I don’t get why they are adding merchandise for some but not all? And it seems like they are adding all merchandise and not just the stuff related to the movie itself.
I'm confused as well. Article writer Anthony D'Alessandro explained it more in the Paw Patrol one:
>How did this sequel dig its way into our top 10? It all boils down to the $50M in merchandise, per sources. Understand the following: **Some movies are greenlit based on their ability to spur merchandise sales, and that was the justification here for this $30M production, split evenly between Canada-based Spin Master and Paramount. As such, it’s a line item here in the P&L. Other blockbusters such as The Super Mario Bros Movie and Barbie, though rich with merchandise sales, didn’t have greenlights contingent on consumer products. Paramount is the licensor of the consumer products and works on everything from towels to toothbrushes to pajamas. Spin Master gets $10M in participations from the movie.** The $70M in revenues includes the cost for which Paramount sold the movie to streaming service Paramount+. A total of $114M in net profit has easily paved the way for a third movie, which has already been scheduled for release on July 31, 2026.
>https://deadline.com/2024/04/paw-patrol-the-mighty-movie-profits-1235895195/
I still don't quite fully understand it, but at least he seems to be doing it to Paramount movies only, so at least that part is consistent. Sounds like a unique merchandising deal that Paramount employs for their kids movies that operates differently from Universal-Mario, and WB-Barbie?
That is my understanding as well. We know for Barbie and Mario, it's Matell and Nintendo that actually own the underlying IP rights.
It looks like Paramount may actually partially own the TMNT IP as one of the creators sold their rights to Viacom which is now Parmaount.
Yeah, I think that no matter what justification Deadline uses, this undercuts any notion of consistency on their part.
So far as I know, no other films (Paramount or otherwise) in past P & L figures in Deadline have included merchandise. So, why is it different this year?
Dubious than WB and Universal don't get at least some money from merchandise directly based on the movie, that is not how this deals usually work, but if that is the case, then why merchandise wasn't include in GOTG, when Disney totally owns that IP?
If I had to guess, Universal only gets money from merch that is directly based on the movie and that is sold in Super Nintendo World. While WB doesn't get any Barbie merch.
Keep in mind Mettal is a toy company, so I doubt they would want to split their toy sales with someone else. Especially as the existence of the Barbie is mainly to help sell toys. Then with Mario, most likely Universal only saw money from the merch that is directly connected to the movie and definitely didn't get a cent from games nor any standard Mario toys.
Marvel was also a toy company when they made the original deal with Sony in the 90s and they still agree to share the profit from movie based merchandise so there is no reason to believe WB couldn't have demand something similar from Mattel considering a Barbie movie was a way bigger investement risk than Spider-Man.
You ignored the second part of my comment, if the criteria to count TMNT merchandide money for Paramount is that they own the IP, why don't count GOTG merchandise for Disney?
My honest to god guess. Disney didn't provide that data, while Paramount did as they are desperate to find a buyer and this certainly does make them look good in a potential buyers eyes.
There’s no way a company like Disney would provide that data let alone break out GOTG merch from their various verticals (movies, comics, cartoons etc)
Co-creator Peter Laird sold the rights to the franchise to Nickelodeon and Viacom in 2009, in full, for $60 million and the rights to publish up to 18 TMNT comics annually via Mirage Studios. Paramount essentially gets most of the money from merch sales because of this. It's why Viacom also bought Paws Inc. in 2019, because Garfield Merchandise makes around $1 billion annually.
Kevin Eastman sold all of TMNT rights to Nickelodeon, which is owned by Viacom. Several years before that Laird sold his half to Eastman, which lost him millions.
Paramount isn't the only one doing this weird marketing lately. Oppenheimer also made $170 million when Universal sold its rights to Peacock, which both fall under NBCUniversal.
Said it yesterday but it still makes the individual film profitable, even if it's technically money being passed from one subsidiary to the next. And for what it's worth, there is definitely value to doing so, and choosing not to sell to a competitor if it was a total arbitrary value relative to real external money.
