Was Kill Bill Volume 1 considered a financial success?
I’m sure someone else can back me up with some numbers, but as the movie was made on a QT budget, it would be nearly impossible not to make shitloads of money.
(QT like to make his films with relatively moderate budgets, and takes a certain priding in sticking to the proposed figures).
You can look up this kind of thing on IMDB
For Kill Bill Vol 1
Budget $55,000,000
US Gross to date $69,909,813 (to 11th April)
Non-US Gross $93,900,000 (up to Christmas 2003)
Sounds like a success to me (even before DVD profits, HBO royalties etc)
Plus the DVD sold more than 2 million copies on its first day of release. Cite
Both parts were made on a budget of 55 million, plus the costs of advertising each seperately. Volume One already has a gross of 180 million, which is quite a profit, and this doesn’t include dvd sales. Volume 2 will be the biggest movie this weekend, and all of the money made from here out will be pretty close to pure profit, as Volume 1 has already made back the initial investment and then some. Here are the official numbers so far.
Here are the week-by-week tallies of Kill Bill vol. 1 in the US: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=killbill.htm
You have to take both films together to consider if it’s a financial success, since they were made together (to make it cheaper, like LOTR). It’ll end up a pretty nice success, I think.
Vol. 2 looks like it’ll do better in theaters than Vol. 1 (based on very early figures), and Vol. 1 has been having outstanding sales so far. They’ll make a whole lot of money.
Just a couple of other things to consider here:
The soundtrack, which while it wasn’t a huge seller, did pretty well.
Budget figures released by a studio are notoriously suspect. It might have been higher or it might have been lower.
All of those gross totals don’t go directly to the studio. The theaters don’t just get by on the price of your popcorn (although it’s getting close). The cut of the studio is close to 90% of the ticket price in the first weeks but decreases in each successive week. It used to be that half of a film’s gross would go to theaters but I doubt that’s the case anymore. Some of those foreign totals may also go to other distributors if foreign rights were pre-sold (I don’t know if that was the case here).
Regardless, by any standards, Kill Bill was indeed a success.