In this episode, Movie Mike covers how major motion pictures actually make money through box office sales, home entertainment and merchandising. He also talks about the difference in how Netflix movies are profitable in the same respect. Mike reviews the new Hulu original movie “Big Time Adolescence” starring Pete Davidson and in movie news he covers all the movies delayed in release and production due to the coronavirus.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome back to Movie Mix Movie Podcast. I
a movie Mike on Twitter and Instagram. Add Mike Destro
and a lot has happened in the world of movies
since the last episode. I got on here last week
and talked about James Bond, which is the first movie
that delayed its release, and since then a bunch of
movies have come out, either delaying production or delaying when
it's gonna come out in theater. So I'm gonna talk
about that. I'm not gonna dwell on at the entire episode.
(00:22):
I did find a way to kind of make this
own interesting episode, even if you're tired of hearing about
the coronavirus, because over the last week we've kind of
been just inundated with it. And I'm not a news podcast,
I'm a movie podcast, So I'm gonna find a way
to tie into movies to where we can still kind
of learn something together and have some fun in here
to just kind of distract us a bit. But it's
really big in the news right now, so it's kind
(00:43):
of hard to avoid it, especially when the box office
hit a twenty year low over the weekend, like they
made around fifty five to fifty six million dollars at
the box office, and that's every single movie in theaters,
which is insane. The lowest has been in twenty years.
And about fifty million dollars is what a typical blockbuster movie.
When a movie does well as the box office, it
(01:03):
makes about fifty million. So you're talking about every single
movie in theaters, including new ones that came out there,
like Movie Still came out over the weekend, but all
combined made fifty five million dollars, which is insane. So
I kind of wanted to look at on this episode
is just how exactly a movie makes money. So when
a movie goes into theaters, all the costs that go
into it, and with the number that gets reported, like
(01:24):
what does that actually mean? Is what I'm gonna be
talking about in this episode. And also, I think a
lot of us right now are gonna be just watching
stuff on Netflix and stuff on Hulu. So I'm also
gonna look at how those movies make money because it's
a little bit different in the fact that don't have
a theatrical release, So I'll talk about that. I also
watched the movie over the weekend with Pete Davidson that
which was brand new on Hulu, so I'll give a
(01:45):
review on that, and then at the very end, I'll
just kind of touched on the coronavirus news of all
the movies getting delayed or pushed back because of it.
So that's what I'm covering on this episode. A lot
to get too, So again, just thank you for checking
out this episode. Again, I'm gonna try to make it
fun and talk about movies. So we're kind of thinking
about that right now. So if you don't mind hitting
(02:06):
that five star rating, or if you're listening on iHeart
Radio or any other podcast app, just hit that subscribe buttons.
You get brand new episodes every single Monday. But without
further ado, let's get into this episode of how movies
actually make money. Here we go in a world where
everyone and their mother has a podcast. One man stands
to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in
(02:28):
a movie podcast. A man with so much movie knowledge,
he's basically like a walking I MTV with glasses from
the Nashville Podcast Network is movie movie podcast. Alright, So
today we're talking about how a movie makes money because
you hear it every single week when a movie does
(02:50):
well at the box office. It's like, oh, they made
a hundred million dollars, this is like the most successful
movie of all time. But there are actually a lot
of costs that go into it. And sometimes it's a
little kind of skewed of how much a movie actually
makes and how much because how much spent to put
in it isn't always out there entirely. They kind of
put production costs out there, but the overall cost of
(03:12):
what it is to make a movie is a lot
more than studios kind of report. A lot goes into
making a movie. So what I did is a bunch
of research on what all the numbers mean and how
much like a typical movie in the box office would make.
So I'm looking at about like a hundred million dollar blockbusters.
So you an average movie probably makes about fifty million,
(03:32):
but when a movie does really well is about a
hundred million dollars at the box office. So I'm going
to kind of break it down of what each step
takes to get there, which there are a bunch of
steps they in costs that are leading up to that
to make it too, even to getting into in the theater.
So so what we have to look at first and
going into the cost of making a movie is the
(03:52):
overall budget. So this has to do with everything from development,
which has to do with getting the final script, the
pre production stuff which is building a team planning to shoot,
the actual production which is shooting the movie, and then
the post production which is the editing, the visual effects,
the sound design, and music. So all this goes in
to this factory of how much it costs to make
a movie. This also includes like the cast and crew wages,
(04:15):
and also like the director and the lead actors. This
is all factored into just the initial budget. And also
what we'll get into later is some of these people
will end up making a certain amount based on how
well the movie does. So say an actor makes a
deal to where like, okay, I'll do this movie for
twenty million dollars, but I also want some of the
box office amount in ticket sales. I want that edit
(04:37):
into my contract. This is also gets factored into this budget.
Or say like a big time director wants to take
on a project, but he's only willing to do it
for this amount of money, and then this the profits
That is where this also gets factored into, and budgets
have just been getting bigger and bigger over the years.
So what I'm just looking at in this episode, I'll
kind of base all the numbers on a typical movie
(04:57):
that makes about a hundred million dollars at the box office,
which is considered like a big, you know, summer blockbuster hits.
So it's something like Jurassic World took a hundred and
fifty million dollars to make, is what they reported. But
when you actually look at the numbers, they end up
spending about about twelve more than they actually report. So
if they say it costs a hundred and fifty million
(05:18):
dollars to make, they actually probably spend about nineteen million more,
and they kind of just factored in other ways, and
they don't really want to put that number out there
that way, Whenever the box office numbers come out, they
look higher and it looks like they actually made more
of a profit then probably they actually did. And then
there are a bunch of other costs and making a
movie that you don't really think about. So all of
(05:39):
this just leads into how much it costs to get
the movie made. So that hundred and fifty million dollars
that they report, which is actually more like a hundred
and sixty nine is actually a lot more when it
comes to all the other costs of making a movie.
So now when you get into is the other cost
of making a movie. So this is even before a
movie is making money yet. So this is all in
(06:00):
the hole so far. So you have your movie shot,
you have your either your hour and a half, your
two hour movie. It's ready to go. But there are
a bunch of other costs that are get factored into this,
and it's stuff we don't really think about it because
we just see like, oh, how much of that movie
take to get made, and then how much did you
make it the box office? Like oh wow, that made
so much money. But there's a bunch of other hidden
costs that really go into making a movie successful. And
(06:24):
this includes marketing, which, aside from just how much it
makes takes to make a movie, marketing is probably this
next biggest thing to factor in because once the movie
is made, they gotta sell it. They gotta make posters,
they gotta make trailers, they gotta send out them the
actors to promote the movie. They gotta put commercials on TV,
(06:45):
on radio, they gotta do all this stuff to market
the movie. They gotta make promotional items and stuff out
to TV networks, to radio stations, they make like weird
little stuffs animals to promote the movie in any way
to just build a buzz around the movie and to
get people into the theater and excited about this movie.
And the weird part about this is that actually, like
(07:06):
the bigger the movie, the less they end up spending
on marketing, which you think would be a little bit
different because like a movie like The Avengers, they're gonna
spend less money on advertising than like a brand new
John Cena movie, because a John Cena movie maybe doesn't
have as much of a draw to audiences to get
into the theaters. So The Avengers are kind of good
and like, okay, we can spend a little miss less
(07:28):
money on advertising, and like a John Cena movie he
has a brand new whatever action romcom coming out, they're
going to spend a lot more money putting out the
world of like, oh, here's this John Cena movie. They
want the word to travel and get people into the
seats for that opening weekend, because the opening weekend is
pretty much make your break for like a bunch of
(07:49):
new movies, like whether or not to get a sequel
and whether or not how much they actually make on
that first weekend is really what they're going for. So
all this marketing cost is just driving people to that
opening weekend to get that biggest number possible to put
on paper. So again, looking back at that number, say
a movie took a hundred and fifty million dollars to make,
the average marketing costs would be about a hundred and
(08:11):
twenty one million dollars. So about of the budget is
going to be just straight up marketing the movie and
selling the thing. And overall, when you factor everything else
in besides that, it comes out to be about thirty
percent of the average costs to make in a movie
is just spent on advertising. And then you think, okay,
we have the movie made, we have our advertising, we're
good to go. Right, No, there's still more costs need
(08:33):
to be factored into how much it costs to make
a movie. You have what you call our prints, which
are the physical copies of the movies that they send
to the movie theaters. So back in the day they
would actually send like the thirty five millimeter film. Now
it's a hard drive, so essentially they put the movie
on a really big file and they put it on
this hard drive, and the movie theaters rent out essentially
(08:54):
those hard drives to show their movies in their movie theaters,
and what they're called is digitill cinema prints. There these
d cps, it's pretty much a big hard drive with
a really big file on it, and then it has
this other little tiny file that kind of gives all
the permissions for the hard drive. So this is why
movies really don't get leaked from movie theaters and what
(09:14):
they kind of all set out not to do. So
they have this little file on the hard drive that
tells it essentially when it can even be played at
what time it can be played in different like permissions
on that even like what kind of projector has shown on.