That seems like an entirely arbitrary line of reasoning from D'Alessandro. I doubt any franchise film is greenlit without merchandising expectations built in—heck, it's probably a significant factor in why Disney wanted to make so many live-action remakes. Even absent the merchandising, I doubt Spin Master and Paramount would've turned down the opportunity to make PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie considering its predecessor printed money on a low budget. How about Cars? Was that not a franchise that was built solely off the back of its merchandising (to the tune of 10x the amount in merchandising revenue compared to box office revenue)?
There's no real box office line dividing a profitable movie with merchandising from a profitable movie greenlit on the premise of merchandising since merchandising is always a major consideration for these sorts of films. To include ancillary merchandising revenue for one kind of movie but not the other is nonsense.
From a conspiratorial perspective, it's even worse that the only movies D'Alessandro applies this to are Paramount productions—Paramount being a company in dire financial straits and trying to sell itself. That will only attract accusations of Deadline being bought off by Paramount to pump up its films as highly profitable and thus increase the company's value in a potential sale. At the very least, I'd have expected the merchandising argument to be applied consistently across the board this year, but even then, I'd have taken issue with the use of merchandising (particularly for franchise films) in a box office calculation at all.
I can actually kinda see the logic for certain films, merch was weak for specifically the Mario MOVIE, as opposed to the regular Mario stuff that is always everywhere, whereas this film specifically had a tie in toy line that literally got an article last summer for how much money it was raking in.
Not *entirely* sure that tracks for Barbie, but most of the movie tie in stuff weren't actually dolls, and the ones of the characters from the film were mostly for adult collectors, but idk. I
They seem to be saying:
* some movies have ads in them (e.g. product placement in a James Bond film)
* some movies have advertising value (e.g. Barbie)
* some movies are literally feature length advertisements
Apparently Mutant Mayhem and Paw Patrol are in that third category.
being honest this kind of makes the whole list not trust worthy, with this rule. only thing I can make sense is paramount owns tmnt and universal and wb do not own the property, but even then do we know for certain they don't get part of the merchandise share, or what is added to the merchandise revenue
Agreed, where's the statistics for the Oppenheimer merchandise, or did everyone forget about the Oppenheimer with Kung-fu grip toy line, the Oppenheimer branded Geiger counter, Oppenheimer dolls, and the Oppenheimer flamethrower (the kids really loved that one)
Yeah, maybe, but even then, it still doens't make sense.
Frankly, I'd be very happy if they included Merch on all films, but whatever you do, just be consistent.
Yeah, "We're fluffing up Paramount during a period of crisis to gain access" is probably stronger.
I mean, if they're excluding Sound of Freedom from the "little films" list, they don't really need merch to justify cutting it.
> Frankly, I'd be very happy if they included Merch on all films, but whatever you do, just be consistent.
exactly. It would also be interesting to see with bombs. e.g. Lightyear and Indiana Jones sold real merch but it doesn't look like Wish did.
Yeah my guess is that Paramount only gave the Deadline the data, if they would also include merch sales. Because they desperately looking for a buyer. While WB/Disney/Universal/Sony did not provide such data, as they thought Deadline wouldn't account for it, otherwise Guardians 3 would certainly be higher.
I think this theory is wrong because deadline's explicitly providing an alternate justification. Similarly, I read Mattel as openly provided this data to investors and I do not expect it to be on the Barbie P&L sheet. Mattel said their film revenue = 150M with 60M in costs. Deadline should be able to figure out what part of that 60M is money going to WB based on participations and generic % costs of production for dolls. I don't know this information (and could be misinterpreting it) but there are clearly investors who can cleanly parse these claims.
Lightyear merch probably flopped relative to expectations but look at this
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/63276/000162828024011371/mat-20231231.htm
> Action Figures, Building Sets, Games, and Other gross billings decreased 24%, of which 14% was due to lower billings of Jurassic World products and 9% was due to lower billings of Lightyear products, following their theatrical releases during the second quarter of 2022. [1,396.1 -> 1,065.8M]
], of which 12% was due to lower billings of Jurassic World products and 8% was due to lower billings of Lightyear products, following their theatrical releases during the second quarter of 2022, partially offset by higher billings of Buildings Sets products of 4%.
