All of the headlines suggest The Little Mermaid is a huge hit, but this isn’t remotely true.
The 2019 Lion King remake made $191 million domestic on opening weekend.
The TLM remake made $118 million domestic on opening weekend.
The Lion King finished at $1.6 billion with two thirds of that being international.
The Little Mermaid only took in $68 million international on opening weekend.
Napkin math says Mermaid will make $350ish million total domestic. If international percentage holds, that’s only another $200ish million.
Projected total? $550 million. On a $250 million budget, that’s a gigantic flop.
2x cost is the basic 'ok break even' accepted number, cause whatever the budget of the film is, they spent on advertising too, as a general rule
Exceptions:
But the theatres take a cut of ticket sales too. So it's actually a bit more than that. But this changes based on dates, and it can be 0 in the first weeks if the movie is a guarenteed hit, and they just want people in the door to sell popcorn to. Star wars I for example, if you own a theatre you needed that film to be showing, even if you were to earn nothing from sales. Easier to just ignore the varying theatre's cut as a result, just round down to 2x.
Speaking of star wars, you also then have knock-on effects when it comes to specific franchises and series and merchendise. Look at how VIII affected future projects, even if it technically met the 2x threshold, how did it then affect future projects and merchandising? So you sometimes need to look at the next film to consider it a success.
Other exceptions are expected flops and unexpected hits. When your 60k blairewitch project starts going viral, you pump a few million into marketing, or if you've got an absolute stinker finished, just dump it to recoup something, market budget gets cut in these cases sometimes.
So there are a few ways to look at it. But the rule of thumb is '2x budget', because you need to consider the marketing budget also, that's the basic number, if you ignore franchises and merchandise and films that defy expectations.
I wonder how much they save on marketing by race-baiting fans and critics to stir up press?
I'm skeptical that there would be much return on that strategy. Leftists tend not to patronize the stuff they destroy. Maybe the buzz it creates would help but I don't imagine it helps much.
While they probably could save on marketing through that method, the sheer amount of promotions and ads everywhere says they don't hold back regardless of controversy stirring.