It's Official - Prometheus will make a profit

Domestic being the UK right?...

wouldn't CREATIVE ACCOUNTING ensure that a profit was never made? ;)

Drake, Why do you keep banging the drum of doom for this film? Seriously, dude!! What's up with that? Seriously, you're comparing the returns of Prometheus (again, an R rated film) to Avengers -- a film with a built in, mass appeal audience, and a PG-13 rating? I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out that it was a given Avengers would beat Prometheus's returns. And it's very rare that ANY film is as successful as Avengers has been. Again, the studio has probably set expectations that are reasonable. They know, going in, that an R-rated film is not going to top a G or comic book movie with mass appeal. At least I would hope they would be competent enough to know that. Anyway, the boxofficemojo.com site, claims the Prometheus budget at $130 million. There are many other films that have done FAR worse! Take Dark Shadows (please!) -- that had a budget of $150 mil and tanked and it was a hallowed TIM BURTON/Johnny Depp film!! Battleship cost $209 mil...it tanked too!! I might add neither of those had R ratings. Additionally, neither Rock of Ages or the new Adam Sandler film were able to make more money and, as a result, Prometheus has held it's own in the box office standings. Even thought it dropped to #4 in the US, it's still in the top ten. For an R rated film out this long, thats an achievement! So compared to other films with high expectations, Prometheus has done very very well!! ALIEN and Blade Runner were not mega hits at the box office either I might add.

@PrivateHudson I am not "banging the drum of doom" for the film in the least. What I am doing, is discussing the numbers. When you talk about things like these you need to be able to forget about the movie and just focus on expenditures verses profits. The fact that Prometheus is rated R has nothing to do with if the studio will think it is a success. The executives care about profits and filling their wallets, they don't care about the circumstances or excuses. They spent X on the marketing campaign and production of the film so they expect Y in return. If the Y they get is not much larger than X then the film is not a huge success. If I put money into a project and everyone swears up and down that it is going to be a huge hit and then it comes back with meager profits I will not care about the circumstances, I just want my money. That is how the movie industry works, the people funding these projects are not fanboys and could care less about the content of the film, they are businessmen who expect solid returns on their investment. And as for Dark Shadows, you keep ignoring the fact that Prometheus had a much costlier MARKETING budget (which is often times more than the production budget for films with such a huge marketing and viral campaign) than Dark Shadows OR Battleship. Its ranking does not matter in the least as the people who fund these films cannot buy a new yacht or house with the film's ranking.

Right?

@Drakeequation Marketing costs for movies have gone up over time, but the average for movies these days, is ~ 50% of the production budget. For "Prometheus" that works out to something between 60 and 65 million. "John Carter" had a production budget of 250 miiion, and they spent 100 million for marketing. Where are the hard numbers to support your claim that the marketing budget of this movie was actually greater than its' production costs?

Domestically in the U.S. - Madagascar 3, MIB 3 and Snow White and the Huntsman have all done more then Prometheus by a sizable margin. Also, Brave just in its opening weekend did 2/3's of Prometheus' total box-office. Therefore i also fail to see how someone can say Prometheus is so successful. The true test for Prometheus would be if it opened now in late June or July would it have made even close to the same amount of $$$. I really doubt it. If it went head to head vs. Dark Knight Rises it would get its a$$ kicked big time. Heck it couldn't even beat Madagascar 3.

LOL i wonder if Charlize Theron knew Snow White would make more then Prometheus.

Just a little info that may shed some light on Scott and a sequel. I was watching the featurettes on the making of Matchstick Men yesterday and Scott was then working on his Tripoli project. He said that there was going to be a 7 month prep on Tripoli and that he would only be working hard on a 7 month prep for maybe 2 months. So he decided he wanted to do something in the 5 months before they started shooting. This turned out to be Matchstick Men. Now I'm not sure if the Tripoli project being cancelled gave them more time to shoot Matchstick Men but obviously Scott thought he would be able to finish the main work on the film before he started Tripoli. I'm not sure but The Couselor seems to me more like a Matchstick Men type film in terms of how long it will take to make rather than being a film like Kingdom of Heaven or Prometheus where there's much more to be done. Just some food for thought.

Moviefan -- Snow White has NOT made more money than Prometheus. Not in the US anyway...and I would say the same is true in the UK since it was the number one movie there for a long time! Here's the tally as it stands now: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/daily/chart/

PrivateHudson- According to imdb.com, Snow White has made more then Prometheus in the U.S. http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/ Snow White: $137M Prometheus: $108M Yes Snow White has been out four weeks and Prometheus three but with that wide a margin ($29M) i'm confident Snow White will stay ahead in total box office.

PrivateHudson- Even in the link you provided it shows Snow White ahead. Look at the purple numbers under each title. Snow White's is higher.

Well, if you want sequel, it should reach at least 500-600 mil gross. Let's hope it can.

