How much of the gross do theaters get?

Msg

Registered User

06-06-13

This is something I've been wondering about recently, and this article from THR (I can't link to it I don't have enough posts) which lists how much this summer's blockbusters cost with marketing and how much they made made me finally ask about this:

If something like Iron Man costs, as THR says, $375 million to make and market, and stars get back end, AND the theaters take a percentage of the gross, how much money do the studios make on these movies??? This is what I've been wondering recently, and now I see THR say Hangover 3, which is a $253 million investment should return about $25 million of profit!

At any rate, my question is what percentage of the gross do theater owners get and does it vary from country to country, and are there any other parties that take a cut of the gross besides the theaters and the actors/directors?

And my second question is how many of the oscar movies end up making money?

syj

Registered User

06-06-13

It looks like this article answers your question about how much theater owners get to keep for movies, although it looks like it only focuses on the US. Basically, movie theaters take 20% or so of the price of the ticket for the first couple of weeks of release, and then closer to 50% for any remaining weeks a movie is in release after that. Here's the relevant quote:

1) Who Gets What From Your $10 Ticket?
Ok, so you walk up to the box office and drop down your $10 to buy your ticket. Who gets that money? A lot of people assume (as did I at one point) that the movie theater keeps 50% of it, and the rest goes off to the studios. That�s not really true.
Most of the money that a theatre takes in from ticket sales goes back to the movie studio. The studio leases a movie to your local theater for a set period of time. In the first couple of weeks the film shows in the theatre, the theatre itself only gets to keep about 20% � 25% of the green. That means, if you showed up to watch Bridget Jones� Diary on opening night, then of the $12 you put out for a ticket, the movie theatre only got to keep between $2.40 and $3.00 of it.
That�s not a lot of money, especially when you think about how much bigger and elaborate theatres are these days. It�s not cheap running one of these places. It can get even worse. This percentage will vary from movie to movie depending on the specifics of the individual leasing deal. For instance, 2 movie theatre managers told me that for Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, the studio took 100% of the box office take for the first week of release. Can you imagine that? They had to over staff and have above normal capacity flood into their theatres� and they got to keep $0.00 from the ticket sales. That almost seems criminal.
Now, as you move into the second and third weeks of release, the percentage starts to swing to anywhere from 45% � 55% that the theatre gets to keep. It gets better after the fourth week when theatres generally can keep up to 80% or better of the ticket sales. There is an obvious inherent problem with this arrangement. I don�t know about you, but when I finally get around to seeing a film that�s already been in the theatres for 4 or 5 weeks, I�m usually one of the only people in the place. It doesn�t do the establishment a lot of good to keep 80% of the ticket sales when only 14 tickets are sold per show. And with more and more and more movies getting released every week, the length of time that a movie stays in theaters is shrinking. Bad news for the movie theaters.
Movie theaters are then forced to really make their money off concessions. One theater manager said �We�re not in the movie business� we�re in the candy business�. Very true. So if you ever wondered why a $0.15 bag of popcorn is costing you $5, and a $0.08 cup of Coke is running you another $4� it�s because the economics of the industry system is so screwed up that the concession stand is where theaters have to make most of their money.

Basically, if you want to support your local movie theater, buy their overpriced food.

Guaporense

Animation nerd

06-07-13

Studios usually receive only 40-50% of the total box office income. For instance, in Japan in 1999, total box office income was 182,835 million yen but the income distributed to the studios was 82,794 million yen.

So usually, a movie made for 100 million dollars, with promotional costs of, let's say, 80 million dollars, will have to make around 360 - 450 million dollars to pay itself from box office income only.

Movies can pay themselves using DVD/Bluray sales and income from TV an official internet streaming sites.

Dimitri001

Msg

Registered User

06-14-13

Thanks, guys!

Incidentally, I just read a THR article from 6.6. (again, I can't link) about how Superman made 170 or 180 million dollars from promotional partners (people who will make action figures, people who'll sell them, car makers who'll, I guess, advertize using superman etc.) and they said the last Batman movie made 150!

Why don't they report those numbers regularly! That's the movie's production budget, or promotional budget paid off before it even opened!

honeykid

MoFo Whisperer

06-15-13

What? You mean alert people to the fact these films are merely adverts for the merchandise/franchise spin-offs?

Besides, it's not part of the box office, so you wouldn't include those numbers. Same as they don't include dvd/bluray sales/rentals, PPV/subscription/terrestrial tv deal, and whatever other revenue streams I've forgotten/don't know about.

__________________
5-time MoFo Award winner.

Dimitri001

Msg

Registered User

06-24-13

Besides, it's not part of the box office, so you wouldn't include those numbers. Same as they don't include dvd/bluray sales/rentals, PPV/subscription/terrestrial tv deal, and whatever other revenue streams I've forgotten/don't know about.

Yes, but the point is for us to know how well the movie did generally, not just at the box office, that's what we're all really curious about. The trades should be reporting those numbers.

Last edited by Dimitri001; 06-24-13 at 05:10 PM.

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