I am not a fan of movies now a days either, but let's be clear. Those 10 movies alone brought in $8,284,225,852. Yes, that is $8.2 BILLION. I don't think they are going to be changing their approach anytime soon. Inside Out 2 made $1.6 Billion by itself and only had a budget of $200 Million. That is a whopping $1.4 Billion profit!!! Say what you want about Hollywood and "Woke" Disney, but that is a lot of money. It is not the $100B a year in profit that Apple makes, but $1.4B is still a lot on just one film. Again, I am not supportive of the current trend in movies, just stating facts.
This is a fact: That's not how profit works.
Firstly, that box office is gross returns, which must be split with the theater. This is different for every region. Rule of thumb is roughly 45% for a major hit in many regions.
That takes it to 880 million
Now, you need to take the budget itself, which is 200 million
That takes it to 680 million
Now the marketing budget. this is not included in development budgets and is intentionally kept quiet (hollywood accounting). Rule of thumb for major releases: usually close to the budget itself. There goes another $150 million, to be charitable.
That takes it to $530 million in profit. Not all of which stays with Pixar/Disney, you need to pay for your investors who funded the project's debt, they expect a return. These contracts are not public, for a guaranteed hit like this they'd want an average return, but that could be anywhere from 10-50% of the movie. We have no idea of knowing.
Still a very profitable movie for Disney, but it's not a $1.4 billion dollar profit. Not even close. When you consider the absolute stinkers Disney has been releasing lately, any and all profit from this film disappears. Mufasa is a great example, despite making 50% more then it's budget at the box office, as it stands right now, disney has LOST money on that film. $327 million at time of writing on a $200 million budget means that, after just box office cuts and marketing, means disney's gross take home is $179 million on a $400 million marketing and development budget. So there goes $220 million of the $550 million Inside Out 2 made.
And the more disney embraces wokeness in its products, the more stinkers it will produce (they lost hundreds of millions on multiple failed marvel products and captian america 4 is gonna be a nuke of a loss). Let us not forget, Pixar's turning Red and Lightyear both lost money, lightyear was a particularly nasty loss. Elemental BARELY "broke even", if you dont count the marketing budget nor the far higher box office cuts overseas theaters get. So that $550 million "profit" gets totally eaten up by the repeated previous losses.
This is not a healthy business.
Wikipedia Highest-grossing films:
Rank Title Worldwide-Gross Year
1 Avatar $2,923,706,026 2009
2 Avengers: Endgame $2,797,501,328 2019
3 Avatar: The Way of Water $2,320,250,281 2022
4 Titanic $2,257,844,554 1997
5 Star Wars: The Force Awakens $2,068,223,624 2015
6 Avengers: Infinity War $2,048,359,754 2018
7 Spider-Man: No Way Home $1,922,598,800 2021
8 Inside Out 2 $1,698,772,985 2024
9 Jurassic World $1,671,537,444 2015
10 The Lion King $1,656,943,394 2019
As already discussed, Inside Out 2 after costs is only making up for some of the previous failures of Pixar. (lightyear lost over $300 million on it's $226 million box office alone). Star wars is a nice addendum. They made a great profit on that film.
$2.06 billion box office.
$1.133 billion after cut
But what about costs? Well, originally, the film has a $250 million budget, then it was $300 million, and today, Wikipedia claims it is actually 456 million, but the source they cite ACTUALLY claims $533 million. this does NOT include marketing, which was figured as more then the movie's initial budget. Yeah, suddenly that $2 billion box office doesnt sound so impressive, right?
With a budget of $533.2 million, 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' has become the most expensive movie ever made.
www.forbes.com
And then you look at Solo: a slow blow story, which disney claims they "lost" 68 million on. BS. ACTUAL costs put it closer to $400 million, but much like episode VII, these costs have continued to increase and are still being written off today. So the losses are likely even higher. Once you put those numbers together, it looks incredibly likely that Solo totally wiped out the profits from VII, VIII's profits are vanishingly small, and IX likely lost money due to insane reshoot budgets that eclipsed the initial budget combined with a disappointing $1b box office.
The reality of hollywood's incestuous accounting practices and insane ballooning development costs mean these big box office hits are not very impressive in context. Like Venom: the last dance. Oh yeah, it brought in 476 million, but remember Madam Web earlier this year? That likely lost over $100 million, that was also Sony Pictures, so make sure you take that out of whatever meager profits Venom managed. On their own? Yeah great. But IRL, when you calculate costs and consider the heavy losses on other projects these studios make? Yeah no, there's a reason so many believe hollywood is a money laundering operation these days.
EDIT: dont forget higher ticket prices. Yeah, these films can gross over $1 billion, but that's significantly less impressive then when a film broke $1 billion 10 years ago. Ticket prices have surges, like everything else, post Red Lung, and actual ticket sales are still way down from pre disease levels.
Also, those top 10 grossing movies do not count inflation (this is why you are not supposed to use wikipedia as a source, children!). Titanic brought in 2.257 billion in 1997; adjusted for inflation, brought in $4.436 BILLION. The original Star Wars brought in an adjusted over $3.5 billion. Avatar brought in $600 million more then Avatar 2, in 2009 dollars, or $4.264 billion total adjusted compared to avatar 2's $2.3 billion. Just for frame of reference, these new movie box offices are not as impressive as they sound.
