FOTR question (1 Viewer)

[Marshall Alsup]

Hey,

I was just checking out the the money FOTR earned worldwide on IMDB and found that it was $834,400,000. Man, thats a BUNCH of cash!

What I was wondering was how much of this do you guys think is raw profit for New Line? After the costs to create, promote, and distribute the movie is there much left over?

Just curious,

-Marshall

 

[Werner_R]

If I remember correctly, studios get around 55% of the boxoffice takes. According to BOM, FOTR did cost around 100$ m for the movie itself + 50$ m for marketing. The entire trilogy should cost around 300$ m, take 50$ m marketing costs for every movie and the final cost would be 450$.
So it's safe to say that FOTR made enough money to pay for the entire trilogy, the 2 next movies are pure profit. I can hear New Line going wild

 

[Kami]

So it's safe to say that FOTR made enough money to pay for the entire trilogy, the 2 next movies are pure profit. I can hear New Line going wild

And also hopefully giving PJ even more freedom with the next two films. They trusted him a lot on the first, maybe they'll trust him more on the remaining films because of its huge success.

 

[Chuck Anstey]

If I remember correctly, studios get around 55% of the boxoffice takes.

I heard the same quote from E! "Inside Blockbusters"? or whatever it was called about summer movies. However, there are many threads here that claim theaters only get 5-10% of the revenue during the first few weeks when 90% of the money a movie makes is made. There seems to be a discrepancy here or is there some other entity that take 35-40% of the revenue?

Chuck Anstey

 

[Malcolm R]

It depends on the agreement for each individual film, and I think it's usually a tiered structure with the percentages changing more in favor of the theater the longer the movie plays. Hence, why theaters should be giddy that FOTR ran for so long. Towards the end, they should have been getting a much larger cut of the BO.

The studios with mega-blockbusters usually demand a bigger cut up front because most open big and fade quickly. I think it generally starts about 80-20 or 70-30 in favor of the studios, then if the film has good legs it generally ends up shifting to same percentages in favor of the theaters. The 55% is likely an overall average, but it can vary. Theaters should have made out pretty well from FOTR, probably retaining a majority of its receipts in the last few weeks.