Oh my! Who could see this coming?!
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To add to the other three who already answered, I think the movies now aren't so important for raw revenue; we're seeing a shift in their function from being the product, to being the face of the product, so to speak, with profits from revenue just becoming gravy for something else. There's a word for it, I'm sure, but I can't think of what it is at the moment.
Money laundering?
Seems to me most of international business is basically just a bunch of legal money laundering, so yeah, that's what happening to the money itself, but I'm looking for a word that refers to how the films are being used - their changing function as a form of propaganda (at least it used to be expected to make money and entertain people. Now they're more like ... PSAs, "Duck and Cover" or those Donald Duck wartime shorts. Or Triumph of the Will, for that matter. Doesn't matter if they make money, that's not their purpose. Hell, they're barely even caring about "entertaining".
Loss leader might be the term you're looking for. Something you sell below profit margins because it gets people through the door and puts their eyes on the products you make your actual revenue from.
Yes, but with the shadings of deliberate political manipulation of the audience, rather than "just" the commercial aspect that "loss leader" implies.
Almost like a "glamour" in the original sense, but then, hollywood was always about .. "glamour".
"MERCHANDISING! Where the real money from the movie is made." -Spaceballs
Yes, only now the merchandise is really an ideology, that just comes with the movies and the toys as a sub-sub-layer.
The complete irony of that is, it was Star Wars that first touched off the phenomenon of "merchandising" to begin with. Before that movie, there weren't really much in the way of toy tie-ins with other media, beyond lunchboxes and Flintstone Vitamins and oddball stuff like that.
But Star Wars? They were selling light sabres and 'droid toys before the movie even came out/came to certain cities, ffs. Coca-Cola had one of the first "look under the cap liner and collect" contests, with the old glass bottles. It was nuts, right through having kiddie merch for movies we weren't allowed to see because we were too young, like Alien.
It was almost like the Droids and lightsabres were designed to be toys. Hrm. :P (And I remember hearing a theory, long ago, that the story was really meant to be about the droids; after all, they're the first ones we see, and follow.)