So so the movie theaters get this version, and also
when it goes out to like TV stations or like satellite,
(09:36):
they get a different version of the movie too. But
it's all on this hard drive. So the physical cost
of creating these hard drives and shipping them out to
movie theaters is about sixties seven million dollars, so on
top of all the marketing to make in the movie,
it takes just sixties seven million dollars in addition just
to get that movie to all these theaters worldwide. And
(09:57):
then another factor into what it costs to make a
movie is all the residuals. So what I talked about
earlier is that first of all, you have unions for
cast and crew, which they have set up with the
Hollywood studios, and then you also have here where an
actor will kind of get residuals for their part in
the movie. So sometimes you'll see like actors who they
(10:17):
end up making a lot of more money just based
off of like a movie's longevity over the year. So
like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump initially asked for less
up front and more on the back end, so over
time he's made a lot of money off Forrest Gump
just based on his residuals that he gets every time
the movies played on TV. So an actor could have
a really good pay to if a movie is not
(10:39):
only profitable at the box office, but they also have
these residuals, and also the movie studios like it because
if a movie doesn't do well at the box office,
they don't have to pay up as much. And then
finally factoring the last amount of what it takes to
make a movie is financing costs, which is anything from
like borrowing money from studios to make up movie. Also,
like when you have a movie overseas, you've got to
account for like and see conversions, all that kind of
(11:01):
associated and defiancing costs, and then you just have overheads.
So pretty much studios charge their own productions and overhead
fee which covers like the time of the staff spends
on the project, the cost of the deals to make
the movie. All that kind of stuff is just their
movies overhead all right. So now that's all of the
costs that go into making movie. Let's look at how
actually they turn that around and make a profit off that.
(11:22):
So the biggest income driver for any movie is going
to be that initial theatrical release. That's where they make
really all their money. So, say a movie makes about
a hundred and twenty nine million dollars at the box
office domestically, they go on to make another two hundred
forty three million dollars internationally. You combine that and you
get that gross box office number, which is about three
(11:44):
hundred and seventy three million dollars. So that's kind of
the amount you get here. So that's the amount that
they always kind of report out there like, oh, this
movie made three hundred and seventy three million dollars the
box office this weekend. It's a big hit. But before
they see any of that money, too big costs have
to be deducted from it, which is the sales tax
and what the movie theaters takeaway. So the actual movie
studio will get about fifty of the box office gross
(12:08):
domestically and of the international growth. So you have that
three d and seventy three million dollars or so, like
a big impressive number, but what they actually end up
taking from that is about a hundred and sixty nine
million dollars. And then you got to go in and
remove what it took to market that movie, which for
this example it was about nine million dollars. So then
(12:29):
you're left with about seventy million dollars, a total about
forty of the overall income. That big number that we
saw initially went down and now we're looking at seventy
million dollars. So that is all that plays into the
box office numbers. And then you move on to home entertainment,
which is everything you can do to watch the movie
at home. Essentially, so this same kind of movie will
(12:52):
make an average of a hundred and thirty four million
dollars just on home entertainment. So first of all, that
kind of sounds like it more than it made of
the box office, but there's other costs in here. They
do have to spend some money on advertising here, which
is about another twenty million dollars. And then obviously if
they're making DVDs that they're making Blue rays, that's gonna
cost about another thirty million dollars to make those and
(13:12):
get those shipped out to stores. And this is why
movie studios are kind of hurting that people don't really
buy Blu rays or DVDs as much. They still make
a pretty good amount of money because last year the
number one selling Blu ray was The Avengers Endgame, which
made about sixty nine million dollars, and the number one
selling DVD was Aquaman, which made seventeen million dollars. So
there's still some money to be made here, and they
(13:33):
make some pretty good money back basically because the movie
is already done. It's already made, and they just kind
of have to push it out there with production costs.
But they're able to get a pretty good return on this.
But with the fall of kind of blue rays and DVDs.
Over time, they'll see less and less money, the same
way the music industry is seen less and less on
CD sales. But if you're wondering why, you go to
the store and you still see brand new DVDs, Yes,
(13:55):
people still do buy them. The next way a movie
will make money is on TV. So the average income
for the same kind of movie would be about eighties
six million dollars. And this pretty much has little to
no direct cost of the movie studios because they typically
they charge a distribution fee to whoever is going to
put out the movie, and then it's out there. It's
either on cable or like TV over the year. And
(14:16):
this is kind of why you think sometimes that movies
don't do so well at the box office. They get
on like maybe like a TBS, and you're like, why
this movie isn't that great, But it ends up kind
of making a profit bag because so this is where
maybe a movie that didn't do so well on the
box office kind of gets a second live because maybe
you wouldn't pay money to go see it in theaters.
But if you already have cable and you're scrolling through
(14:37):
and you watch and maybe TBS and you see like
a movie with Will Ferrel that's maybe not his best movie,
but it's there and you watch it, and it's a
way these movie studios still make money on maybe a
flop or a movie that didn't perform as well as
they thought. They can put it on TV and still
get some money back from it. And then you have
video on demand, which is essentially like Amazon, iTunes or
(14:58):
any way you pay for a movie at home, be
a pay per view, and this is kind of where
movies are starting to go more because if you don't
go see a movie in theaters, you can just click
a button and have it in your home. I think
maybe eventually there'll be a wave to have brand new
movies in your house, but if you want to do
that now, it's actually really expensive. There's this thing that
essentially only rich people can have where you pay to
(15:20):
have this box in your house to where you can
have movies streamed into your house before they're even released,
and it costs like two d and fifty dollars, but
it actually costs like two hundred and fifty dollars just
to rent a movie for twenty four hours, and you
have to pay a lot of money just to get
this box in your house. I think it's like twenty
or thirty thousand dollars just to put it in your house.
But until that's available with all of us at a
cheaper price, we kind of have to sit around and
(15:42):
wait until a movie comes to us. And I think
they should have a quicker turnaround time because it's kind
of like if you go see a concert, like say
you go see a new band, you leave there and
you go stream their music when you get home. There's
really not that for movies. If you go see a movie,
you have to wait another six months or so. It's
probably a lot less now, but essentially to watch that
movie at home. How cool would it be just to
(16:03):
be able to go see a movie in theaters and
then be like, oh, I kind of want to see
that again. You take it home right after, or you
wait a bit and you kind of don't have to
go to the theater and you can watch it in
your house. Also, when this is airlines, you can get
on a flight, you hop on there, you hit a
touch screen, and you can watch a movie on your flight.
And while it's free to us, the airline actually has
to pay to have those movies in there, and they
can make another two point seven million dollars by licensing
(16:26):
out their movies to airlines. And that's pretty easy money
for them because all they had to do is make
a deal, put the movie on the airplane, and their
instant money. And then the final way a movie makes
money is through merchandising. So say a big Hollywood production
something like Star Wars would make an average of another
eleven point five million dollars just in merchandise. But then again,
(16:50):
Star Wars is a bit different because they're kind of
the o G s of movies making money off merchandizing.
And that's kind of why them and Disney pair so
well together right now, because Disney is like so hyper
focused on the merchandizing because essentially their movies are commercials
for their merch. So they put a movie out that's
(17:10):
about ninety minutes of an animated movie. It's a great
feel good story and that's a great Disney classic, but
they see it as a commercial for their their merch.
I mean, they make so much money off toys, off
of it, t shirts, and I mean anything that Disney
can put their characters on is what they're making money off.
Of and this is really big for them when it
(17:32):
comes to like The Avengers or anything like Pixarre and
then even I mean maybe not right now in the
world of today, but Disney World and Disneyland, those attractions
are based on the movie. So as long as they're
turning out new movies, putting out new stories, new characters,
they get more people into the parks, and they're selling
merch They're selling tickets to their their parks. So merchandizing
(17:56):
is huge for Disney. For some of the other movies,
it's not as big. Um looking at just the average
of what other movies will make off of this is
about one million dollars, which is still pretty good. But
if you don't have anything attached to like a toy
line or um like any kind of collectibles from a movie,
you get less merched. People aren't really gonna buy a
(18:16):
t shirt for a movie, but when it comes to
animated movies, man, they can really crush it here. And
the weird thing about when they put out the first
Star Wars movie as is that the toys weren't ready
by the time the movie came out, which is kind
of what's happening now with Babe Yoda um with the
Mandalorian coming out last year, but Baby Yoda still hasn't shipped.
