I laid out the varying forms of back-end revenue, why studios favor making a profit during a film's box office run, and even gave an example of a film that flopped, but still got a sequel thanks to the long tail revenue it made by being a fan favorite.
And all you got out of it was: "nuh uh"...
I find that response very interesting. "Industry Pro's" jumped all over Shazam 2 after the first week, and poured the haterade on Mario right up until the box office receipts came in...
Utterly fascinating what the industry "Professionals" decide to like, and not like.
Definitely some underestimation the scale of money that still needs to be recovered. Studios favor making their money back at the box office because they recover their costs and can make a profit inside a month, with a gushing river of customer cash.
By comparison, long tail revenue is a shallow stream that you can't fish in. VoD rentals/buys being the last chance to get a decent chunk of change in one short go before the film does the streaming, cable, network rounds...
No studio funds films out of pocket. These studio's go into hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to make these films.
A successful box office run allows them to pay all that off in one go, and start banking profit.
If a film has an unsuccessful run,
the studio still has to service all that debt.
With the interest payments continually cutting into the back end revenue the longer it takes to break even.
