Avisible Man
S/N: 52093850
@Avisible Man with you following the charts like you have, what's your take on the Black Adam fiasco?
You think it really needed to make 600M to break even?
Black Adam needing $600M to break even would mean that it grossed 3x it's $200M production budget. The general rule of thumb is that a movie needs 2.5x its production budget to break even. There's some people who argue for 2x the production budget. These rules take into account the production and marketing budgets to determine profitability.
So, going by the 2.5x rule, Black Adam needed $500M worldwide to break even. It's made $390M worldwide, which is 22% shy of the number needed.
Going by the 2x rule, it would still be just shy of breaking even. It's $390M would be 2.5% shy of the necessary $400M gross.
If you look at the domestic and international revenue splits, you get a good estimate of the distributor's take. Some people go by the 50% rule for domestic take; some go by the 60% rule. I've usually seen the 50% rule as the general rule of the thumb. The distributor (WB) takes 40% of the international gross, typically. I believe it's always 25% of the Chinese gross, where The Rock is big, but not applicable, in this case.
Black Adam's $167.7M domestic gross would mean $83.86M revenue for WB, by the 50% rule. It's $222.3M international take results in $88.92M in revenue. Add them together and you get $172.78M in revenue. That's 86.4% of the $200M production budget. It would still be shy of breaking even if you went with the 60% domestic take, which would result in revenue of $189.54M and be 94.8% of the way there.
Black Adam is like an Incredible Hulk level "miss." Incredible Hulk made back 87% of it's budget at the box office. It's right there with Eternals making back 86.8% of it's budget from the box office.
It's a theatrical "miss" in that sense but not a total disaster.