Is this a repost: Serenity breaks even and becomes profitable on DVD by Gelassenheit

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Is this a repost: Serenity breaks even and becomes profitable on DVD

POSTED BY: GELASSENHEIT
UPDATED: Monday, February 20, 2006 23:09
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Sunday, February 19, 2006 8:51 AM

Has anyone here posted this yet? If so, sorry!!!

http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=59843

Serenity breaks even and becomes profitable on DVD

There was quite a bit of discussion a while back whether the movie Serenity would make any money for Universal. Well, it seems now on DVD that the movie has moved out of the red and is now making money for Universal. It hasn't exactly made a huge amount of money and there's still some way to go for a sequel to happen, but at least the movie is no longer climbing out of the red.

Here's some figures and number crunching for anyone who's interested:

Serenity costs $39 million to make ($1 million under it's $40 million budget) and while the advertising budget was never made public, people have estimated around $10 million. So overall the movie costs around $49 million for Universal to make. Now Serenity made a disappointing $25 million domestically and $13 million internationally for a total of $38 million at the box office. Now following the 55% rule, where studios get around 55% of the total of the box office, Universal only made $21 million from the box office.

Now there's been no official sales figures for Serenity since it's been released on DVD, only where it's ranked on the sales charts. However, there have been sales announcements for other DVD's above and bellow Serenity and people have managed to do some number crunching and worked out that Serenity sold from 1.104 to 1.605 million copies in the first week of release! Some more number crunching was done to figure out Serenity sold around 825 thousand copies for January 2006. So by now it's definitely over 2 million (possibly high as 2.5 million). Now studios generally take around $12 dollars profit per DVD, with the remaining split between the retailer and distributer. So that's $24 million from the DVD sales, already more than the studio made from the box office. Meanwhile VideoBusiness.com tracked Serenity in bringing in over $9 million in DVD rentals. It has since fallen off the chart, but at the rate of it's decline it's safe to estimate that it manage to make $10 million before dropping too far.

Now the tv rights for Serenity were sold to NBC for a 3 movie package deal for $26 million. Now Serenity was hardly the top movie in the deal, so let's low ball it and say Serenity only gets $5 million out of that deal.

So that's $21 million from the box office, $24 million from DVD sales, $10 million from rentals, and around $5 million from tv rights for a total of $60 million. With Serenity costing $49 million to make and advertise it's estimated that Universal has made $11 million off of the movie. Not nearly enough for Universal to invest in another movie, but there's still profit to be made. The DVD has yet been released internationally and if the domestic sales are any indication, the DVD will make more money than the theatre box office. Especially since Universal International has included a lot of cool extras in the various international editions, the Australian version has a second disk of extras and comes in a cool metal tin, plus one retailer is offering free posters with the movie, another retailer offering Serenity mouse-mats and all sorts of other cool stuff. Meanwhile the DVD has sold well enough for the talked about Special Edition to be made available. The extras have already been produced for the Australian edition and ready to go, the only extra thing that Joss Whedon wants to do is add full cast audio commentary.

Meanwhile those calculations didn't include anything from licensing which has been doing really well. The comic book, movie novelization, books, official t-shirts, RPG have all sold better than expected and more of all these items are on it's way. There's more money to be made out of this franchise yet and a sequel or possibily even a direct-to-DVD sequel might still yet happen.

Gelassenheit means Serenity

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Sunday, February 19, 2006 8:54 AM

DAVESHAYNE

Quote:
Originally posted by Gelassenheit:

Has anyone here posted this yet? If so, sorry!!!

It has been posted before (under the title "Some good news for a change" I think) but no wories as good news is always welcome.

David

"A lot of people are asking me, you know, what exactly is Firefly? It's a tv show you morons!" - Joss Whedon

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Sunday, February 19, 2006 9:21 AM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Well I hadn't caught it the first time round, so thanks

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Sunday, February 19, 2006 9:37 AM

THINGY

The same goes for me. This is very good news that I hadn't yet heard. Thanks a bunch.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - ... +
"She's in Congress?"

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Sunday, February 19, 2006 12:04 PM

SAVEWASH

Now I am learning about scary.

Me, too! I'm happy to hear it.

"We need to keep our head so we can ... keep our heads."

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Sunday, February 19, 2006 12:57 PM

ALEN

hope, hope, hope...
hold, hold, hold...

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Sunday, February 19, 2006 1:18 PM

GHOLA

Quote:
Meanwhile VideoBusiness.com tracked Serenity in bringing in over $9 million in DVD rentals.

The studio doesn't get any money from DVD rentals other than the cost of the DVD.

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Sunday, February 19, 2006 1:29 PM

GROUNDED

There was a fair bit of disagreement on Whedonesque with some of the reasoning in that post. Don't take it as gospel.

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Sunday, February 19, 2006 4:20 PM

GELASSENHEIT

Quote:
Originally posted by Grounded:
There was a fair bit of disagreement on Whedonesque with some of the reasoning in that post. Don't take it as gospel.

I saw something about that mentioned but have been unable to find it. Do you have a link?

Gelassenheit means Serenity

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Monday, February 20, 2006 4:08 AM

FLYWITHMECAPTN

I'm glad this was posted again. So many threads get lost. I love hearing news like this so keep it comin'.

Woo Hoo........Told ya to hold the line.

I knew we could do it!!!

"Don't forget to call him "Sir." He likes that."

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Monday, February 20, 2006 9:45 AM

HOIDY

Quote:
Originally posted by Ghola:
Quote:
Meanwhile VideoBusiness.com tracked Serenity in bringing in over $9 million in DVD rentals.

The studio doesn't get any money from DVD rentals other than the cost of the DVD.

The studio DOES get money for movie rentals. The movies that big stores, such as blockbuster and hollywood video, have are not "bought" by them. The studio gets a cut of each movie rental from these places and in exchange blockbuster or hollywood get the movies without paying for them. Lately, with blockbuster's no late fees thing, some studios are demanding that blockbuster buys the movies outright because there are less rentals without late fees. anyways, i hope that clears up a little of how movie rental revenue works.

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Monday, February 20, 2006 11:09 PM

ANIMALM0THER

Heres some other articles commenting on this:

[url] http://digg.com/movies/Serenity_makes_more_money_from_DVD_than_from_bo
x_office]

[url] http://www.sliceofscifi.com/archives/dvd_sales_push_serenity_over_the_
top.html[/url]

I'm certain these are numbers Universal must be looking at with consideration. Now if we just knew what the exact FireFly DVD sales numbers are....

I'll be in my bunk.

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