The box office was apparently like 4x the budget. Are those directly comparable? It seems to me that, even if they aren't making Disney money, a studio ought to be able to keep the lights on if they can reliably quadruple their investments.
A) not all movies break even, most lose money, so the "hits" are needed to keep the lights on. It's not unlike VC investing.
Ironically small movies tend to lose money because they're small, telling small stories, with small ambitions. Ultimately these don't attract much of a cinema audience, and even those who enjoy them won't necessarily encourage others because (B). Streaming is a new, and perfect market for these with a very wide global audience - but making it for streaming takes out all the upside, even further constraining the budget.
There is no "community" (aka audience) already in place for some random new action movie. It costs a fortune to make, and returns are highly variable.
Contrast this with star-*, marvel, James bond, Tolkien etc. There's a pre-established market for these. If your gonna spend North of 100 million (or a billion for LOTR) there better be some expectation there.
Which brings us to (B). B) - why go watch it in a cinema? Growing up my TV was tiny, sound was rubbish, quality was bad. And cinema was cheap. It really was "better on the big screen". Now my TV is huge, sound is amazing, I can pause to go yo the loo. And a month on streaming costs less than a single movie ticket.
Sure there are still movies made for the big screen - Top Gun Maverick is grand in scope and beautifully filmed, and imax worthy. And Tom worked hard for 3 years convincing people to go see it (spoiler: worth the wait.) it's a sequel, barely, not a franchise - but we very much know the movie we are going to see.
The point being that that is the first time I've been to a cinema in 3 years. Before that I've seen maybe one a year, much less an average. I figure 99% of the movies I watch now are at home.
To those complaining about all movies being Marvel, well clearly they aren't. But if you want variety in movies then the cinema is not the place to look. The variety is now on streaming where small movies with modest budgets can better reach a wider shallower audience.
This does work better in art-house cinemas with quiet and invested audience. And people are different, audiences are different and peoples home watching experiences are different. But I can see clearly how the longer I work in cinema the more I prefer watching a movie in big screen instead at home. Even if I just watch it alone in big auditorium. Both for the ritual of taking the time out from other activities and completely focusing on the movie and enjoyment that good camerawork, acting, set-design and sound come better our on the big screen.
Obviously every viewing experience is different. In the end movie watching is experience between the viewer, film and co-audience. I have had many unforgettable evenings with very run down equipment or small screens. But I do feel that in our more and more distracted times cinemas carry a good function to present a film in distraction free setting, with good quality and mood supporting environment.
In addition to the technical quality I have learned to enjoy more and more how much enjoyment it is if someone knowable has made a choices and put together a film program. Like any good curator it brings out options I would never know to look for myself or would not really investigate because of my biases. Sadly it is finically more easy to sustain this kind of program in film festivals not in everyday cinemas.
Tickets are expensive enough to keep me at home, and while watching in a cinema can be fun there are also times it's less so. Some theaters have better seats, others are worse and so on. Ultimately distributing movies via cinema's adds a very high cost to me seeing it. And in 99% of cases I consider that cost untenable.
So, I'm not saying the cinema approach is bad, just that outside of some very narrow places there just isn't the demand enough to keep a cinema open, much less make any kind of dent in the profitability of the movie itself.
Hollywood accounting, which surely inspired The Producers, can obscure a film's real profitability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting