The production budget was, according to IMDB and other sources, about $207 million dollars. The marketing budget is unknown, but was possibly around $100 million dollars (I’m trying to find a solid cite). As of right now, it has grossed around $60 million in the US and around $12 million in the UK. That’s a respectable return - on a movie that cost half as much to make. It could be worse, yes, but it’s pretty bad.
I misspoke, I meant a quarter of a hundred million, of course.
Well, it’s not a quarter of one million. I believe Larry Mudd said ~25 million.
That’s not too bad considering we still have New Year’s weekend still to go, and the entire month of January when there will be little in ways of new competition.
It doesn’t look like a flop, yet, but cthiax is mostly right so far.
For comparison, the less anticipated Narnia did 67M it’s opening weekend. KK did 66M it’s first 5 days, and 50M it’s opening weekend (the 16th). That same weekend, Narnia did 31M.
The weekend of the 23rd, overall box was down, but KK did 21M to Narnia’s 20M, evne though it had been out 5 fewer days, done less total box, and has had a much bigger push behind it. Yeah, KK fell almost 60%. That’s what your normal “big push, stinky movie” does. Movies with staying power do what Narnia did. . .lose 30% or so.
Also, ROTK did 72M and followed it with a 50M.
Even Meet the Fockers last year did like 45 followed with a 41. And one of those was a weekend with Christmas on it.
I know those are sequels, but I’d argue there was at least as much recognition of KK as any one of them, more than the Fockers.
Might it catch on like the Titanic after a slow start? It might. It’s going to be a bad sign if it doesn’t even beat Narnia this weekend, though.
Sure, it will make it’s money back taking into account overseas, and DVD sales, but I think we can safely say that just making your money back is not what the financers of Kong had in mind. This was their Titanic, their billion dollar baby. And this movie ain’t gonna do that.
If it really had, at this point, made $25 million over production, it would be a disaster. I believe, as per Trunk’s links, that it’s more like $60-$80 million over the production budget…which means it hasn’t probably hasn’t cleared the marketing budget yet. In two weeks. It’s a flop.
Figure the DVD sales and post theatrical release merchandising roughly doubles the overall profit. Since Kong is at about break even point now, that means the investors can expect all their money back by end of the year, and then another check for the same amount around the end of next year. Then they have another twenty years of residuals.
Even the papers who eagerly gave us premature reports of Kong’s supposed flopitude claimed a fifty million marketing budget, so the profits are coming in now – and King Kong is still the #1 picture at the box office.
How anyone can continue to shout “flop!” when every indication is that it’s a critical, financial, and popular success is beyond me.
Oh come on. You clearly do not like the taste of hat. Two weeks out, the movie is just about at break-even on it’s theatrical release, with the New Years’ holiday weekend still to come, and you’re calling it a FLOP??? The current metric on movies is that they make more on DVDs than they do on the theatrical release, so I’m betting $300 million plus in profits after a year. Of course the studio accounting will show Kong to be a $50 billion loss. But who believes that shit?
Flop may be harsh but it is nowhere close to breakeven yet. Often with a major
release the distibutor can squeeze the theaters for 100% of first weekend
profits but then it goes to 50/50 like normal. If the squeeze was on my
guess is another 160 mil in gross to hit breakeven. The first wknd gross, for & domestic, was probably around 100 so if another 180 has come in look at around
180-190 to studio/distributor, ect. They may get there eventually but still not
close to what was expected particularly if lost income opportunities are looked at.
Safe to say 30 yrs ago before dvd, vhs, games ,ect it would have been a flop
no doubt but these other markets aren’t going to be as big as a few seem to think.
But it’s not 30 years ago and nobody in business in Hollywood is dumb enough to treat the world that way.
Through today Kong has grossed just under $300 million worldwide. It will break $500 million and probably $600 million, which is what War of the Worlds did. Peter Jackson gets 20% of the gross, although I assume that means 20% of the gross that returns to the studio after the theaters take their cut. Over the long haul, theaters do get about half, so the studio will get 80% of, say, $250 million or $200 million. This is less than the movie costs plus marketing figure by far, but it just the first tiny step in the process.
Kong will probably double its take due to the various ancillary rights sales. DVD, video, pay per view, cable, network fees will come in worldwide. There is a game attached to it and a soundtrack. The bulk of these monies will go to the studio rather than to Peter Jackson.
Unlike WofW, Kong has a huge potential in merchandising rights, from figurines to the Kong-sized Triple Whopper at Burger King.
The long-term gross is over $1.5 billion, a minimum of half of which will go to the studio.
The studio won’t net all that money and they would surely like the gross to have been $2 billion but at those numbers it’s all quibbling.
True, some total nutcakes were going around just before the film opened and declaring that it was going to beat Titantic as the all-time high-grossing movie. This was insanity at the time and possibly the cause of otherwise sane adults calling the movie a flop. Sure, if you’re going to compare it with insane expectations, it can’t conceivably win. If you base your answer just on making hundreds of millions of dollars you come to a different conclusion.
We should all have such “flops.”
