Biopic: budget/box office
Beautiful mind: 58/317
Imitation Game: 14/234
Theory of everything: 15/124
Social Network: 40/225
Bohemian Rhapsody: 55/911
Rocketman: 40/195
Elvis: 85/289
Spencer: 18/25
Ford vs Ferrari: 98/226
Judy: 10/46
Green Book: 23/322
Vice: 60/76
Darkest hour: 30/151
Hacksaw Ridge: 40/181
Hidden Figures: 25/236
Jackie: 9/37
Bridge of spies: 40/166
American Sniper: 59/547
Selma: 20/68
Dallas Buyers Club: 5/55
Wolf of Wall Street: 100/407
Lincoln: 65/275
Famous directors around 100 M$ budget in recent years:
Wolf of Wall Street: 100/407
Once upon a time in Hollyood: 96/377
Gravity: 80-130/723
Dunkirk: 100/527
West Side Story: 100/76
Django Unchained: 100/426
Alien Covenant: 100/241
The Martian: 108/631
Variety speculated a couple years ago that this movie needed $400M worldwide to become profitable. Pretty amazing that it’s already there after only 10 days. It has a good chance to make it to $700M, which would be pretty jawdropping. It’s all icing on the cake for Universal & Nolan moving forward.
If the $100 million marketing budget is true, then it'll take $490 million.
Even still, the rest of your point remains. Job well done overall!
Variety was already accounting for the $100M of marketing costs when they said it needed $400M worldwide to break even. $200M of total expenses ($100M production, $100M marketing). So the $400M box office number makes sense, given that theaters get 50% of the revenue.
Variety speculated a couple years ago that this movie needed $400M worldwide to become profitable. Pretty amazing that it’s already there after only 10 days. It has a good chance to make it to $700M, which would be pretty jawdropping. It’s all icing on the cake for Universal & Nolan moving forward.
If the $100 million marketing budget is true, then it'll take $490 million.
Even still, the rest of your point remains. Job well done overall!
Variety was already accounting for the $100M of marketing costs when they said it needed $400M worldwide to break even. $200M of total expenses ($100M production, $100M marketing). So the $400M box office number makes sense, given that theaters get 50% of the revenue.
I wonder how much the actual budget was because I imagine they got tax rebates, especially for all the stuff shot in New Mexico. The NM tax rebate for productions is somewhere between 25-40%.
Biopic: budget/box office
Beautiful mind: 58/317
Imitation Game: 14/234
Theory of everything: 15/124
Social Network: 40/225
Bohemian Rhapsody: 55/911
Rocketman: 40/195
Elvis: 85/289
Spencer: 18/25
Ford vs Ferrari: 98/226
Judy: 10/46
Green Book: 23/322
Vice: 60/76
Darkest hour: 30/151
Hacksaw Ridge: 40/181
Hidden Figures: 25/236
Jackie: 9/37
Bridge of spies: 40/166
American Sniper: 59/547
Selma: 20/68
Dallas Buyers Club: 5/55
Wolf of Wall Street: 100/407
Lincoln: 65/275
Famous directors around 100 M$ budget in recent years:
Wolf of Wall Street: 100/407
Once upon a time in Hollyood: 96/377
Gravity: 80-130/723
Dunkirk: 100/527
West Side Story: 100/76
Django Unchained: 100/426
Alien Covenant: 100/241
The Martian: 108/631
This is a good reference; thanks for putting this up!
Variety speculated a couple years ago that this movie needed $400M worldwide to become profitable. Pretty amazing that it’s already there after only 10 days. It has a good chance to make it to $700M, which would be pretty jawdropping. It’s all icing on the cake for Universal & Nolan moving forward.
If the $100 million marketing budget is true, then it'll take $490 million.
Even still, the rest of your point remains. Job well done overall!
Variety was already accounting for the $100M of marketing costs when they said it needed $400M worldwide to break even. $200M of total expenses ($100M production, $100M marketing). So the $400M box office number makes sense, given that theaters get 50% of the revenue.
Below is some napkin math. Pardon me because I did this earlier in the morning before Box Office Mojo updated domestic and international percentages, but you're currently not considering that split in revenue share as well as Nolan's first-dollar gross.
So, here you go:
Gross revenue accounts for:
55.7% domestic market* (60% cut) = 33.42% revenue share
44.3% international market* (40% cut since China isn't involved yet) = 17.68% revenue share
Costs include:
$100 million production budget
$100 million marketing budget**
Nolan's contract is 20% first-dollar gross
If x = amount of millions of dollars needed to break even, then:
** Marketing budget was reportedly between $65 million and $100 million. I'm being on the safe side here and using that $100 million as Variety stated, but at $65 million then that would indeed really help change the profit line to ~$404 million.
When we get actuals tomorrow, I'll update this. I'd say $500 million is safer though since it will start opening in more international markets, thus covering more of the worldwide spread.
