Quote from: Kane's other son on May 15, 2017, 10:22:19 AM
No, it does not need "about 400-450 to break even". If that were the case, Prometheus would be a money-loser and we'd never get Covenant.
Studios are businesses. They didn't agree on a sequel for the fans' sake.
It does.
Prometheus was a box office money loser by a fairly decent amount. That is partially why this was given a lower absolute budget even five years later, even though it almost always goes the other way due to inflation alone.
There are other ways a movie can make money and through those avenues Prometheus nearly broke even. The studio wanted a new franchise and they were willing to take an initial loss of some degree to establish it. If Prometheus had made money, they would not have forced this massive shift to Aliens in it and given it a lower budget. Prometheus lost money.
Covenant needs about 400-450 to break even at the box office. There are other ways for it to make money (dvd sales being a relatively large one) but the box office is king in terms of amount of money taken in and public perception.
QuoteNo studio greenlights a movie in 2015 hoping to earn back its investment through home video sales.
The market's pretty much dead and looks nothing like it did back in 2012.
You are 100% dead wrong. People buy dvds or digital media for the top movies at very high rates. To throw out an example, TFA made nearly 200 million in dvd sales alone (non digital), last year.
Frozen made a little less than 400 million dollars in physical media sales.
If you want to only look at R rated movies, deadpool made nearly 100 million.
These are not going to save an absolutely tanking movie and I explicitly said they would not. In Prometheus' case they definitely pushed the movie close to the breaking even point though which, in part, convinced the studio to allow this sequel (with some stipulations). Physical and digital media sales are very powerful revenue streams.