Of course no one knows what this would have made, and who knows if they will release numbers from the on-line proceeds (and how that translates to profit - how much is Google’s cut compared to the movie chains’?) but those smaller theater revenues will likely be a small part of what they make.
I suspect there will be lots of people who would not see this movie in the theater (saving that expense and effort for movies that benefit from the Big Screen, like the new Hobbit movie) who will spend 6 bucks to kill an hour or so streaming it out of curiosity. And go without the popcorn and oversized soda.
Direct-to-video always saved the company cost and was the path to take if a movie was thought to be unlikely to bring in enough to justify the theater distribution expenses. This is a significant ramp-up in the current version, direct-to-streaming (with a limited pro forma theatrical release), and makes sense in a this era of more shows now only available as streamed items.
If this makes money, for a movie that seems otherwise to have been a low revenue producer, it may be a watershed moment for major movies that are not special effects blockbusters moving into increasingly streaming at release as an option.
So yeah, the limited theatrical release is a fraction of what it will bring in.
$18 million revenue (total) is not bad for the first 4 days for a movie that was otherwise not, shall we say, expected to do all that well. Pineapple Express brought in a total of $101 million worldwide its whole run for comparison, and given its (and likely this movie’s) relatively low budget was considered a good enough return to keep green-lighting Rogan and Franco for this one. We’ll see what sort of legs streaming at release has but given the smaller cut likely going to the streamers compared to the movie theater distribution system a smaller gross may be required to call something a good return.
The response reminds me a little of the people who subscribed to http://www.aljazeera.com/ after US hackers attacked it and took it offline during the … was it the first or second Gulf War?
FWIW articles in the NYT and CNET both claim that the traditional theatrical distribution channel costs the studio a 50% share of the revenues overall while on-line streaming usually costs them 25 to 30%.
Considering the average North Korean doesn’t have a DVD player, a television, or electricity, can’t speak English, and the NK government will probably imprison/kill anyone found in possession of the DVDs in the first place, this really is the worst kind of activism that will do more harm than good.
I’m starting to see articles questioning whether North Korea had anything to do with the hacking at all.
IF it turns out the leaker of all those emails was just a disgruntled Sony employee, Sony is going to look really stupid, not just cowardly, for pulling the movie from release.