With the release of Batman v. Superman, talk of box office grosses and the numbers needed to turn a profit have been flying fast and furious around here. How much does a film like that really need to make in order to be in the black? For the past 3 years, Deadline Hollywood has been taking a closer look at the total grosses and costs of the major money earners and ranking them on a yearly "Most Valuable Blockbuster" list.
Starting with the box office broken into "Domestic", "Foreign" and "China" totals, they then determine how much of that money actually came back to the studios in Theatrical Rental gross. Next they add in Home Entertainment grosses for both Domestic and International, and then Television as well as any other revenues. From that Total Gross Revenue they subtract the production costs, releasing costs (foreign and domestic), home entertainment costs, interest, residuals, particiaption, overhead and distribution fees to come up with a final number representing the total profit earned by the film.
The the current countdown of 2015's biggest blockbusters has reached the next big Superhero blockbuster, Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron, which ranked 4th with total profits of $382.3m, just ahead of Furious 7's $354m.
Looking at the major numbers:
Global Box Office: $1405.4m
Total Revenue (Box Office share, Domestic video and Television earnings): $1042.2m
Total Costs: $659.9m
Studio Net Profit: $382.3m
(Be sure to check out the source for the full breakdown of the numbers)
A monster amount, but not enough to claim the top Superhero spot on their charts since Deadline started their yearly tournaments. Despite outgrossing Iron Man 3 by about $190m at the global box office, in the end the total profit brought in by the direct Avengers sequel wasn't quite enough to overtake the solo hero's biggest entry in the profits department. The biggest reason likely being the rising production costs, as well as an estimated $100m in payouts to talent involved.
Here are how the most profitable Comic Book Movies have done in total estimated profits since Deadline began their yearly list with the 2013 releases:
Iron Man 3 - $391.8m
Avengers Age of Ultron - $382.3m
Guardians of the Galaxy - $204.2m
Big Hero 6 - $187.3m
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - $166.2m
Thor The Dark World - $139.4m
Ant-Man - $103.9m
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - $81.31m
X-men Days of Future Past - $77.4m
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - $70.4m
Man of Steel - $42.7m
Where will this year's entries like Deadpool, Batman v. Superman, Captain America Civil War, and X-men Apocalypse land on the chart? We'll have to wait until next year for all of the factors to be counted.