Talk:Terry Gilliam/Archives/2021

box office success?

"Gilliam's $30 million-budgeted film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus had also become an international box office success, grossing over $60 million in worldwide theatrical release." If you gross 60 million on a 30 million budget you break even. Half the gross revenue is kept by the theaters. I would not call that a success. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 03:06, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Parnassus had broken even before the film was even released anywhere, thanks to clever distribution deals, see [1]. Those $65 million are *ON TOP* of the production breaking even. --2003:71:4E07:BB23:9163:E32E:3FE1:A5D3 (talk) 00:07, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

The Vancouver Sun citation talks about how the financing was put together, no mention of anything that made this a break-even film budget. Further rights (such as DVD distribution) can be presold, etc., but no discussion in the article of these standard practices. The $30 million production cost is only for getting the film made. It does not include marketing, advertising and distribution costs--which can easily wind up equaling the production costs. That's why as a rough estimate a film is considered "break even" when it makes double the production costs. On top of that, according to Box Office Mojo[2], the film only made $7,689,607 domestic revenue, $54,119,168 in foreign markets. Domestic gross is weighted more heavily, because the producers get more of that money back than from the international market. The entire Box Office section comes off as a puff piece, which is really unnecessary even if that's the aim. Members of the film industry understand the numbers. Not sharing that with Wikipedia users is a disservice to them and to Gilliam. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vogelspiegel (talk • contribs) 17:22, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Speaking of standard practices, it's a standard Wikipedia practice according to official guidelines on film articles not to count "marketing, advertising and distribution costs" when it comes to when a film breaks even. The rest is only some creative "Hollywood book-keeping" to dump on people that some bigwigs don't like, by only counting those latter costs against misfits but never when it comes to the darlings of studio heads. Speaking of which, the domestic market for Parnassus was the UK, and $7 million drawn in at the UK box office is certainly a lot. Anyways, this supposed rule that films are supposed to make a lot especially in the "domestic market" is a biased US-centric POV when it comes to non-US and maybe non-Canadian films. The rule is non-existent outside of North America.

Anyways, even if the above wouldn't disprove your poor points from the start, there's more in the Vancouver Sun article than just that, namely the fact that the film's *PRODUCERS* have officially stated that the film had broken even before it had even been released, thanks to clever distribution and licensing deals. --2003:EF:1700:B470:40A4:31ED:152D:BBF6 (talk) 15:31, 14 January 2021 (UTC)