Ignoring artistic merit for the moment, let’s look at movies strictly from the financial point of view. From what I can tell (and I’m no accountant), your best ROI (return on investment) is low budget. That seems to make intuitive sense and you have to wonder what thinking is behind the big budget movies.
I love going over the box office listings on this page (Box Office Mojo) not because I care about things like top ten movies but because I like looking at the estimated budgets and weeks on the chart relative to what they’ve made. On the current listing (which changes every week, of course) I can see three movies with budgets of $200 million or more. One of them, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, had a budget of $250 million and has earned $301,948,049 after 21 weeks. (This ignores ancillary products like books, toys etc., and also ignores DVDs etc. It is strictly the movie as it performs in theatres.)
Harry has made about $50 million more than its budget. Now let’s look at two other movies.
The Blind Side has currently earned $128,867,559 after 3 weeks. It had a budget of $29 million. So it has earned almost $100 million over its budget and after only 3 weeks. Then there is the other one we keep hearing about, The Twilight Saga: New Moon. It has earned $255,363,052, also after 3 weeks. That’s more than $200 million more than its budget and again after only 3 weeks.
After 5 weeks the movie Precious has made $36,252,012 having been made with a budget of $10 million. After just 2 weeks the movie Old Dogs as made $33,924,385 from a budget of $35 million. Anything further it makes is essentially money beyond its budget cost.
Lastly, look at two of the most costly movies (both pegged at budgets of $200 million). After 5 weeks A Christmas Carol has earned $115,249,331, falling short of budget so far by roughly $85 million. After 4 weeks the movie 2012 has made $148,958,486, about $50 million less than its budget.
From an investor’s point of view, what movies would you want to have your money in? Which ones have the best ROI?
As mentioned, none of this includes all the ancillary material. You can be sure Harry Potter and 2012 are games, or will be, and there are DVDs and so on. But you would have to be sure you get a percent of those revenues before investing. Movies appear to have the best ROI when the budget is low (and that makes sense) but to repeat, why then would studios spend $200 million on something? Even when they make money the ROI ratio isn’t great by comparison. (It has to relate to the franchise aspect, meaning all the other products that spin off from it.)
To a large extent the movies that get made are based on numbers, at least as far as Hollywood goes. Did anyone need to see yet another inspiring sports story? You would not think so since they seem to get made with a regularity that makes my bowels envious. As it turns out, we did want to see another inspiring sports story. The numbers indicate that.
Yes, I know. There is a heck of a lot more to the financial end of movies and public taste and so on. Still, looking at earnings relative to box office and weeks in the market makes a fascinating study. However, what I would really like to see is the budgets relative to everything a movie makes in return – all in, as car dealers like to say.
The other thing that intrigues me is the marketing budget relative to overall budget for individual movies. Why do we hear so much about movie A before, and sometimes after, its release date and far less, if anything, about movie B? I’d like to see a kind of comparative chart on this.
Currently, I seem to be taken up with the Dirty Harry movies (the 1970’s). I’ve recently watched the first three (Dirty Harry, Magnum Force and The Enforcer) and soon will see the last two (Sudden Impact and The Dead Pool). On Saturday I watched Dirty Harry (1971) again and 
