Re: Is Snow White going to make money?

On 2025-05-05 7:57 PM, anim8rfsk wrote:

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

Just out of curiousity, I looked up Snow White at IMDB just now and was
pleased to see that the rating has stayed steady at 1.6 out of 10.
However I was rather surprised to see the box office returns. At the
moment, we have the following numbers:
>
==================================
Budget
$250,000,000 (estimated)
>
Gross US & Canada
$86,123,346
>
Opening weekend US & Canada
$42,206,415 Mar 23, 2025
>
Gross worldwide
$200,568,210
=================================
>
Despite the miserable opening weekend it had in the US and Canada (and
the much worse one it had in China, one of its biggest markets, where it
made less than 2 million!), the film continues to make money and is
already at 200 million dollars, which is 80% if its (estimated) budget.
It looks like there is a real chance that it will break even.

 No.
 250 million budget is its negative cost.
 That means the movie is ready to be made ready for the public.
 You used to have to make untold millions of dollars in prints but you don’t
have to do that anymore. But you do have to split the box office with the
theaters and there is some distribution cost and then there is marketing,
which I’ve heard was as much as $150 million but they may have given up on
that.
 Maybe half of that 200 million box office gets back to Disney (it used to
be a fifth). And there are a lot more expenses than the negative cost. A
wild guess right now would be that it has netted $100 million out of the
$450 it needs to gross.
  Any money

it makes after that is actual profit!

 Nope (see above.)
 (I expect these numbers don't

include marketing costs, which can be tens or even hundreds of millions
of dollars, but Disney cut back drastically on marketing when it was
obvious the film was going to be really awful.)
 Wouldn't it be wild if a film that was so reviled by practically
everyone still made money?

 No Hollywood movie has ever made money.
 

>
I wonder if Disney executives will use this as a rationale for
continuing to make woke garbage on the grounds that, whatever the
critical reaction, it's still profitable so why not stay with a
"winning" formula?
>

I wonder if that budget number, $250 million, was the *original* budget or the amended budget after reshoots? The original version of the film was slammed hard for how horrible it looked so they redid major sections of the film to try to save it so I assumed that cost major money.
I know that marketing can be a major expense separate from the budget but I know they cut back on that dramatically when it was obvious the film was going to be a flop and when Zegler proved to be a loudmouth that WOULD NOT SHUT UP. I wasn't aware of the other costs you mention. And, of course, I know about the accounting tricks the studios use to make it look like they lost money so that they don't have to pay out to actors; we had a thread about that recently.
In any case, I'm apparently way off in suggesting that the film is close to breaking even. Still, who can say? It may be a huge hit outside of North America (and China) and it may even make money when they release it for streaming from people who will pay just to hate-watch it.
--
Rhino