So Star Wars is kind of creates a buzz over
(18:38):
their merchandizing and they make a lot of money. And
like back in the day, those toys just flew off
the shelves, making them a lot of money. And they
kind of saw a correlation between the toys coming out
with the movies and how much money they would make
off the toys, because when there was the years that
they didn't put out at a new Star Wars, they
were still making toys and they weren't really making any money.
(18:59):
So they were like, George Lucas, please make another movie
because we need to sell these toys. They need to
have kids go to the theaters and see like, oh,
I remember that character. I love that character. I want
to go home later and go to a store and
have my parents buy me that character. So these movies
are really just the vehicles to kind of pushed towards
this merchandise, and a movie studio like Disney really can
(19:24):
really just clean up here. So that is essentially how
a movie makes money, all the costs that go into it.
All right, So I'm gonna talk about now how a
Netflix movie makes money. So you're probably wonder when they
put out these movies with like Will Smith and Mark Wahlberg, like,
what is it a benefit to them? So last year
(19:47):
The Irishman, which was the Martin scorsesey movie that ended
up being nominated for Best Picture. That costs Netflix like
the most they've ever spent on a movie at one
and fifty nine million dollars to make that, and they
claim that's twenty six allion people watch that in their homes.
But you wonder what's the profit there, because nobody really
hoped to Netflix just to watch that movie. If you
(20:10):
already have a subscription, what difference is that if you
cook play on it or not. So really, what Netflix
cares about is how many subscribers they have. That's how
they make money. You pay a monthly fee and you're
able to watch anything on their service, and that's essentially
how they make money. That's what they care about. The
benefit to movie studios and filmmakers to Netflix is that
(20:33):
there's really no worry. There's a lot less like anticipation
when it comes to They don't have to meet box
office numbers, they don't have to meet like critics. They
don't care what people say. Once the movie comes out.
There's a lot less of that because once a movie
gets put on Netflix, it's out there. The deal is done.
How a Netflix movie works is they essentially make the deal.
(20:53):
They have this algorithm that determines how much they should
spend on creating original content, and then they based that
around how much they will pay for a movie to
get put on their service. Because Netflix distributes the movie
and then the movie studios, they don't have to worry
about distribution. They don't have to worry about even like advertising,
all that stuff I talked about earlier. None of those
(21:14):
returns matter for a Netflix movie. Once they paid for
the movie, it's there. That's it. They got their paycheck.
They're good. So that's essentially how Netflix movies get made.
They make the film, they get a check, that's it.
That's simple. And what Netflix does to kind of make
money off of this is they rely on the word
of mouth in a way that kind of theaters can't
(21:35):
afford to. Because the movie gets put out on a
certain weekend and then somebody watches it, They tell a
friend to watch it, and they get more people talking
about the movie, and then maybe that in turn brings
more subscribers to their service who come to watch that movie,
and then they see all the other stuff they have
on their so and then essentially they're not coming just
to see that movie like you would in a movie theater.
(21:56):
But once you get somebody there, you hope that they
stick around and end up paying for your service. So
that's kind of how Netflix makes money off of their movies.
So it sounds pretty good. You make a movie, you
get that check, and you're good to go. I think
what I kind of see less of is that Netflix
doesn't really have any franchises, Like there's not like a
part two is being made of a bunch of movies.
They essentially put out one movie and then that's all.
(22:17):
Can you kind of hear about it? So I think
it kind of takes away from franchises a bit, and
also it takes like, while it does take away the
risk for directors and filmmakers, sometimes that risk is good.
One of the highest grossing and most profitable movies ever
was Paranormal Activity. So that movie only costs fifteen thousand
dollars to make. That's it. It's a pretty basic movie.
(22:39):
If you've seen it. It's basically like a lost footage
movie where all this paranormal stuff hence the name, happens
in the house. It was really cheap to make, but
it ended up making a hundred and ninety three million dollars,
so that makes it a really profitable movie. Another movie
like Magic Mike, which cost seven million dollars to make,
ended up making a hundred and sixty seven million dollars,
(23:00):
so again they took us They took a risk putting
these movies out, paying this money, but it was such
a big hit. They had such a big return on that,
which is something you couldn't really get through Netflix because
you get kind of that upfront money, you get paid
for it, but you don't really get anything in return. Again,
it takes away then anticipatient of worrying about how well
(23:21):
it's gonna do, but it also kind of takes away
from this. You can't really have like an unexpected hit
and if it is a highly successful movie. Probably the
most one we would know was Birdcage with Sandra Bullock,
which was a movie Netflix put out that kind of
got everybody talking in the entire country, which was different
for them. They haven't really put out anything on part
of that sense, and in turn they probably got a
(23:43):
lot more subscribers because of that movie, which allowed them
to make other movies than kind of just overall adds
to the big machine that is Netflix. I think really
where they kind of have a space in is like
movies that probably wouldn't get made that they are able
to put out on their service, especially when it comes
to like things like documentaries, lower budget stuff that people
(24:03):
discover on Netflix, and those are really movies and projects
that people kind of talk about a lot. So I
think that's kind of cool to see like a smaller
director get a chance to put out his documentary on Netflix.
Something like in sen there's a documentary called Icarus which
was paid for by Netflix and actually ended up in
theaters and one of the best documentary Oscar back in tweens,
So stuff like that it's cool too. But that just
(24:26):
kind of explains Netflix's model where film producers kind of
can sleep well at night knowing that they're not tied
to these box office earnings and they already get their money,
and then Netflix is cool because hey, we put out
this movie, we know we can cover the cost, we
know how much we paid for it. We have it
only on our service, so it gets more subscribers and
(24:46):
people paying money for our service. So that's kind of
how the whole Netflix model works, all right. Gonna get
into my review now of Big Time Adolescents starring Pete
Davidson Griffin Gluck, who you may know if you watch
the Netflix series called American Van Dole. He was in
that also John Cryer and Machine Gun Kelly. And it
is written and directed by Jason Orley, who this is
(25:07):
his first ever directorial debut, and it's essentially about this
kid who his sister dates Pete Davidson in high school
and he's much younger than them, but he becomes friends
with them, and then even after they break up, they
stay friends. Pete Davidson isn't really the best influence on him.
He parties, he does drugs, he drops out of college,
(25:27):
but they just have this kind of bond because the
kid doesn't have an older brother, so they hang out
all the time. And then his parents kind of don't
really approve of it, and they end up getting into
some pretty big trouble. So I'll get into my review here,
but first here's a bit of big time adolescence. This weekend,
it's you at your party. You think I'm just gonna
(25:47):
walk into a party and everyone's gonna want to buy
pop from me? Call me crazy. So, like I said,
this movie is directed by Jason Orley, who actually had
the idea of maybe back five years ago, and he
knew that he wanted Pete Davidson to play his character
whenever he saw him on the Comedy Central roast of
(26:07):
Justin Bieber and then he was like, that's it, Like
I want Pete Davidson to essentially be this character. So
his characters in the movie is named Zeke and the
younger kid is named Mo. So Pete Davidson's character dated
his sister in high school and this kid didn't really
have any kind of big brother influence that we saw
Pete Davidson and was like, hey, let's start hanging out
(26:29):
even though you and my sister broke up. So Pete
Davidson kind of takes him under his wing, but he's
not really the best influence. He like parties, does drugs um.
After graduating high school, he goes on to college, but
he drops out and he's like working at some random
like applying store, UM. But it's kind of cool to
see the contrast of like a coming of age story
(26:51):
that's told in a different way. What I like about
it is, although Pete Davidson's kind of playing himself, I
like seeing him in a movie and see that character
more because really, I I mean, I'm a fan of
his comedy. I like him on Ut and Nell, but
I really don't get to see him fully kind of
interact with other people because on Us and L it's
essentially a skit and even in the stand up it's
(27:12):
not really the same as seeing him in a movie.
So I enjoyed seeing kind of his personality come out
through this character. But it does kind of feel like, oh,
it's Pete Davidson playing himself. But I think it works.
So again, I won't spoil the movie. If you want
to go watch it, um, if you have a Hulu account,
it's essentially you pay for the subscription and it's free
to watch. I always say it's free, but you're already
paying for it. So what essentially happens is the kid
(27:34):
takes a bunch of advice from Pete Davidson's character on
you know, Getting Girls, how to make friends at school,
but it's not necessarily the best advice because his life,
in turn, hasn't really turned out how he wanted to.
