Let's talk BUSINESS: third flop in a row for Disney Marvel?

yeah, that's basically a good summary of the broad revenue split as i understand it. and that china figure jibes with what i've heard before.

i could imagine it might be the case that, with major studios having their own streaming services, they may have used that as leverage to tighten the screws even more on exhibitors.

i definitely think it's a bit too simplistic to say that shang-chi, for eg, pulled in 420m or whatever, and disney only got 1/2 of that. given that it hasn't and likely won't play in china, and that disney certainly got a majority of the north american revenue, they almost certainly retained more than half. i don't know what kind of deals they have with theatres throughout europe and asia. it's likely a patchwork, perhaps. it's possible the deals they have in the uk or france might be even more favourable to them. i really don't know, but it seems possible.

regardless, i suspect it's far more complex than 'these movies cost $300-$400m, therefore they're all flops.'

& it's probably also worth mentioning that it's pretty common for movies to lose money.

my understanding (and again it's been a while since i dove into this topic, so i don't want to pin myself to these figures) is that basically 50-60% of released movies never get out of the red, some 20-30% get into a zone where they vaguely break even, and about 5-10% make serious money, and it's those money makers that keep the industry solvent.

the book publishing industry functions in a very similar way, where most published works never come close to making the publisher any money, and everything they do is kept going by the 5% of books they publish that sell 100s of thousands or millions of copies.

the smart person will say 'then just publish successful things!'

we are blessed to have those people with that kind of nostradamus-like ability. funny that they spend all their time on message boards and not actually producing the things that will make millions for everyone.