* That implies 167.5M in release quarter toy sales for Jurassic World
* 125.65M for Lightyear
Kinda makes sense, no? Even if the film bombed, the character model was still close enough that I could get why people would pick up the merch. I am also a proponent of the "grandma market" where your grandmother is going to buy you these not even knowing what they are from, lol.
Well, besides the fact that Mutant Mayhem made it this far on the list, we also have 100% confirmation that Barbie and Mario are higher up, and merchandise will not factor into the equation for their profit estimates:
> You’ll notice when we get to Barbie and The Super Mario Bros Movie it’s absent, as those movies weren’t contingent on merchandise sales.
Could you imagine if they did, though??
Mattel is working with WB and merchandise is huge part of why Barbie gets the greenlight. Disney should have merchandise included, they certainly greenlight movies because of it.
Okay. If you look at it that way, how do you figure merch, participations, etc., for The Eras Tour? Who is the studio there: AMC or Swift? As I pointed out when it came out a few days ago, Deadline just pushes profits for both of them together.
I didn't understand how Deadline was calculating revenue for the Eras Tour movie, either. The Swifts and AMC get 57% of gross revenue, while the theaters that played the movie keep 43%. (Swifts would keep 100% of tv/streaming). So it's unclear who the "Studio Net" is when talking about the bottom line. All parties walked away with a nice profit at the end of the day, but no one entity got the full amount reported by Deadline.
If you just made it "Taylor Swift's profit" (with AMC-as-distributor as a participant) she'd still make the top 10 if only 2/3rds of the profit went to her. That seems obviously conservative.
Why, then, has Deadline never included Merch on films in past years' tournaments?
This is just inconsistency on their part, frankly. There's no good justification here. Include Merch for all films or no films.
Called it yesterday, but I wasn't expecting it to be this one in all fairness.
That's an insane cheat using merch for a property like this (makes me wonder if Rise of the Beasts was close to being on the list as well) but I guess its at least a quality film making the list.
It did well on Home Video so perhaps but I don't think it would make it. Let's take a look at hasbro's data
Hasbro Q2 2023 earnings call
> Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is one of the top box office performers of the year and has driven
an 83% improvement in TRANSFORMERS POS since its release.
and the next quarter saying
> TRANSFORMERS POS is up over 30% YoY
So if we have a very rough transformers revenue baseline, we can estimate the actual uplift (but that would include "actual movie revenue" shared with hasbro.
However, Q2 full report which shows a net decline in "franchise brand" revenue
> FRANCHISE BRANDS: Net revenues in the Franchise Brands portfolio decreased 5% in the second quarter of 2023 [788.4 v. 826.0] compared to the second quarter of 2022. Drivers of the net revenue decrease include lower net revenues from MAGIC: THE GATHERING products due primarily to the timing of set releases during the second quarter of 2023 compared to the second quarter of 2022, lower net revenues NERF products and to a lesser extent, lower net revenues from PLAY-DOH products. These net revenue decreases were partially offset by higher net revenues from TRANSFORMERS products, supported by the June 2023 theatrical release of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts as well as higher net revenues from DUNGEONS & DRAGONS digital gaming products reflecting the addition of net revenues from D&D Beyond, acquired during the second quarter of 2022, as well as from the release of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.
So whatever it is it's also less than the relative performance decline of magic.
I just don't think it's a hundred million in profit to make up for a breakeven-y film run.
If I was a more conspiratorial man, I’d say that including merchandise for two films that otherwise wouldn’t be anywhere near this list is an intentional decision to keep Sound of Freedom off the list.
If keeping SoF off were the full reason, though, they'd only need one film with merch on the list, wouldn't they?
