Myrdin Potter
Hero
The formula is still valid for comparing box office results against the cost.That is not what it means in common parlance since the pandemic. If it did, almost no movies would have been made since the pandemic. Streaming is a huge component now of their overall sales.
But you know this. We've discussed this, you argued you didn't know what the streaming numbers would be so somehow that meant they don't count because you didn't have access to that data. And yet here we are again, you pretending ticket sale box office is the only thing that counts.
Tell me Zard, was Glass Onion a hit or a flop? It made $13M total worldwide in box office ticket sales, and had a $40M budget and more for marketing. Netflix also spent $465 million for the rights to produce two Knives Out sequels (so you can say that's $232.5M), in addition to that $40M production budget and the marketing budget. Hit or flop?
The answer is HIT. It was a HUGE hit.
There is a Hollywood Writers Strike that was just voted on over this very issue (in addition to other issues). How to formulate contracts for writers in this new era where streaming is making up a majority of movie profits but contracts for writers are still stuck on box office ticket sales and how that cheats the writers from their fair share of the profits. EVERYONE in Hollywood acknowledges this is a real issue and needs to be worked out and the dispute is only on what percentage to give people, and how to calculate that profit, not whether streaming really is a huge part of the profits now. Everyone agrees it is a huge part of the profits now.
It is difficult to calculate the profits from streaming. Most are debating how to calculate the number of newly acquired streaming customers that can be attributed to that film streaming, and the number of retained streaming customers who would have otherwise left earlier that can be attributed to that film streaming, and then apply a portion of the customer lifetime subscription value to those numbers. Yes, this is hard to do even if you have access to all relevant data. No, you do not and will never have sufficient access to that data for you as an amateur on the outside to make a correct assessment.
Here is an example of one of the models being discussed. These are made-up numbers from a discussion of a movie which was released to streaming directly, and in this example the movie is a loss and they're calculating what the loss looks like:
Here is another model being discussed:
Of course, we don't have access to much of this data. We might get steaming viewership numbers (or might not) but we won't get the sub and library value multiples data, nor the customer acquisition, retention, or lifetime value data. We'll always need to use inadequate data and the best indications we get from experts who do have access to that data, probably for a long time as amateurs on the outside.
That last part is what I have been doing by the way, and what a lot of others in this thread who disagree with you are doing: making our best assessments based on the inadequate data we have about what the people who do have access to the data think about whether this movie was a hit or flop. They seem to think it was a hit, so far. There is reason to mistrust their assessments, but given it's the only assessments we have from people with access to the real data, that's unfortunately what we need to work with these days. And yeah, if a sequel is greenlit, that will be a darn good indication the studio viewed it as a hit. Which, by the way, is the only thing that really matters with this topic. There is no purpose to the "hit or flop" designation other than what the studio thinks about their own film's success or failure.
Your formula is outdated. It's universally acknowledged in the industry you're discussing as being outdated. And it stinks that we don't have data for the new formulas being used but that's not a good excuse to pretend the old formula still works when we know it does not.
And the pandemic is over (I mean, not really, but most people act like it is). Streaming services are not quite as hot. Paramount has a library of their own but if D&D is exclusive to their much smaller streaming service than maybe not as much revenue there.
Do you think that streaming is really going to cover the pretty large hole that HAT will be in? Maybe $200M global box office (call it $100M to the studio) compared to estimates of $150M cost plus $100M marketing. Even if the marketing is $50M, that is a $100M hole.
I think “box office flop” is guaranteed. What is your guess in tne rest of the revenue?
BTW - this strike is about resetting formulas but the extreme of 100% streaming for Black Widow are quickly going behind us. Streaming exclusives are known much more in advance now. So your point is a little stretched.
