By A new piece in Variety has gone into this Summer’s box-office woes and has revealed estimates for some potentially big losses by this year’s crop of tentpole pictures.
The big issue is budgets – namely all these films are too expensive for the diminished revenue they’re taking in. Rule of thumb with box-office is generally a film has to earn 2.2-2.5 times its production budget to cover the other costs – exhibitor cuts, distribution costs, marketing spend, etc.
The Summer kicked off with the Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt-led “The Fall Guy” which cost $140 million to produce and has grossed $167 million worldwide so far.
The trade indicates the film has to reach $275 million-$300 million to turn a profit and at the rate it’s going, it’s estimated to lose $50-60 million in its theatrical run.
George Miller’s “Furiosa” cost an even more eye-watering $168 million to make and so its breakeven point is thought to be around $350 million (though Warners says it’s lower). Either way it has only made $146 million and is on track for a loss of $75-95 million.
Those are just the obvious flops. Even the ones that seem to be doing well are facing issues – John Krasinski’s fantasy family film “IF” cost $110 million to produce and so needs to make $275 million theatrically (it’s currently at $164 million worldwide).
Even “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” the year’s fourth-highest-grossing film to date with $362 million worldwide, likely needs a little more to make profit from its $160 million budget.
The only real profitable tentpoles this year so far came in the Spring, such as “Kung Fu Panda 4” which has managed to gross an impressive $545 million and did so on the cheapest budget for the films to date – namely at a cost of just $85 million to produce.
Plenty of talk around “The Fall Guy” has come down to why did it cost so much and, had it been made for closer to $80-90 million, the conversation surrounding it would be potentially quite different.
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