I don't think in the movie Pete Davidson really comes
off as being a bad guy. I just think maybe
he doesn't have it all together and he's just kind
of trying to do the best with what he has.
And I just saw so many parallels in this and
(27:56):
like other people I know growing up, so I kind
of related to it in that sense. So the kid
takes his advice, it doesn't really turn out very well
when it comes to the girls, and then he ends
up trying to make friends with kids his own age
because he's essentially in the movie just hanging out with
Pete Davidson and his friends who are much older, which
was something like I was kind of like in high school.
I didn't really have any high school friends that I
(28:16):
would go hang out with on the weekend, but like
my older brother was seven years older than me, I
like go hang out with him, and I'd be the
youngest one in the crowd. So I kind of felt
the kids in this movie just based on that. And
he tries to make friends in high school, but Pete
Davidson's advice is like, hey, you should probably go sound
drugs at their parties, and you can kind of tell
(28:38):
that that did turn out so well. I thought the
movie was good overall. I thought it was pretty funny.
I laughed out loud a lot. Um, it's a little
more on the raunchy side. Is rated art. There's no
like nudity or anything, but it's a bunch of language
and drug use, so I'd say it's on the same
scale and maybe like a super bad four year old
virgin when it comes to the R rating. So if
that kind of takes you away from watching a movie
(28:58):
like this, maybe not for you, but if it needs
something that's kind of a raunchier comedy in a way,
not I wouldn't say it's super raunchy, but it's a
little more on that side of those kind of movies.
But I think it's pretty funny. I liked the story.
I found it pretty relatable, and I was had my
attention throughout the entire movie. It's about an hour and
a half, so it's a pretty quick watch too, if
you're looking for something on Hulu, which I think right
(29:20):
now we're kind of I was trying to stay indoors
and not go out a whole lot to the movie theaters.
So it's a good at home watch if you want
something funny, I give it about three point five out
of five homemade tattoos. All Right, gonna get into some
movie dues now. So last week I talked about James
Bond to laying it's really stayed from April ten to
there's November, and since then it just kind of caused
(29:42):
a chain reaction of other movies just to laying either
when the movie will come out or not even saying
when they're gonna put it out now, or movies now
are kind of starting to delay production due to the coronavirus.
But James Bond was the first one to do this,
and the one that kind of was the biggest to
me was A Quiet Place, which is supposed to come
out on March twentie and now the new data is unknown,
(30:03):
but I saw John Krasinski post that he essentially doesn't
think it's the right time to put it out because
it's a movie that he wants everybody to see together,
and with what everything going on in the world, he
doesn't think it's a great environment to put the movie
out right now. And as we saw over the weekend
with his box office numbers being a record low in
twenty years. I think they're making the right move here.
(30:23):
It's kind of hard for me as a movie goer
to see all these movies I was so excited to
see and stuff that was just on my highly anticipated
list for the year just be delayed, and kind of
wondering how that's kind of kind of affect everything. Because
the movie schedules essentially have their slots and they put
them out in certain times of the year based on
a lot of there's a lot of reasoning that goes
(30:45):
into that, and delaying when it comes out. I just
wonder what it's gonna look like later in the year
when you have these other big movies now going up
against other movies. It's really gonna change numbers. And it's
just overall affecting like how people make money for these movies,
and even like the production schedules of stuff coming out
like one or two years later, Like how is that
(31:05):
going to affect stuff down the line. So I'll run
through now the list of just all the movies that
I know so far who have that have got delayed
or just kind of postponed for a bit. It got
My Spy, which is the movie with Batista, went from
March to thirteenth to April seventeen. A Quiet Place Too,
like I talked about, which is supposed to come out
of March twentieth. Now the new data is unknown. As
of now, Disney has delayed Mulan from March to an
(31:28):
unknown date. Peter Rabbit too, moved from April third to
August seven. Love Birds moved from April third to now
being unknown. The other new Marvel movie coming out, The
New Mutants, moved from April third to now a date
unknown um. And then a movie called Antler's moved from
April seventeen to a new unknown date. And another really
big one which was kind of the craziest of as
(31:50):
far as how long they delayed it was the New
Fast in the Furies nine movie moved from May twenty
two of this year to April second of twenty one.
That's a long time to delay that movie. And I
think the reason behind that is it's such a global
movie in that movie not only makes a lot in
the United States, but just has a really big international market.
(32:11):
So I think just with everything going on in the
entire world, they're like, yeah, this is a movie we
just really have to wait out. We can't let this
kind of affect our box office numbers because it's I mean,
as we see it happening right now, it's crazy how
little movies are making right now because movie theaters are
either closing down and where cities it's really bad in
(32:31):
and AMC and Regal have reduced how many tickets they
sell by fifty, so they will only feel like, say
a theater that fits five people, they're only selling two
and fifty tickets to that showing that is I mean,
that's half of people you can even get into theaters,
and that's even less of people actually going in to
field those teats. So even myself, like I was going
(32:52):
to go to the movies this weekend, and I'm like,
maybe I should go, and I know, I come on here,
and I talked about how it's gonna take a lot
for me to you know, kind of not want to
go to the movies, which just even just the way
technology is changing. But I felt like maybe it wasn't
the best idea this weekend. Even looking at the box
office numbers now. The number one movie was Onward, which
I saw last week, and it only made ten million
(33:13):
dollars the entire weekend, which that is like one, I think,
maybe the highest Pixar drop in a very long time
for a movie. And it's all because of this going
on right now. And then you have movies delaying production.
So The Batman, which is I am just super excited
about with Robert Pattinson, that's just pulled off on production
right now. Also Jurassic World Dominion, they've pulled off production
(33:37):
on Flint strongest pulled off production. And the one I'm
kind of waiting on seeing what happens to is Black Widow,
which is Scarlett Johansson's solo movie. It's still scheduled to
come out on May one, but with all these other
movies getting pushed back and delayed, I don't know if
that's gonna happen. And as of the recording of this
podcast right now, it has not been delayed or pushed
(33:58):
back anything so far that I've seen, So I'm waiting
to see what happens with that. It would be pretty
bummed if that one gets moved because essentially May is
like the kickoff to summer blockbuster season, and it's a
big Marvel movie that always comes out usually in May
or like late April, and that kind of kicks it
off for like a bunch of great movies. So, like
I said, it's gonna be weird to have all these
(34:19):
movies postponed and laid. But that's it for movie news
for the week. Before I hop out of here, I
got to give my shout out of the weekend. I
usually do Instagram, but this week I'm doing Twitter because
I've got a really nice tweet from at Club Sore,
which is the Sore Losers Band Club, which is another
podcast we have on the Nashville Podcast Network if you
haven't checked out, it's a lunchbox where a Mondo and
Eddie from the Bobby Bones Show. They do a sports show,
(34:41):
which they're having a kind of difficult time right now.
Maybe a little not as difficult as I am removing movies,
but there's no sports right now, so it's hard for
them to do their podcast. But those are three funny
guys and they're gonna get on there and kind of
do a show anyway with life after Sports. With their Twitter,
it's kind of been blowing up with just like people
doing stuff at home right now. So that's another good
(35:02):
podcast to check out if you're I mean, if you're
also hurting from the loss of sports and you want
to see how those guys take it on right now,
go check out the Sore Losers. But this tweet says coaches,
If you like me, I need entertainment in this world
of no sports, check out Mike d Stro's podcast Movie
Mike's Movie Podcast. It's great even if you're not a
big movie person. Check it out. So I appreciate that
shout out at club Sore. If you want to follow
(35:23):
me on Twitter at Mike d Stro. But the way
you get an Instagram or Twitter shout out is all
you have to do is tag me that you're listening
to the podcast. On Twitter, you can just send me
a tweet and tag me at Mike d Stros how
you're listening, or on Instagram, just take a screenshot or
a picture of wherever you're listening and tag me in it.
Put it in your story and I'll pick one of
those to reposted about the week and then give you
(35:44):
a shout out next week. Hope you guys enjoyed this episode.
I'll try to do more movie reviews on stuff streaming
because I think that's kind of where I'm gonna be
the next couple of months or so, so I'm gonna
be looking out for not only new movies coming out streaming,
but maybe stuff that you may have missed on there.
There's a lot of kind of hidden gems in Netflix
and like Hulu and Amazon, a bunch of good stuff
(36:05):
out there. So I'll kind of put together some reviews
on that, maybe even make some top list of different
categories and stuff you can check out on the area
if you're stuck at home and needs something good to watch.
