-disappointing-holiday-box-office-makes-any-fantastic-beasts-comparisons-moot/#52b690df48f5

robus · Dec 28, 2017

oknazevad said:
Yes. The break even for the film is estimated at $750 million. See https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2017/11/24/justice-league-disappointing-holiday-box-office-makes-any-fantastic-beasts-comparisons-moot/#52b690df48f5

The global marketing campaigns for these movies often match the production in terms of cost. It’s incredible!

ArchfiendBobbie · Dec 28, 2017

oknazevad said:
Yes. The break even for the film is estimated at $750 million. See https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhu...ntastic-beasts-comparisons-moot/#52b690df48f5

I'll admit I don't check Forbes much. That website gives my virus scanner fits.

Having an advertising budget of 150% of your production budget is a massive screw-up. The movie was expensive to make, but it wasn't expensive enough they should not already be in the black. Even more so since most of the examinations I saw when people were first saying it was failing were talking a break even of $600 million.

The movie might break even by the time it leaves theaters, but I have to admit that it was a bad example.

Oofta · Dec 28, 2017

ArchfiendBobbie said:
I'll admit I don't check Forbes much. That website gives my virus scanner fits.

Having an advertising budget of 150% of your production budget is a massive screw-up. The movie was expensive to make, but it wasn't expensive enough they should not already be in the black. Even more so since most of the examinations I saw when people were first saying it was failing were talking a break even of $600 million.

The movie might break even by the time it leaves theaters, but I have to admit that it was a bad example.

I also wouldn't discount movie studio shenanigans when it come to calculating profit. Basically the studios frequently make a lot of money off of movies but use accounting tricks so that they don't have to share profits.

But the rule of thumb? A movie has to make double it's production cost to be considered "profitable".

LordEntrails · Dec 28, 2017

Parmandur said:
The rule of thumb is that critical opinion will mean plus or minus ~10% to the bottom line: it is more lucerative to have movies that have popular appeal but critical approval, which is why film companies care and try to hit both. The DCEU movies that didn't have critical approval all made less than Wonder Woman, which wowed the critics. 10% is an awfully large amount of money on the line for blockbusters. The conventional wisdom is that even flashy blockbusters that are critic proof (Michael Bay) would make even more money if critics channelled more people to them.

Thanks for this. Very userful.

I think it supports the premise that critical review is important, but not nearly as important as populous approval.

Now for the consideration of how approval of a movie may impact the D&D brand.
I think we can assume that critical approval of the movie will impact the brand to the same degree (or arguably much less) of about 10%. Therefore once again populous approval of the movie is going to be the major driver for brand impact. How is the movie going to impact the brand?

Will it bring in more new players? Will it result in more employees for WotC working on more products? Will it result in new or increased social trends towards "nerd", specifically role-playing, cultural acceptance?

What might be the impacts, good and bad, of increasing the social acceptance of the hobby?

Perhaps their have been studies on how Fifty Shades has impacted the BDSM community and similar conclusions could be drawn?

ArchfiendBobbie · Dec 28, 2017

Oofta said:
I also wouldn't discount movie studio shenanigans when it come to calculating profit. Basically the studios frequently make a lot of money off of movies but use accounting tricks so that they don't have to share profits.

But the rule of thumb? A movie has to make double it's production cost to be considered "profitable".

I want to know where Forbes is getting $750 million from. Justice League, according to every source I can find, had a production cost of $300 million. By rule of thumb, it's already profitable. The only way they could require $750 million to be profitable is if they had an advertising budget of $450 million.

I'm definitely calling shenanigans on this one.

Oofta · Dec 28, 2017

ArchfiendBobbie said:
I want to know where Forbes is getting $750 million from. Justice League, according to every source I can find, had a production cost of $300 million. By rule of thumb, it's already profitable. The only way they could require $750 million to be profitable is if they had an advertising budget of $450 million.

I'm definitely calling shenanigans on this one.

Yeah, makes you wonder if someone had agreed to a profit sharing compensation clause. :hmm:

bmfrosty · Dec 28, 2017

Does this mean that all the rights problems have been sorted out?

Enevhar Aldarion · Dec 28, 2017

ArchfiendBobbie said:
I want to know where Forbes is getting $750 million from. Justice League, according to every source I can find, had a production cost of $300 million. By rule of thumb, it's already profitable. The only way they could require $750 million to be profitable is if they had an advertising budget of $450 million.

I'm definitely calling shenanigans on this one.

You do know that the ticket sales numbers reported are before the movie theaters get their cut of ticket sales, right? Current estimates give an average of 60% of US sales and anywhere from 20-40% of foreign sales, depending on country, goes to the movie studio, so for big blockbusters we can figure an average of 50% overall. That means a movie that cost $300 million to make needs to sell $600 million in tickets to break even on production costs, and that does not even cover the advertising costs. A movie like Justice League could have easily cost $150 million in marketing worldwide, so that would make it about $750 million to break even between ticket sales, dvd sales, pay-per-view, etc.