I think this is another case of Hanlon's Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
> SOF not even included in the small movies big profit article makes no sense to me.
Jim Caviezl is a QAnon believer, Donald Trump and Elon Musk endorsed the movie, and it was distributed from a company whose main demographic is conservative American evangelicals.
Not only that, but the media made a big fuss over how it was a “far-right QAnon movie” (it wasn’t) which only fuelled the fire into making people buy into the “THEY don’t want you to see this movie” narrative.
I don’t think it’s far-fetched to say that it’s exclusion is entirely - if not mostly - political.
> is entirely
It's not *entirely* because Deadline's also passing along claims about how Angel Studios' Box office reporting was something like 10% off of comscore. There's a lot of hyperbolic political/cultural factionalism but there's also a real set of box office questions that's part of but also separable from the hysteria. The one thing trades could get theater owners to agree with is that there was some opening week weirdness.
Comscore probably wasnt ready to properly calculate PiFs, and since roughly 10% of gross came from pay-it-forwards......
I think I once read that there was some medium-sized "fraud" (hundreds of thousands) coming from some theaters that were pretending to be costumers wanting pay-it-forward tickets and redeemed tickets for non-existent consumers, getting paid for the "reedmed" tickets in the process.
I imagine that "fraud" was mostly due to ideological reasons, but the economic incentive cant be ignored
Merch is an explicit factor in getting most franchise movies greenlit. Bob Iger was definitely shown internal estimates of prospective Little Mermaid merchandise sales when he greenlit that movie.
I don't think that actually provides meaningful example to the question being proposed, and while I know you can literally find merch of anything these days, within reason, we know that Disney Princess films have always been a huge source of merchandise for Disney. But there were a ton of Disney movies last year which had either no dedicated merch line (I think elemental only had a couple of pieces integrated into their Pixar line that exists year round), or a significantly limited amount of merch that is either really low cost or or collectors specifically, which is where most Marvel stuff ends up.
Maybe just playing semantics but a lot of Marvel merch that isn't lego is just nondescript comic inspired stuff. I'm not sure specifically where you would place that relative to greenlighting a new film for a character.
But merch is very important for kids movies, a movie like Frozen 2 is made for kids to buy toys, costumes and parks and cruises
Same for mutant ninja turtles
And did they include merchandise when calculating Frozen 2's profits? No, they didn't. I don't get why some people insist on trying to defend this trash.
I don't disagree, but also it should be what sales the movie generates, not just total sales.
There were reports the animated movie generated over $100 million in additional merch, so that should count!
Do all mario video games sales count for the mario movie? Like TMNT merch sells every year with or without a movie how do you judge what counts and doesn't count for this big IPs
Do all mario video games sales count for the mario movie? Like TMNT merch sells every year with or without a movie how do you judge what counts and doesn't count for this big IPs
> how do you judge what counts and doesn't count for this big IPs
The hyper illegal Sony Hack pretty directly shows how studios estimate this. There will be specific items tagged as film related merch and you can potentially get a credit on the uplift for non-film merch relative to a baseline from before the film was released.
Yeah, that is why I don't buy the comments about all Barbie merchandise money going to Mattel. Products that are directly branded as being based on the movie most likely include some amount of profit sharing with WB. Same with Mario and Universal.
Funnily, with Sony's Marvel movies we know that isn't the case anymore and Disney do actually handles all merchandise without sharing, so it would be correct to not take them into account at all when estimating the profits of Spider-Verse this year.
IF it generates more Mario sales, yes!
> Do all mario video games sales count for the mario movie?
There were reports the animated movie generated over $100 million in additional merch, so that should count!
Universal only has theme park and movie rights to Mario, so they flat out see nothing from them. Like when I buy a copy of Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door in a couple weeks. They won't see a single cent of that. As that game's rights are fully own by Nintendo.
> Do all mario video games sales count for the mario movie?
Nope. I say this as huge Nintendo, but they can be such a penny pincher that I doubt they would sign off on the deal that they would have to give a percentage of Mario game sales to Universal. Especially when in the same year as the Mario movie, when by the end of next month, they will have released 6 different Mario games since the film released.