So look out for that coming up in the next episode.
But I will talk to you guys next week here
on another Monday of Movie Mix Movie Podcast. Until then
later
Hello, and welcome back to Movie Mix Movie Podcast. I
a movie Mike on Twitter and Instagram. Add Mike Destro
and a lot has happened in the world of movies
since the last episode. I got on here last week
and talked about James Bond, which is the first movie
that delayed its release, and since then a bunch of
movies have come out, either delaying production or delaying when
it's gonna come out in theater. So I'm gonna talk
about that. I'm not gonna dwell on at the entire episode.
(00:22):
I did find a way to kind of make this
own interesting episode, even if you're tired of hearing about
the coronavirus, because over the last week we've kind of
been just inundated with it. And I'm not a news podcast,
I'm a movie podcast, So I'm gonna find a way
to tie into movies to where we can still kind
of learn something together and have some fun in here
to just kind of distract us a bit. But it's
really big in the news right now, so it's kind
(00:43):
of hard to avoid it, especially when the box office
hit a twenty year low over the weekend, like they
made around fifty five to fifty six million dollars at
the box office, and that's every single movie in theaters,
which is insane. The lowest has been in twenty years.
And about fifty million dollars is what a typical blockbuster movie.
When a movie does well as the box office, it
(01:03):
makes about fifty million. So you're talking about every single
movie in theaters, including new ones that came out there,
like Movie Still came out over the weekend, but all
combined made fifty five million dollars, which is insane. So
I kind of wanted to look at on this episode
is just how exactly a movie makes money. So when
a movie goes into theaters, all the costs that go
into it, and with the number that gets reported, like
(01:24):
what does that actually mean? Is what I'm gonna be
talking about in this episode. And also, I think a
lot of us right now are gonna be just watching
stuff on Netflix and stuff on Hulu. So I'm also
gonna look at how those movies make money because it's
a little bit different in the fact that don't have
a theatrical release, So I'll talk about that. I also
watched the movie over the weekend with Pete Davidson that
which was brand new on Hulu, so I'll give a
(01:45):
review on that, and then at the very end, I'll
just kind of touched on the coronavirus news of all
the movies getting delayed or pushed back because of it.
So that's what I'm covering on this episode. A lot
to get too, So again, just thank you for checking
out this episode. Again, I'm gonna try to make it
fun and talk about movies. So we're kind of thinking
about that right now. So if you don't mind hitting
(02:06):
that five star rating, or if you're listening on iHeart
Radio or any other podcast app, just hit that subscribe buttons.
You get brand new episodes every single Monday. But without
further ado, let's get into this episode of how movies
actually make money. Here we go in a world where
everyone and their mother has a podcast. One man stands
to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in
(02:28):
a movie podcast. A man with so much movie knowledge,
he's basically like a walking I MTV with glasses from
the Nashville Podcast Network is movie movie podcast. Alright, So
today we're talking about how a movie makes money because
you hear it every single week when a movie does
(02:50):
well at the box office. It's like, oh, they made
a hundred million dollars, this is like the most successful
movie of all time. But there are actually a lot
of costs that go into it. And sometimes it's a
little kind of skewed of how much a movie actually
makes and how much because how much spent to put
in it isn't always out there entirely. They kind of
put production costs out there, but the overall cost of
(03:12):
what it is to make a movie is a lot
more than studios kind of report. A lot goes into
making a movie. So what I did is a bunch
of research on what all the numbers mean and how
much like a typical movie in the box office would make.
So I'm looking at about like a hundred million dollar blockbusters.
So you an average movie probably makes about fifty million,
(03:32):
but when a movie does really well is about a
hundred million dollars at the box office. So I'm going
to kind of break it down of what each step
takes to get there, which there are a bunch of
steps they in costs that are leading up to that
to make it too, even to getting into in the theater.
So so what we have to look at first and
going into the cost of making a movie is the
(03:52):
overall budget. So this has to do with everything from development,
which has to do with getting the final script, the
pre production stuff which is building a team planning to shoot,
the actual production which is shooting the movie, and then
the post production which is the editing, the visual effects,
the sound design, and music. So all this goes in
to this factory of how much it costs to make
a movie. This also includes like the cast and crew wages,
(04:15):
and also like the director and the lead actors. This
is all factored into just the initial budget. And also
what we'll get into later is some of these people
will end up making a certain amount based on how
well the movie does. So say an actor makes a
deal to where like, okay, I'll do this movie for
twenty million dollars, but I also want some of the
box office amount in ticket sales. I want that edit
(04:37):
into my contract. This is also gets factored into this budget.
Or say like a big time director wants to take
on a project, but he's only willing to do it
for this amount of money, and then this the profits
That is where this also gets factored into, and budgets
have just been getting bigger and bigger over the years.
So what I'm just looking at in this episode, I'll
kind of base all the numbers on a typical movie
(04:57):
that makes about a hundred million dollars at the box office,
which is considered like a big, you know, summer blockbuster hits.
So it's something like Jurassic World took a hundred and
fifty million dollars to make, is what they reported. But
when you actually look at the numbers, they end up
spending about about twelve more than they actually report. So
if they say it costs a hundred and fifty million
(05:18):
dollars to make, they actually probably spend about nineteen million more,
and they kind of just factored in other ways, and
they don't really want to put that number out there
that way, Whenever the box office numbers come out, they
look higher and it looks like they actually made more
of a profit then probably they actually did. And then
there are a bunch of other costs and making a
movie that you don't really think about. So all of
(05:39):
this just leads into how much it costs to get
the movie made. So that hundred and fifty million dollars
that they report, which is actually more like a hundred
and sixty nine is actually a lot more when it
comes to all the other costs of making a movie.
So now when you get into is the other cost
of making a movie. So this is even before a
movie is making money yet. So this is all in
(06:00):
the hole so far. So you have your movie shot,
you have your either your hour and a half, your
two hour movie. It's ready to go. But there are
a bunch of other costs that are get factored into this,
and it's stuff we don't really think about it because
we just see like, oh, how much of that movie
take to get made, and then how much did you
make it the box office? Like oh wow, that made
so much money. But there's a bunch of other hidden
costs that really go into making a movie successful. And
(06:24):
this includes marketing, which, aside from just how much it
makes takes to make a movie, marketing is probably this
next biggest thing to factor in because once the movie
is made, they gotta sell it. They gotta make posters,
they gotta make trailers, they gotta send out them the
actors to promote the movie. They gotta put commercials on TV,
(06:45):
on radio, they gotta do all this stuff to market
the movie. They gotta make promotional items and stuff out
to TV networks, to radio stations, they make like weird
little stuffs animals to promote the movie in any way
to just build a buzz around the movie and to
get people into the theater and excited about this movie.
And the weird part about this is that actually, like
(07:06):
the bigger the movie, the less they end up spending
on marketing, which you think would be a little bit
different because like a movie like The Avengers, they're gonna
spend less money on advertising than like a brand new
John Cena movie, because a John Cena movie maybe doesn't
have as much of a draw to audiences to get
into the theaters. So The Avengers are kind of good
and like, okay, we can spend a little miss less
(07:28):
money on advertising, and like a John Cena movie he
has a brand new whatever action romcom coming out, they're
going to spend a lot more money putting out the
world of like, oh, here's this John Cena movie. They
want the word to travel and get people into the
seats for that opening weekend, because the opening weekend is
pretty much make your break for like a bunch of
(07:49):
new movies, like whether or not to get a sequel
and whether or not how much they actually make on
that first weekend is really what they're going for. So
all this marketing cost is just driving people to that
opening weekend to get that biggest number possible to put
on paper. So again, looking back at that number, say
a movie took a hundred and fifty million dollars to make,
the average marketing costs would be about a hundred and
(08:11):
twenty one million dollars. So about of the budget is
going to be just straight up marketing the movie and
selling the thing. And overall, when you factor everything else
in besides that, it comes out to be about thirty
percent of the average costs to make in a movie
is just spent on advertising. And then you think, okay,
we have the movie made, we have our advertising, we're
good to go. Right, No, there's still more costs need
(08:33):
to be factored into how much it costs to make
a movie. You have what you call our prints, which
are the physical copies of the movies that they send
to the movie theaters. So back in the day they
would actually send like the thirty five millimeter film. Now
it's a hard drive, so essentially they put the movie
on a really big file and they put it on
this hard drive, and the movie theaters rent out essentially
(08:54):
those hard drives to show their movies in their movie theaters,
and what they're called is digitill cinema prints. There these
d cps, it's pretty much a big hard drive with
a really big file on it, and then it has
this other little tiny file that kind of gives all
the permissions for the hard drive. So this is why
movies really don't get leaked from movie theaters and what
(09:14):
they kind of all set out not to do. So
they have this little file on the hard drive that
tells it essentially when it can even be played at
what time it can be played in different like permissions
on that even like what kind of projector has shown on.
