D&D Movie/TV D&D Movie Hit or Flop?

[bedir than]

To be fair, I think talking at slight cross purposes - HaT triggered a 25 million write down for Hasbro as didn't do as well as they expected at box office (which does counter some early reporting around HaT doing better than expected). I think Bedir is stating that while that 25 million hit is true, it may have been offset by increases in revenue elsewhere for the DND franchise.

Yes, this

They still can't be happy with that, they wanted the next Transformers Bayverse for D&D, not GI Joe.

GI Joe current makes Hasbro much more than D&D. It's also part of Franchise Brands.

It may, we have no causation, only correlation, but it is reasonable to assume that at least some of it is due to HAT. Without having more details than we have, anything else is unclear, so anyone can lean either way on it. I'd say it is reasonable to assume a large part is HAT related in some fashion.

The quarterly report left it all pretty vague. This is nothing new, Hasbro notoriously never manages to spell out how much D&D actually makes...

While it isn't causation and I haven't claimed it. There is a strong correlation.
The search metrics for D&D and Honor Among Thieves are a mirror, with D&D being dramatically larger.
They did spell out how much the game made. They didn't spell out how much the franchise made.

Wasn't m who claimed 60 million in marketing

It wasn't me either, despite your insistance.
I quoted Paramount's Q1 report and you demanded that it was me making a claim.

 

[mamba]

A healthy bump in Digital Revenue could account for an overall 74% jump. Digital has big ROI for the D&D brand.

"Digital and licensed gaming revenue increase of 33%, bolstered by the addition of D&D Beyond and growth in Magic: The Gathering Arena."

"Franchise Performance: Second quarter growth in TRANSFORMERS(+83%), DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (+74%), and PEPPA PIG (+15%)"

It also sounds like the jump is not so much natural growth as them buying DDB (not that this matters here, just for context). That could work too... the question is how much of Digital is D&D and how much is D&D overall. D&D overall grew 74%, digital grew 33%, MtG probably less, the DDB purchase is probably more, for an average of 33%.

As usual the report does not really help answering any of that, it is like they want to release as little info as they can get away with...

I doubt Digital is more than 50% of D&D, so you still need to account for the franchise jump somewhere, even if you say Digital kept track with the overall 74% increase due to the difference in sized between D&D and MtG and how they contributed to a joint 33%.

So the movie still helped, but the increase on the franchise side is then probably less than the loss on the movie side. On the other hand there are more quarters where they can close that gap.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yes, this

GI Joe current makes Hasbro much more than D&D. It's also part of Franchise Brands.

While it isn't causation and I haven't claimed it. There is a strong correlation.
The search metrics for D&D and Honor Among Thieves are a mirror, with D&D being dramatically larger.
They did spell out how much the game made. They didn't spell out how much the franchise made.

It wasn't me either, despite your insistance.
I quoted Paramount's Q1 report and you demanded that it was me making a claim.

I got the number from you but didn't know where you sourced it from.

 

[Jaeger]

I doubt Digital is more than 50% of D&D, so you still need to account for the franchise jump somewhere, even if you say Digital kept track with the overall 74% increase due to the difference in sized between D&D and MtG and how they contributed to a joint 33%.

D&D as a Brand has also been growing on its own every quarter as well recently...

This is why I have doubts about attributing the significant year-on growth to the D&D film:

I find it hard to make a correlation between a lackluster film that struggled to attract casual audience eyeballs, yet somehow is still largely responsible for making the overall Brand grow.

D&D took a $25million write-down due to D&D HaT. We know that to be true.

That's functionally a 25m Loss due to lack of brand engagement by its target audience. Yet somehow HaT contributed enough "Brand Awareness" to 'other areas' that it not only made up the 25M difference on the balance sheet, but went on to surge the brand to +72% growth over last year?

Color me straight-up skeptical. There has to be other factors at play.

But again: This is All still pure speculation.