Either way, I guarantee that those who have net points instead of gross points will never see a dollar. From my favorite squib of the year:
Mapcase-I don’t think we are far apart in our opinion. I posted because others said it was making a profit already, it is not. My guestimate was at around 480 it will be black,that is still to happen. Of course that was before you informed me Jackson was pulling 20%. I brought up my 30 yr statement because I know tickets are just a part of the revenue, but I think you are way optimistic on the ancillary impact. BK isn’t ponying up half of the “gross” Kong Burger’s Gross.
Also ok, Spielberg is to you a nutjob on at least this as he predicted 100 maybe 150 opening. He was wrong.
Anyway it is sliced, I don’t think we will need to take a collection for anybody
connected to this project, but doing as well as “War of the Worlds”?-- maybe even non-nut jobs expected more.
I’m sure it will be re-released in some near summer and make tons again for
all involved.
BTW, loved your Frazier anectdote. Never take net in anything to do with
business, show or otherwise.
Wouldn’t things like the Kong Triple Whopper or the Kong themed Corn Pops and Apple Jacks be an advertising expense, not a marketing revenue? Surely the studio pays Pepsi Co. or General Mills or whoever to put their monkey on the box, and not the other way around?
Sure, each Kong-themed item generates publicity for the movie.
But each Kong-themed item sold also generates licensing revenue for the studio.
Burger King buys the line the studio feeds them about how Kong is going to be the next Star Wars, in terms of everyone buying every-damned-thing-on-the-planet with its name attached, so they agree to license Kong for a couple of burger names, perhaps at a discount since BK is possibly marketing the burger on their own advertising dime.
I’m not sure that he is. He famously asked for US$20mil as salary (for both he and wife Fran Walsh, between the two of them) upfront. I’m not so certain he’s also got a cut of anything more.
Movie studios make money on tie-ins. Advertising is separate. Burger King bids against other fast food franchises for the rights to tie in a product to the movie. It’s virtually free money for the studio.
LIT123, we’re probably not so far apart, although I stand by my statement that anyone predicting bigger than Titanic grosses was a few lifeboats short of a rescue.
You may be misinterpreting one piece of what I said, however. The Burger King tie-in is just one of hundreds that will collectively pull in hundreds of millions of dollars for the studio, since licensing money has virtually no costs against it. I’m not saying it will do that much business all by itself.
BTW, the usual rule of thumb in Hollywood is that a movie moves into the black at 2 1/2 times production plus marketing costs. That’s about $500 million, just about what LIT123 said. With Jackson’s huge cut, the breakeven point does move even further out. (However, note that the article says that “Mr. Jackson will cover any costs over a budget of $150 million” which meant that he had to put in $50 million of his own money, giving the studio a smaller nut to cover.) But worldwide grosses will hit that mark with room to spare, I predict, and all ancillary money will be profit. Except to the accountants.
Awesome story. I remember hearing that they cancelled the original “Battlestar Galactica” because it was losing money, which was also laughable - pre-cable network TV shows never lost money. BG just wasn’t making enough.
I also saw an interview once with Bob Denver and Dawn Wells where they explained that they never recieved residuals for Gilligan’s Island until well into the 80’s - apparently the producers told them with a straight face that they were losing money, even though the show is the most rebroadcast and syndicated in the history of television. (And shot on one of the smallest budgets, too.)
No shit? I always figured the idea behind those tie-ins was that when Joe Consumer is eating a Whopper, he’s looking at King Kong and gets the idea in his head, “I should go see that movie sometime,” so the studio pays Burger King to put their movie on their food. What you’re saying is that, when Joe Consumer feels like having an e. coli burger and is trying to pick a franchise, seeing a giant monkey on the wrapper will influence him to pick one franchise over the other? So Burger King expects to get more sales by putting someone else’s (non-food) product on their packaging? And this actually works?
Marketing is the bane of all logical professions. They are the alchemists in a world of hard science. They say and do things that make no sense and then claim it works. The have more in common with politicians than any other group I can think of.
I expect that King Kong will gross 1 billion worldwide before it’s time in the theaters is done. I saw it and I loved it. It was a great movie. Kong fighting T-Rexes, how can you go wrong?
Anyone that thinks King Kong has flopped doesn’t understand the film business. Movies like Deuce Bigalow are made because the studio knows that on DVD sales alone they will make the money back. A movie like King Kong that will be released, rereleased, rented On-Demand, from Netflix, from Blockbuster, will do phenomenally well in DVD sales, and they will make a killing. The fact that it’s close to breaking even on theater tickets alone makes it a smash hit. It’s only been around for about two weeks at this point, and it’s the top movie. It’ll be the top movie next weekend, and the top movie the next weekend. The real issue for Hollywood right now is that theater attendance is dropping off. Theater attendance is what makes the movie an “event” as opposed to simply a product, so they want people to by hyped on King Kong for a year in advance of teh DVD release. If they break even in the theaters, then they are going to rake it in when the DVD comes out.
Very few business ventures have as high a return on an investment as King Kong is having, and will continue to have when the deluxe super gold platinum encrusted with silver, delivered to your door by Naomi Watts edition comes out.