So so the movie theaters get this version, and also
when it goes out to like TV stations or like satellite,
(09:36):
they get a different version of the movie too. But
it's all on this hard drive. So the physical cost
of creating these hard drives and shipping them out to
movie theaters is about sixties seven million dollars, so on
top of all the marketing to make in the movie,
it takes just sixties seven million dollars in addition just
to get that movie to all these theaters worldwide. And
(09:57):
then another factor into what it costs to make a
movie is all the residuals. So what I talked about
earlier is that first of all, you have unions for
cast and crew, which they have set up with the
Hollywood studios, and then you also have here where an
actor will kind of get residuals for their part in
the movie. So sometimes you'll see like actors who they
(10:17):
end up making a lot of more money just based
off of like a movie's longevity over the year. So
like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump initially asked for less
up front and more on the back end, so over
time he's made a lot of money off Forrest Gump
just based on his residuals that he gets every time
the movies played on TV. So an actor could have
a really good pay to if a movie is not
(10:39):
only profitable at the box office, but they also have
these residuals, and also the movie studios like it because
if a movie doesn't do well at the box office,
they don't have to pay up as much. And then
finally factoring the last amount of what it takes to
make a movie is financing costs, which is anything from
like borrowing money from studios to make up movie. Also,
like when you have a movie overseas, you've got to
account for like and see conversions, all that kind of
(11:01):
associated and defiancing costs, and then you just have overheads.
So pretty much studios charge their own productions and overhead
fee which covers like the time of the staff spends
on the project, the cost of the deals to make
the movie. All that kind of stuff is just their
movies overhead all right. So now that's all of the
costs that go into making movie. Let's look at how
actually they turn that around and make a profit off that.
(11:22):
So the biggest income driver for any movie is going
to be that initial theatrical release. That's where they make
really all their money. So, say a movie makes about
a hundred and twenty nine million dollars at the box
office domestically, they go on to make another two hundred
forty three million dollars internationally. You combine that and you
get that gross box office number, which is about three
(11:44):
hundred and seventy three million dollars. So that's kind of
the amount you get here. So that's the amount that
they always kind of report out there like, oh, this
movie made three hundred and seventy three million dollars the
box office this weekend. It's a big hit. But before
they see any of that money, too big costs have
to be deducted from it, which is the sales tax
and what the movie theaters takeaway. So the actual movie
studio will get about fifty of the box office gross
(12:08):
domestically and of the international growth. So you have that
three d and seventy three million dollars or so, like
a big impressive number, but what they actually end up
taking from that is about a hundred and sixty nine
million dollars. And then you got to go in and
remove what it took to market that movie, which for
this example it was about nine million dollars. So then
(12:29):
you're left with about seventy million dollars, a total about
forty of the overall income. That big number that we
saw initially went down and now we're looking at seventy
million dollars. So that is all that plays into the
box office numbers. And then you move on to home entertainment,
which is everything you can do to watch the movie
at home. Essentially, so this same kind of movie will
(12:52):
make an average of a hundred and thirty four million
dollars just on home entertainment. So first of all, that
kind of sounds like it more than it made of
the box office, but there's other costs in here. They
do have to spend some money on advertising here, which
is about another twenty million dollars. And then obviously if
they're making DVDs that they're making Blue rays, that's gonna
cost about another thirty million dollars to make those and
(13:12):
get those shipped out to stores. And this is why
movie studios are kind of hurting that people don't really
buy Blu rays or DVDs as much. They still make
a pretty good amount of money because last year the
number one selling Blu ray was The Avengers Endgame, which
made about sixty nine million dollars, and the number one
selling DVD was Aquaman, which made seventeen million dollars. So
there's still some money to be made here, and they
(13:33):
make some pretty good money back basically because the movie
is already done. It's already made, and they just kind
of have to push it out there with production costs.
But they're able to get a pretty good return on this.
But with the fall of kind of blue rays and DVDs.
Over time, they'll see less and less money, the same
way the music industry is seen less and less on
CD sales. But if you're wondering why, you go to
the store and you still see brand new DVDs, Yes,
(13:55):
people still do buy them. The next way a movie
will make money is on TV. So the average income
for the same kind of movie would be about eighties
six million dollars. And this pretty much has little to
no direct cost of the movie studios because they typically
they charge a distribution fee to whoever is going to
put out the movie, and then it's out there. It's
either on cable or like TV over the year. And
(14:16):
this is kind of why you think sometimes that movies
don't do so well at the box office. They get
on like maybe like a TBS, and you're like, why
this movie isn't that great, But it ends up kind
of making a profit bag because so this is where
maybe a movie that didn't do so well on the
box office kind of gets a second live because maybe
you wouldn't pay money to go see it in theaters.
But if you already have cable and you're scrolling through
(14:37):
and you watch and maybe TBS and you see like
a movie with Will Ferrel that's maybe not his best movie,
but it's there and you watch it, and it's a
way these movie studios still make money on maybe a
flop or a movie that didn't perform as well as
they thought. They can put it on TV and still
get some money back from it. And then you have
video on demand, which is essentially like Amazon, iTunes or
(14:58):
any way you pay for a movie at home, be
a pay per view, and this is kind of where
movies are starting to go more because if you don't
go see a movie in theaters, you can just click
a button and have it in your home. I think
maybe eventually there'll be a wave to have brand new
movies in your house, but if you want to do
that now, it's actually really expensive. There's this thing that
essentially only rich people can have where you pay to
(15:20):
have this box in your house to where you can
have movies streamed into your house before they're even released,
and it costs like two d and fifty dollars, but
it actually costs like two hundred and fifty dollars just
to rent a movie for twenty four hours, and you
have to pay a lot of money just to get
this box in your house. I think it's like twenty
or thirty thousand dollars just to put it in your house.
But until that's available with all of us at a
cheaper price, we kind of have to sit around and
(15:42):
wait until a movie comes to us. And I think
they should have a quicker turnaround time because it's kind
of like if you go see a concert, like say
you go see a new band, you leave there and
you go stream their music when you get home. There's
really not that for movies. If you go see a movie,
you have to wait another six months or so. It's
probably a lot less now, but essentially to watch that
movie at home. How cool would it be just to
(16:03):
be able to go see a movie in theaters and
then be like, oh, I kind of want to see
that again. You take it home right after, or you
wait a bit and you kind of don't have to
go to the theater and you can watch it in
your house. Also, when this is airlines, you can get
on a flight, you hop on there, you hit a
touch screen, and you can watch a movie on your flight.
And while it's free to us, the airline actually has
to pay to have those movies in there, and they
can make another two point seven million dollars by licensing
(16:26):
out their movies to airlines. And that's pretty easy money
for them because all they had to do is make
a deal, put the movie on the airplane, and their
instant money. And then the final way a movie makes
money is through merchandising. So say a big Hollywood production
something like Star Wars would make an average of another
eleven point five million dollars just in merchandise. But then again,
(16:50):
Star Wars is a bit different because they're kind of
the o G s of movies making money off merchandizing.
And that's kind of why them and Disney pair so
well together right now, because Disney is like so hyper
focused on the merchandizing because essentially their movies are commercials
for their merch. So they put a movie out that's
(17:10):
about ninety minutes of an animated movie. It's a great
feel good story and that's a great Disney classic, but
they see it as a commercial for their their merch.
I mean, they make so much money off toys, off
of it, t shirts, and I mean anything that Disney
can put their characters on is what they're making money off.
Of and this is really big for them when it
(17:32):
comes to like The Avengers or anything like Pixarre and
then even I mean maybe not right now in the
world of today, but Disney World and Disneyland, those attractions
are based on the movie. So as long as they're
turning out new movies, putting out new stories, new characters,
they get more people into the parks, and they're selling
merch They're selling tickets to their their parks. So merchandizing
(17:56):
is huge for Disney. For some of the other movies,
it's not as big. Um looking at just the average
of what other movies will make off of this is
about one million dollars, which is still pretty good. But
if you don't have anything attached to like a toy
line or um like any kind of collectibles from a movie,
you get less merched. People aren't really gonna buy a
(18:16):
t shirt for a movie, but when it comes to
animated movies, man, they can really crush it here. And
the weird thing about when they put out the first
Star Wars movie as is that the toys weren't ready
by the time the movie came out, which is kind
of what's happening now with Babe Yoda um with the
Mandalorian coming out last year, but Baby Yoda still hasn't shipped.