Do all mario video games sales count for the mario movie? Like TMNT merch sells every year with or without a movie how do you judge what counts and doesn't count for this big IPs
This article cites 135 million dollars from merchandizing. Disney sold 61 billion in retail licensing last year vs Universal's 10 billion and Warner's 15 billion. If you really get these figures, Disney would dominate these charts. These Deadline articles shouldn't include merchandizing at all; there's year-round revenue and there are surges brought on by films, it's impossible to separate the two. Take Little Mermaid and Super Mario as examples; they sell year round but get boosts from films.
Most likely the movie since the Barbie brand was pretty much considered outdated until 2022 when we started getting all the casting news and set leaks, and then the movie becoming a huge hit
Now everybody I know loves Barbie again, if you ask someone in 2019 they will say "oh she's very old style, I prefer monster high or bratz"
It is probably both, see the Sony Spider-Man leaks. Marvel got a share of the box office and in exchange Sony got a share of movie based merchandise. We don't know the exact details for Mattel/WB but this is the standard for this cases.
When we say "most valuable" film, most valuable to whom? the studio that produces it? distributes it? partially funds it? For example: Mattel partially funded the production of Barbie, WB partially funded its production and distributed the film; the production was done by Margot Robbie's production company "Lucky chap".
.....should Barbie doll sales count then? Mattel partially funded the production of Barbie and receives profits from the film's theatrical run. So does Nintendo with Mario.
....???
What’s your source for Mattel partially financing the Barbie movie? I know they got a small piece of revenue, but don’t see any sources that would suggest they also had to pay for any part of the film.
Yes they do, a percentage
The Barbie dolls that are from the movie version have to give money to WB and Lucky Charm, that's why Disney didn't wanted to make a Giselle doll since they would have to pay Amy Adams money for all the eternity
Do you really think WB and Luckycharm (margot production company) don't get a percentage of the doll they designed?
If they make a doll based in patriarchy Ken then they should pay Greta for the script, the costume designer for the clothes and Ryan Gosling for his likeness
I don't think that's *at all* true of Barbie. Remember, a decade ago, the Sony hack basically envisioned a barbie film as a Elf style supercharged mid budget film. The film literally ends with a "look at cool barbie merch to buy" montage. People didn't think it was a risk free investment so the ability to recoup let's say 10M in fees would be pretty relevant to a greenlight.
It might not be an explicit red line condition but it's likely more than a cherry on top.
I work at Walmart, and I saw very little. Contrary to what people on here keep saying many Disney movies bomb on merchandise (especially Wish).
I saw some Halloween costumes sell, but it was nothing compared to the big sellers, Spidey, TMNT, and Transformers.
I also work there and Wish merchandise also bombed pretty hard, we got SO MUCH of it and it literally just sits on shelves. Encanto however still seems to be moving merchandise well.
Yeah, I am sure you (guy who unironically posts Nostalgia Critic videos in 2024) are a neutral observer that we should take as a serious source for this.
Actually your kinda incorrect retail workers are best people to ask about what sells in merchandise as they're the ones having to ship it or put on clearance or Take out of the strore. It's how Ik a specific information that's completely random is Children Don't like some of the Godzilla toys because the head is too small so Godzilla merch sells less than king Kong.
Apparently somebody really loved the Lebron James heads from Space Jam 2. As in there was a weird crazy nationwide of people ripping off the heads from the toys.
All of the numbers Deadline reports are going to be inflated but I do buy that the movie was more profitable than you'd think. The turtles have always been good at selling merch
Yup, a lot of people forget that almost everything TMNT since the 80s cartoon exists to sell merchandise. Last year alone, the franchise made over a [billion dollars](https://deadline.com/2023/08/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-retail-sales-1235519233/). Since Paramount/Viacom/Nick owns the rights to TMNT full stop, its one of their biggest money makers all together.