The 20% of the first dollar gross is misleading, because I'm sure that similar profit-sharing deals exist for other films also, the only difference being that they are not public info so we just don't know about them.
Either you apply the same blanket rules to all films (be that 2.5x budget or whatever), by which metric Oppenheimer is an immense success, or you wait for Deadline's year-end detailed breakdowns.
The 20% of the first dollar gross is misleading, because I'm sure that similar profit-sharing deals exist for other films also, the only difference being that they are not public info so we just don't know about them.
Either you apply the same blanket rules to all films (be that 2.5x budget or whatever), by which metric Oppenheimer is an immense success, or you wait for Deadline's year-end detailed breakdowns.
LOL it's not "misleading," that is his contractual payment. I'm just talking about Universal turning a profit for themselves, and Nolan isn't Universal.
You can wait all you want, just like I'm going to wait till tomorrow to hear about how it did on Sunday. I don't go by estimates. The fact of the matter is Nolan can come out of this thing handsomely with a crapload of money because of the deal he swindled with Universal, and I'm factoring that while nobody else is. If Deadline does, great and I was ahead of it. For now though, I'm not going to sit around and read that people are saying this movie is already in the green when they aren't separating domestic with international (which I'll have to recalculate tomorrow) and Universal will have to pay 20% of the collection to its director.
$250 million isn't the breakeven point, and $400 million isn't the breakeven point. Either way, this film will profit beautifully.
My point is that factoring in the 20% on first dollar gross would be judging Oppenheimer's box office by standards that don't apply to other films.
Let's put it like this: the only reason that you are sitting there trying to make calculations at all is because Mr. Nolan's '20% on first dollar gross' clause with Universal was leaked to the trades. If that had never happened, then you would have to make do with the blanket '2.5x budget' rule, by which metric the film is a roaring success.
Now compare this to Mission: Impossible, which I'm sure has some kind of similar percentage-based profit-sharing with Mr. Cruise and Mr. McQuarrie, the difference being that none of it is not public information. Therefore, we have no choice but to stick to the '2.5x budget' rule, and no one is sitting there trying to factor in Mr. Cruise's percentage on first dollar gross or whatever.
For all we know, Mr. Murphy is getting 3% of the first dollar gross, or the Oppenheimer estate is getting 1%, or heck, maybe Mr. Nolan recently revised his deal to bring it down to 17% or whatever.
I understand that you're trying to be as analytical as possible, but unless you have inside connections at Universal's accounting department, you are not in possession of all the numbers. Therefore, trying to make any detailed calculations beyond the blanket '2.5x budget' rough guess is a pointless exercise. It's best to keep it simple until Deadline's year-end detailed breakdowns give us hard concrete numbers.
My point is that factoring in the 20% on first dollar gross would be judging Oppenheimer's box office by standards that don't apply to other films.
Let's put it like this: the only reason that you are sitting there trying to make calculations at all is because Mr. Nolan's '20% on first dollar gross' clause with Universal was leaked to the trades. If that had never happened, then you would have to make do with the blanket '2.5x budget' rule, by which metric the film is a roaring success.
Now compare this to Mission: Impossible, which I'm sure has some kind of similar percentage-based profit-sharing with Mr. Cruise and Mr. McQuarrie, the difference being that none of it is not public information. Therefore, we have no choice but to stick to the '2.5x budget' rule, and no one is sitting there trying to factor in Mr. Cruise's percentage on first dollar gross or whatever.
For all we know, Mr. Murphy is getting 3% of the first dollar gross, or the Oppenheimer estate is getting 1%, or heck, maybe Mr. Nolan recently revised his deal to bring it down to 17% or whatever.
I understand that you're trying to be as analytical as possible, but unless you have inside connections at Universal's accounting department, you are not in possession of all the numbers. Therefore, trying to make any detailed calculations beyond the blanket '2.5x budget' rough guess is a pointless exercise. It's best to keep it simple until Deadline's year-end detailed breakdowns give us hard concrete numbers.
To your point...if I am not mistaken, I'm pretty sure Nolan's share of the gross was already mentioned in the Variety article a couple years ago that said Oppenheimer needed $400 million to become profitable. So they're already accounting for his special deal when they say the movie needs 4X higher than the production budget instead of 2.5X higher than the production budget. Putting the "break even" number at 5X the production budget seems pretty dang extreme.
Supposedly the new Little Mermaid movie has a break-even point of 2.5X higher than the production budget. That movie cost a ton of money, both in production and marketing. Based on that example, the 5X number for Oppenheimer seems too extreme. I doubt Universal would have gone down this path if they felt the studio would be losing $90 million on a $400 million gross. That sounds pretty absurd.
Last edited by redfirebird2008 on July 31st, 2023, 12:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
My point of all of this was to say you want to play on the safe side of things, not assume that it has already broken even.
And yes, there are many things we haven't factored in, such as exclusive rights to IMAX and whatever else may be involved. So to say that $400 million is the breakeven point then is farcical. Aim higher is all.