So Star Wars is kind of creates a buzz over
(18:38):
their merchandizing and they make a lot of money. And
like back in the day, those toys just flew off
the shelves, making them a lot of money. And they
kind of saw a correlation between the toys coming out
with the movies and how much money they would make
off the toys, because when there was the years that
they didn't put out at a new Star Wars, they
were still making toys and they weren't really making any money.
(18:59):
So they were like, George Lucas, please make another movie
because we need to sell these toys. They need to
have kids go to the theaters and see like, oh,
I remember that character. I love that character. I want
to go home later and go to a store and
have my parents buy me that character. So these movies
are really just the vehicles to kind of pushed towards
this merchandise, and a movie studio like Disney really can
(19:24):
really just clean up here. So that is essentially how
a movie makes money, all the costs that go into it.
All right, So I'm gonna talk about now how a
Netflix movie makes money. So you're probably wonder when they
put out these movies with like Will Smith and Mark Wahlberg, like,
what is it a benefit to them? So last year
(19:47):
The Irishman, which was the Martin scorsesey movie that ended
up being nominated for Best Picture. That costs Netflix like
the most they've ever spent on a movie at one
and fifty nine million dollars to make that, and they
claim that's twenty six allion people watch that in their homes.
But you wonder what's the profit there, because nobody really
hoped to Netflix just to watch that movie. If you
(20:10):
already have a subscription, what difference is that if you
cook play on it or not. So really, what Netflix
cares about is how many subscribers they have. That's how
they make money. You pay a monthly fee and you're
able to watch anything on their service, and that's essentially
how they make money. That's what they care about. The
benefit to movie studios and filmmakers to Netflix is that
(20:33):
there's really no worry. There's a lot less like anticipation
when it comes to They don't have to meet box
office numbers, they don't have to meet like critics. They
don't care what people say. Once the movie comes out.
There's a lot less of that because once a movie
gets put on Netflix, it's out there. The deal is done.
How a Netflix movie works is they essentially make the deal.
(20:53):
They have this algorithm that determines how much they should
spend on creating original content, and then they based that
around how much they will pay for a movie to
get put on their service. Because Netflix distributes the movie
and then the movie studios, they don't have to worry
about distribution. They don't have to worry about even like advertising,
all that stuff I talked about earlier. None of those
(21:14):
returns matter for a Netflix movie. Once they paid for
the movie, it's there. That's it. They got their paycheck.
They're good. So that's essentially how Netflix movies get made.
They make the film, they get a check, that's it.
That's simple. And what Netflix does to kind of make
money off of this is they rely on the word
of mouth in a way that kind of theaters can't
(21:35):
afford to. Because the movie gets put out on a
certain weekend and then somebody watches it, They tell a
friend to watch it, and they get more people talking
about the movie, and then maybe that in turn brings
more subscribers to their service who come to watch that movie,
and then they see all the other stuff they have
on their so and then essentially they're not coming just
to see that movie like you would in a movie theater.
(21:56):
But once you get somebody there, you hope that they
stick around and end up paying for your service. So
that's kind of how Netflix makes money off of their movies.
So it sounds pretty good. You make a movie, you
get that check, and you're good to go. I think
what I kind of see less of is that Netflix
doesn't really have any franchises, Like there's not like a
part two is being made of a bunch of movies.
They essentially put out one movie and then that's all.
(22:17):
Can you kind of hear about it? So I think
it kind of takes away from franchises a bit, and
also it takes like, while it does take away the
risk for directors and filmmakers, sometimes that risk is good.
One of the highest grossing and most profitable movies ever
was Paranormal Activity. So that movie only costs fifteen thousand
dollars to make. That's it. It's a pretty basic movie.
(22:39):
If you've seen it. It's basically like a lost footage
movie where all this paranormal stuff hence the name, happens
in the house. It was really cheap to make, but
it ended up making a hundred and ninety three million dollars,
so that makes it a really profitable movie. Another movie
like Magic Mike, which cost seven million dollars to make,
ended up making a hundred and sixty seven million dollars,
(23:00):
so again they took us They took a risk putting
these movies out, paying this money, but it was such
a big hit. They had such a big return on that,
which is something you couldn't really get through Netflix because
you get kind of that upfront money, you get paid
for it, but you don't really get anything in return. Again,
it takes away then anticipatient of worrying about how well
(23:21):
it's gonna do, but it also kind of takes away
from this. You can't really have like an unexpected hit
and if it is a highly successful movie. Probably the
most one we would know was Birdcage with Sandra Bullock,
which was a movie Netflix put out that kind of
got everybody talking in the entire country, which was different
for them. They haven't really put out anything on part
of that sense, and in turn they probably got a
(23:43):
lot more subscribers because of that movie, which allowed them
to make other movies than kind of just overall adds
to the big machine that is Netflix. I think really
where they kind of have a space in is like
movies that probably wouldn't get made that they are able
to put out on their service, especially when it comes
to like things like documentaries, lower budget stuff that people
(24:03):
discover on Netflix, and those are really movies and projects
that people kind of talk about a lot. So I
think that's kind of cool to see like a smaller
director get a chance to put out his documentary on Netflix.
Something like in sen there's a documentary called Icarus which
was paid for by Netflix and actually ended up in
theaters and one of the best documentary Oscar back in tweens,
So stuff like that it's cool too. But that just
(24:26):
kind of explains Netflix's model where film producers kind of
can sleep well at night knowing that they're not tied
to these box office earnings and they already get their money,
and then Netflix is cool because hey, we put out
this movie, we know we can cover the cost, we
know how much we paid for it. We have it
only on our service, so it gets more subscribers and
(24:46):
people paying money for our service. So that's kind of
how the whole Netflix model works, all right. Gonna get
into my review now of Big Time Adolescents starring Pete
Davidson Griffin Gluck, who you may know if you watch
the Netflix series called American Van Dole. He was in
that also John Cryer and Machine Gun Kelly. And it
is written and directed by Jason Orley, who this is
(25:07):
his first ever directorial debut, and it's essentially about this
kid who his sister dates Pete Davidson in high school
and he's much younger than them, but he becomes friends
with them, and then even after they break up, they
stay friends. Pete Davidson isn't really the best influence on him.
He parties, he does drugs, he drops out of college,
(25:27):
but they just have this kind of bond because the
kid doesn't have an older brother, so they hang out
all the time. And then his parents kind of don't
really approve of it, and they end up getting into
some pretty big trouble. So I'll get into my review here,
but first here's a bit of big time adolescence. This weekend,
it's you at your party. You think I'm just gonna
(25:47):
walk into a party and everyone's gonna want to buy
pop from me? Call me crazy. So, like I said,
this movie is directed by Jason Orley, who actually had
the idea of maybe back five years ago, and he
knew that he wanted Pete Davidson to play his character
whenever he saw him on the Comedy Central roast of
(26:07):
Justin Bieber and then he was like, that's it, Like
I want Pete Davidson to essentially be this character. So
his characters in the movie is named Zeke and the
younger kid is named Mo. So Pete Davidson's character dated
his sister in high school and this kid didn't really
have any kind of big brother influence that we saw
Pete Davidson and was like, hey, let's start hanging out
(26:29):
even though you and my sister broke up. So Pete
Davidson kind of takes him under his wing, but he's
not really the best influence. He like parties, does drugs um.
After graduating high school, he goes on to college, but
he drops out and he's like working at some random
like applying store, UM. But it's kind of cool to
see the contrast of like a coming of age story
(26:51):
that's told in a different way. What I like about
it is, although Pete Davidson's kind of playing himself, I
like seeing him in a movie and see that character
more because really, I I mean, I'm a fan of
his comedy. I like him on Ut and Nell, but
I really don't get to see him fully kind of
interact with other people because on Us and L it's
essentially a skit and even in the stand up it's
(27:12):
not really the same as seeing him in a movie.
So I enjoyed seeing kind of his personality come out
through this character. But it does kind of feel like, oh,
it's Pete Davidson playing himself. But I think it works.
So again, I won't spoil the movie. If you want
to go watch it, um, if you have a Hulu account,
it's essentially you pay for the subscription and it's free
to watch. I always say it's free, but you're already
paying for it. So what essentially happens is the kid
(27:34):
takes a bunch of advice from Pete Davidson's character on
you know, Getting Girls, how to make friends at school,
but it's not necessarily the best advice because his life,
in turn, hasn't really turned out how he wanted to.
