It's certainly possible this is a case of Hollywood Accounting, but is there any particular reason we think it is, vs just a film losing a lot of money normally?
This thing bombed everywhere. People with existing subscriptions watching it doesn't make it any. More profitable to Warner Bros
And people with existing subscriptions don’t matter, because Warner Bros isn’t getting subscription money directly, they’re getting money from deals with subscription services.
Edit: HBO is owned by Warner. So even if they don’t do accounting such that HBO pays Warner but just track subscription revenue directly, it still doesn’t matter. Retaining subscribers is hugely important, not just getting brand new subscriptions. It does make it a lot harder to compare box office receipts though.
By this logic, platforms will never need new content ever in order to keep existing subscribers happy.
It's not just new subscriptions, it's also retention: do people stay subscribed to platform X because movies like The Matrix Resurrections are on the platform?
It'd be rather hard to measure for a single film, it's the aggregate of platform content that dictates retention, I would think.
If the answer is yes, then the platforms will continue to pay companies like WB to film "box office bombs".
Nevermind that they are the same company.
From HBO's perspective, they also benefit from having a 'blockbuster' in their catalogue since it signals to potential subscribers that they're a platform you can expect to view high-budget movies.
My impression is that this sort of deal -- where the production arm may well shop around a product to different networks/services, even if the parent company actually owns one -- is becoming less common as nearly everyone's starting their own streaming service, but AFAIK it still happens, particularly for movies.
Matrix was viewed about 3 million times in its opening week. Assuming it doubles that over the first month, that’d be 6M * 7 or an impact value of $42MM. If you want to be generous, multiply again by a number to account for HBO Max’s smaller size compared to Netflix, or to account for Max’s strategic importance to Warner. Either way, the contribution is significant but not enough to make Matrix 4 a hit relative to its budget.
And you can add half of that again for the marketing budget.
General practice amongst the box office geeks is to assume marketing is EQUAL to the production budget for a big blockbuster.
There's a lot of meta- to the film about the process, state of Hollywood, big cinema, giving in to retelling the same story for nostalgia bros, from what I understand. (I am not a critic or terribly deep, just observing)
I mean this clip speaks volumes. That unmistakable look of "Why'd you have to ask me that" as she is presumably self censoring thinking about what she /should/ be saying.
I don't really know much about the industry, or what it take to make a film like this, but $100m is enough to pay 1000 people 100k. Did this film take that many people, that long to make?
I would imagine CGI is reducing a lot of expensive things (like blowing up aircraft, and expensive location shoots).
My SO is a huge The Walking Dead nut. There was a couple seasons (episodes?) that (from the outside) looked more like a vehicle to sell cars (pun intended) than to advance the storyline.
'Memba new coke? Stranger Things did, too!
Sure, go watch ET - there's obvious product placement too - what was it, pizza hut? Pepsi? M&Ms? It's been a while, but it was rarely the McGuffin in the storyline.
Did ET want to call home or did ET use the latest 5g sprint network on ETs new Samsung Flip mobile, exclusively at Sprint stores, everywhere, to call home?
It's so transparent, and then to have the audacity to charge $30 to view this 90-minute product placement informercial.. and yet the masses gobble it up and it's just a feedback loop of "Well, it's working! Let's _double down_ next time!" <Queue the KFC commercial>
I'm probably not up with the times, but I don't really see many actors in that film that would be classed as A-list (although the definition of that is somewhat loose).
I really like Keanu, and he seems like a great guy, but I don't think he getting paid $20 million a film, although his popularity seems on the rise again (but perhaps that is just on Reddit). He was reportedly paid 2.5mil for some of the John Wick films, and you'd have to imagine he is the top paid in this latest matrix film.
Regardless, I have already said I don't know much about the industry, and I haven't even seen the film, so it is all just speculation on my end. However, I'm willing to bet that a significant percentage of the reported spend went to subsidiaries charging healthy margins, which is common in the industry to help cut into the % of profits the studio would have to share with people as part of their contracts.
Just take a look at the credits at the end of a blockbuster movie to see how many specialized skills are required.
From Wikipedia:
> Filming started in February 2020 but was halted the next month by the COVID-19 pandemic. Wachowski toyed with the possibility of shelving the project and leaving the film unfinished, but the cast insisted that she finish it. Filming resumed in August 2020, concluding three months later.
I am happy to admit I don't really know what I am talking about. All my info is either a quick google and some gut feelings around projects. Happy to be told otherwise by someone with experience in the industry, or with references.
In short, a lot of people work a long time on a movie on this scale. The credit roll are the names they have to mention due to contracts or union regulations, but a lot more are involved in various support functions or as sub-contractors.
And of course salary is not the only expense. You need soundstages, workshops, offices, administrative functions. Movie equipment is extremely expensive. Set building can be expensive - for Matrix Reloaded they literally built a two-mile stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere in order to film the car chase scene.
If you need on-location shoots, there is a lot of logistics involved. Transporting a large crew and equipment to some inconvenient location and establishing the necessary infrastructure.
I would have bought 3 tickets to this, but watched it on HBO instead.
They wouldn't -have paid- anything, HBO is owned by Warner too
edit: ...they wouldn't have to have paid anything..
That.
Conversely if they want it to be a windfall for some reason they charge HBO idiotic amounts of money for the distro rights, which HBO will happily pay because Warner tells them to do so.
That's exactly hollywood accounting.
I have no idea if it was actually 'done' to the matrix here.
sorry, yeah I agree, this is a better way of saying that
There's also the matter of "marketing costs" which also help out the parent company.
So, of the $190 million that the movie cost, some of it was raised from WB, but some of it also went back to WB. From the outside it's really hard to say when they come out even.