Well, to date "Prometheus" has made about $268 million. With the film yet to be released in Germany and Japan. After a quick look at the box office standings/takes in those countries for other recent releases I'd say that by the end of it's run the film stand a good chance of reaching $300 million in ticket sales prior to it being released via cable/internet/DVD/Blu-ray. Over at the Box Office Mojo site I was looking at an older link on the "summary" page for "Prometheus". While I don't think that the film is without flaws I do think that the write of the article hit the nail on the head about the overall positive response to the film. The bottom line is that "Prometheus" was an R rated film released in early summer. The only other recent "serious" minded action film that I can recall coming out in the summer was "Inception" and that was rated PG-13. In my mind I think that "Prometheus" has delievered enough both on screen and at the box office to make it very possible that the franchise will see another film more in the vein of "Prometheus" and less in the vein of "AVP". Those who enjoyed "Prometheus" can only hope that that is the case. [url=http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3461&p=.htm]http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3461&p=.htm[/url] "While it had to settle for second place, Prometheus still earned an impressive $51.05 million in its opening weekend. That's off from Inception's $62.8 million, though it's a significant improvement over Super 8's $35.5 million from the same weekend last year. It's the second-highest opening of director Ridley Scott's career behind 2001's Hannibal ($58 million), and it's also a new record for the Alien franchise ahead of Alien Vs. Predator's $38.3 million (though ticket sales were about on par with that entry). Prometheus's debut ranks 10th all-time among R-rated movies, and among action-oriented ones it was behind The Matrix Reloaded ($91.8 million), 300 ($70.9 million) and Watchmen ($55.2 million). This may not be the monumental opening many were hoping for, but by pretty much any measure it's an unqualified success. Dark, "original," R-rated sci-fi movies are a tough sell, and on paper Prometheus resembled recent duds Pandorum and Sunshine (total of $10.3 million and $3.7 million, respectively). Of course, Prometheus was a big-budget Ridley Scott movie getting a nationwide release from a major studio, so it was always going to be significantly bigger than those titles, but to get this high is really a tribute to 20th Century Fox's incredible marketing effort. When the attention-grabbing teaser trailer landed in December the movie immediately shot to the top of many must-see lists, and future material (including some cool viral videos) was equally enticing. Also, for most of the campaign there wasn't an explicit connection made to Alien, which made the movie feel like a must-see original movie event. The audience was 57 percent male and 64 percent 25 year of age and older. 3D accounted for 54 percent of ticket sales, while IMAX contributed 18 percent (nearly all of which is included within that 3D figure). While this is a great start for Prometheus, its ultimate success really comes to down to whether or not it holds up in the coming weeks. Without a CinemaScore available, and with a steep 25 percent drop from Friday-to-Saturday, the movie's long-term prospects are highly questionable. Sometimes discussion-ready movies develop must-see word-of-mouth (here's looking at you, Inception), but if the movie is frustrating enough (which anecdotally seems to be the case for some people with Prometheus) that doesn't necessarily happen. "

Prometheus entered profitability before it hit 260 million. This is because its box office was heavily front loaded, and movies keep 90-100% of their box office in the first week of release, before dropping to 80-90% in the second weekend. I don't remember the dates, but I believe it made back it's budget in the first 7-10 days. Not uncommon (if a film is a hit) for it to enter profit in its first week, if not first weekend. This is why studios push for big openings. As far as marketing costs and how they count against a film, that's a nebulous affair that involves a maze of marketing firms the studios setup for some very clever Hollywood Accounting.

[u]Roeschdale[/u]: I'd be interested to know more about exactly how the box office take is being divvied up between Fox and the theaters. Given that Fox is paying for the advertising for the film it makes sense that they get a disproportionate percentage of the box office take during the first week of the film's release. My understanding is that the theaters make most of their money on the overpriced concessions they sell theatergoers. Well, "Prometheus" is now up to $284 million and counting. I'd say that it's looking as though the film will easily tally up at least $325 million in box office sales before it leaves theaters.

The theatres make their money on concessions and in-theatre advertising (I'd forgotten how bad this is as I only go to The Arclight nowadays, so I was shocked when I ventured into a Regal Cinema during LAFF a week or so ago, and had to endure advertising). In the later weeks of a films release (week 5 and onward) theatres take a much larger share of ticket sales. 50% and up. Movies are devoured so quickly nowadays, that it is important to get as many butts in chairs as possible during that first 2-3 week window when the studio takes 80-90% (and in the case of tent pole films, even more) of box office. North American box office is still important, but nowhere near as important as it used to be. With the mass development of theatre chains in China and Russia, the game has changed in a big way. I believe almost every major release this year was released overseas *before* North America. Prometheus had taken in around 90 million overseas (I believe?), in the week leading up to opening weekend in North America. The 3 day take in North America was 50 million +. The studio takes almost all of this money, as well as all monies from Monday-Thursday leading into the second weekend. In some cases the studios second weekend take drops around 10%, in others (big films) it stays the same. The studio, in its wildest fantasy, *might* have been deluded enough to believe this film could earn 500 million. But even they know that's crazy for an R rated film with complex subject matter. So the more realistic *wildest* dream would have been around 400 million. Though I LOVE the film, the first thing I said after I saw it was, "American's are not going to embrace this." While it seems that's proved somewhat true, I am really happy this film will pass 300 million. So to recap, the general rule of a 100 million dollar film needing to make 200 million just to break even isn't always true. And in a way it goes back to an age when there weren't so many theatres, things weren't consumed so quickly, and films would play forever and ever. A 100 million dollar film can make back its production budget in its worldwide opening weekend.

The film is now at $284 million. But this article shows the amount of marketing that took place http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ridley-scott-prometheus-UK-Secret-Cinema-344150 [url=http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ridley-scott-prometheus-UK-Secret-Cinema-344150]Secret Cinema[/url]

Looks good...Prometheus will have zero problems passing the 300 mill mark.

If the studio was really making profitability the major issue, it would not have been R rated.