I don't think in the movie Pete Davidson really comes
off as being a bad guy. I just think maybe
he doesn't have it all together and he's just kind
of trying to do the best with what he has.
And I just saw so many parallels in this and
(27:56):
like other people I know growing up, so I kind
of related to it in that sense. So the kid
takes his advice, it doesn't really turn out very well
when it comes to the girls, and then he ends
up trying to make friends with kids his own age
because he's essentially in the movie just hanging out with
Pete Davidson and his friends who are much older, which
was something like I was kind of like in high school.
I didn't really have any high school friends that I
(28:16):
would go hang out with on the weekend, but like
my older brother was seven years older than me, I
like go hang out with him, and I'd be the
youngest one in the crowd. So I kind of felt
the kids in this movie just based on that. And
he tries to make friends in high school, but Pete
Davidson's advice is like, hey, you should probably go sound
drugs at their parties, and you can kind of tell
(28:38):
that that did turn out so well. I thought the
movie was good overall. I thought it was pretty funny.
I laughed out loud a lot. Um, it's a little
more on the raunchy side. Is rated art. There's no
like nudity or anything, but it's a bunch of language
and drug use, so I'd say it's on the same
scale and maybe like a super bad four year old
virgin when it comes to the R rating. So if
that kind of takes you away from watching a movie
(28:58):
like this, maybe not for you, but if it needs
something that's kind of a raunchier comedy in a way,
not I wouldn't say it's super raunchy, but it's a
little more on that side of those kind of movies.
But I think it's pretty funny. I liked the story.
I found it pretty relatable, and I was had my
attention throughout the entire movie. It's about an hour and
a half, so it's a pretty quick watch too, if
you're looking for something on Hulu, which I think right
(29:20):
now we're kind of I was trying to stay indoors
and not go out a whole lot to the movie theaters.
So it's a good at home watch if you want
something funny, I give it about three point five out
of five homemade tattoos. All Right, gonna get into some
movie dues now. So last week I talked about James
Bond to laying it's really stayed from April ten to
there's November, and since then it just kind of caused
(29:42):
a chain reaction of other movies just to laying either
when the movie will come out or not even saying
when they're gonna put it out now, or movies now
are kind of starting to delay production due to the coronavirus.
But James Bond was the first one to do this,
and the one that kind of was the biggest to
me was A Quiet Place, which is supposed to come
out on March twentie and now the new data is unknown,
(30:03):
but I saw John Krasinski post that he essentially doesn't
think it's the right time to put it out because
it's a movie that he wants everybody to see together,
and with what everything going on in the world, he
doesn't think it's a great environment to put the movie
out right now. And as we saw over the weekend
with his box office numbers being a record low in
twenty years. I think they're making the right move here.
(30:23):
It's kind of hard for me as a movie goer
to see all these movies I was so excited to
see and stuff that was just on my highly anticipated
list for the year just be delayed, and kind of
wondering how that's kind of kind of affect everything. Because
the movie schedules essentially have their slots and they put
them out in certain times of the year based on
a lot of there's a lot of reasoning that goes
(30:45):
into that, and delaying when it comes out. I just
wonder what it's gonna look like later in the year
when you have these other big movies now going up
against other movies. It's really gonna change numbers. And it's
just overall affecting like how people make money for these movies,
and even like the production schedules of stuff coming out
like one or two years later, Like how is that
(31:05):
going to affect stuff down the line. So I'll run
through now the list of just all the movies that
I know so far who have that have got delayed
or just kind of postponed for a bit. It got
My Spy, which is the movie with Batista, went from
March to thirteenth to April seventeen. A Quiet Place Too,
like I talked about, which is supposed to come out
of March twentieth. Now the new data is unknown. As
of now, Disney has delayed Mulan from March to an
(31:28):
unknown date. Peter Rabbit too, moved from April third to
August seven. Love Birds moved from April third to now
being unknown. The other new Marvel movie coming out, The
New Mutants, moved from April third to now a date
unknown um. And then a movie called Antler's moved from
April seventeen to a new unknown date. And another really
big one which was kind of the craziest of as
(31:50):
far as how long they delayed it was the New
Fast in the Furies nine movie moved from May twenty
two of this year to April second of twenty one.
That's a long time to delay that movie. And I
think the reason behind that is it's such a global
movie in that movie not only makes a lot in
the United States, but just has a really big international market.
(32:11):
So I think just with everything going on in the
entire world, they're like, yeah, this is a movie we
just really have to wait out. We can't let this
kind of affect our box office numbers because it's I mean,
as we see it happening right now, it's crazy how
little movies are making right now because movie theaters are
either closing down and where cities it's really bad in
(32:31):
and AMC and Regal have reduced how many tickets they
sell by fifty, so they will only feel like, say
a theater that fits five people, they're only selling two
and fifty tickets to that showing that is I mean,
that's half of people you can even get into theaters,
and that's even less of people actually going in to
field those teats. So even myself, like I was going
(32:52):
to go to the movies this weekend, and I'm like,
maybe I should go, and I know, I come on here,
and I talked about how it's gonna take a lot
for me to you know, kind of not want to
go to the movies, which just even just the way
technology is changing. But I felt like maybe it wasn't
the best idea this weekend. Even looking at the box
office numbers now. The number one movie was Onward, which
I saw last week, and it only made ten million
(33:13):
dollars the entire weekend, which that is like one, I think,
maybe the highest Pixar drop in a very long time
for a movie. And it's all because of this going
on right now. And then you have movies delaying production.
So The Batman, which is I am just super excited
about with Robert Pattinson, that's just pulled off on production
right now. Also Jurassic World Dominion, they've pulled off production
(33:37):
on Flint strongest pulled off production. And the one I'm
kind of waiting on seeing what happens to is Black Widow,
which is Scarlett Johansson's solo movie. It's still scheduled to
come out on May one, but with all these other
movies getting pushed back and delayed, I don't know if
that's gonna happen. And as of the recording of this
podcast right now, it has not been delayed or pushed
(33:58):
back anything so far that I've seen, So I'm waiting
to see what happens with that. It would be pretty
bummed if that one gets moved because essentially May is
like the kickoff to summer blockbuster season, and it's a
big Marvel movie that always comes out usually in May
or like late April, and that kind of kicks it
off for like a bunch of great movies. So, like
I said, it's gonna be weird to have all these
(34:19):
movies postponed and laid. But that's it for movie news
for the week. Before I hop out of here, I
got to give my shout out of the weekend. I
usually do Instagram, but this week I'm doing Twitter because
I've got a really nice tweet from at Club Sore,
which is the Sore Losers Band Club, which is another
podcast we have on the Nashville Podcast Network if you
haven't checked out, it's a lunchbox where a Mondo and
Eddie from the Bobby Bones Show. They do a sports show,
(34:41):
which they're having a kind of difficult time right now.
Maybe a little not as difficult as I am removing movies,
but there's no sports right now, so it's hard for
them to do their podcast. But those are three funny
guys and they're gonna get on there and kind of
do a show anyway with life after Sports. With their Twitter,
it's kind of been blowing up with just like people
doing stuff at home right now. So that's another good
(35:02):
podcast to check out if you're I mean, if you're
also hurting from the loss of sports and you want
to see how those guys take it on right now,
go check out the Sore Losers. But this tweet says coaches,
If you like me, I need entertainment in this world
of no sports, check out Mike d Stro's podcast Movie
Mike's Movie Podcast. It's great even if you're not a
big movie person. Check it out. So I appreciate that
shout out at club Sore. If you want to follow
(35:23):
me on Twitter at Mike d Stro. But the way
you get an Instagram or Twitter shout out is all
you have to do is tag me that you're listening
to the podcast. On Twitter, you can just send me
a tweet and tag me at Mike d Stros how
you're listening, or on Instagram, just take a screenshot or
a picture of wherever you're listening and tag me in it.
Put it in your story and I'll pick one of
those to reposted about the week and then give you
(35:44):
a shout out next week. Hope you guys enjoyed this episode.
I'll try to do more movie reviews on stuff streaming
because I think that's kind of where I'm gonna be
the next couple of months or so, so I'm gonna
be looking out for not only new movies coming out streaming,
but maybe stuff that you may have missed on there.
There's a lot of kind of hidden gems in Netflix
and like Hulu and Amazon, a bunch of good stuff
(36:05):
out there. So I'll kind of put together some reviews
on that, maybe even make some top list of different
categories and stuff you can check out on the area
if you're stuck at home and needs something good to watch.
So look out for that coming up in the next episode.
But I will talk to you guys next week here
on another Monday of Movie Mix Movie Podcast. Until then
later
Host
Mike D
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