Because this:

As usual the report does not really help answering any of that, it is like they want to release as little info as they can get away with...

I've worked in enough different corporations to know that this is Absolutely Intentional.

They do this so that they can be fuzzy about where the money is really coming from to look as good as possible for investors and shareholders.

Largely so that they don't get called to the carpet on their bad decisions with specific IP that they have to steal from peter to give to paul to cover for.

 

[Jaeger]

Q2 will have all of the Honor Among Thieves data from them, except advertising, as they already reported that as 62 million

Also, of note. Paramount Global did list their ad spend for Honor Among Thieves in their last quarterly report. It was 62 million at most.

Another poster said 60+ million on marketing so total costs are 213 odd million of which hasbro paid 75 million.

Given the above quotes we know that HaT marketing budget was $62 million.

62 + 151 = 213 Million total cost. Metrics say the film had to do around $426 million at the box office to break even.

It did $208.2 million total worldwide.

It needed around 217 more to break even. When we back out the movie math, we know that post Box office run; D&D HaT is in the red to the tune of about $108 million.

How much of that 100m hole got made up with VoD/Streaming? (Supposedly Hasbro and Paramount are splitting the take...)

We do not know. Nobody does.

We do know that Hasbro paid (financed) 75m of the film, and have already taken a 25 million write down on the film on their side of the ledger...

Let's say that Paramount fronted all the marketing... So that would mean that Hasbro paid in 75 million (35%) with Paramount 138 (65%) million.

Assuming that they are spitting the VoD take along the same lines of their buy-in: Hasbro has already done a 25m write off of their initial 75m investment due to lack of revenue.

I don't think it controversial to be of the opinion that Paramount is likely still in the red as well...

 

[mamba]

D&D as a Brand has also been growing on its own every quarter as well recently...

not at the rate of 50% or so, and book sales are down from my understanding

This is why I have doubts about attributing the significant year-on growth to the D&D film:

I find it hard to make a correlation between a lackluster film that struggled to attract casual audience eyeballs, yet somehow is still largely responsible for making the overall Brand grow.

why, how many fat plush dragons did you think would have been sold without HAT? merchandising can be huge

D&D took a $25million write-down due to D&D HaT. We know that to be true.

yes

That's functionally a 25m Loss due to lack of brand engagement by its target audience.

no, that functionally is the movie losing money, it tells us nothing about anything else, at least not directly

Yet somehow HaT contributed enough "Brand Awareness" to 'other areas' that it not only made up the 25M difference on the balance sheet, but went on to surge the brand to +72% growth over last year?

well, we got 30% or so accounted for by WotC purchasing DDB, so 40%?

Reporting a loss on a movie while reaping the benefits elsewhere could just be better accounting wise

Color me straight-up skeptical. There has to be other factors at play.

that is your prerogative, after all we agree that

This is All still pure speculation

I've worked in enough different corporations to know that this is Absolutely Intentional.

never said otherwise, but this is not new, we never could figure out how much D&D actually makes

 

[Hussar]

Probably House of the Dragon. Well regarded might be more accurate. WoT and RoP not that well regarded Witcher seems a mess I haven't seen season 3 though.

Willows dead, Shadow and Bone is very good, Sandman was also good.

What’s House of the Dragon? Haven’t heard of it.

 

[Ferrousbones]

What’s House of the Dragon? Haven’t heard of it.

Game of Thrones prequel

 

[MockingBird]

The producer and writers of The Witcher seem hell bent on self destruction. So bad that Henry left. I was super excited for this series and I thought Henry was a great Geralt. I can't even muster an once of enthusiasm to watch season 3.

I thought RoP was good. I can see how some purest don't like it but I enjoyed it. It's beautifully shot too.

WoT, meh. I'm a fan of the books but this adaptation just didn't do it for me.

 

[mamba]

What’s House of the Dragon? Haven’t heard of it.

Precursor to Game of Thrones, 300 or so years before GoT. Easily the best of the current series, by a lot, at least to me.