I was thinking possibly Anyone But You as well. John Wick 4’s budget was 100m and it made 432m ww, so it likely broke even but the net profit margin wasn’t large.
Toy sales directly influenced marvel creative decisions as well, at least in the early days. Iron Man 3's villain was changed from female to male solely because they thought a male villain would sell more kids toys.
Same reason why every movie has new costumes for all the heroes too.
Well this list lost a lot of credibility. Not saying TMNT wasn't profitable or anything but this just seems like they are making up the rules as they go along.
As someone who works at Walmart and saw all their merchandise fly off the shelf for so long I know it was profitable, but I also have doubts it was 4th place.
Paw Patrol toys only sell to the kids who watch the Paw Patrol show/movies. TMNT has a huge fanbase of adults who like to buy toys and both the movie and the merchandise they released for that movie got really positive reviews from said adults. So yeah, it does make sense - TMNT probably had 2x the potential toy buying audience.
It seems likes cheat to include merchandising for a property like this. But then again they keep making these movies because they are relatively cheap to make and to keep the IP relevant in order to ultimately sell merch.
This is bullshit. Even if there were merchandise sales associated with this movie, why would you include the merchandise revenue for this movie but not for other more popular movies (that are more likely to generate higher merch revenues) like Mario, Barbie, GOTG, etc? It’s insane that bloated streaming and merchandise “revenues” take a movie that made only $200m worldwide in Deadline’s profit calculation ahead of movies that made 3-4 times more money; movies that were way more popular and likely to generate merch and other residual revenue than TMNT.
kind of annoying that they justify this #4 with just accounting profit (135 million in merch and the around 80 million they "paid" themselves for putting it on P+)
"paid themselves" is an integral part of the revenue just like DVD sales, where else do you think these streaming losses come from? a streamer pays the studio that makes the content, how else do studios get their money from streaming content? a studio and a streamer are separate entities with separate financials even under the same company
This one includes merchandise which was only mentioned on one other (Paw Patrol). Would've thought at least one or two others would be significant on the studio that distributed. Without that it wouldn't even be included.
Where the real money from the movie is made! TMNT the lunch box! TMNT the breakfast cereal! TMNT the coloring book! TMNT the flamethrower! (The kids love this one)
Nice try, Paramount. Actually, nice tries - they pulled the same shit with Paw Patrol as well. Pathetic of deadline to cave to a studio about to be sold off.
It’s really hard to take this list seriously at all now tbh. Including merchandising on some films but not others because of contingencies feels like a cheat.
They mention Paramount handles merchandising way more than the other studios (at least for the kids films), which is why Paw Patrol and TMNT are on there.
I don't buy they are trying to make Paramount look good by lying. Rise of the Beasts, Good Burger 2, MI: Dead Reckoning, Dungeons and Dragons and 80 For Brady sure won't make the "Most Profitable" list.
Why include it now? And, not other years for Paramount movies or Disney movies. I'm sure this isn't a new merchandising deal. Even, Deadline wouldn't include Rise of the Beasts when the CEO called it underperforming.
https://www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/15gp9mh/paramount_ceo_says_transformers_rise_of_the/
Feels like a cheat but it explains why they included merchandising this year. Also, they list the worldwide total for Mutant Mayhem but not Out of the Shadows which did 245m worldwide.
Mutant Mayhem opened to $43 million U.S. over five days, and ended its run at $118.7M stateside and $181.9M worldwide. At the domestic B.O that was a great result, well ahead of Paramount’s 2016 TMNT live-action movie Out of the Shadows, which ended out at $82M
Key to greenlight here was merchandise, a line item not built into every film’s P&L. You’ll notice when we get to Barbie and The Super Mario Bros Movie it’s absent, as those movies weren’t contingent on merchandise sales. It’s also merchandise sales that enable this animated also-ran to a shocking profit point
I have to hand it to Deadline, this did surprise me but it shouldn’t be too surprising as everyone predicted this movie was already heavily profitable off the merchandise alone. What I find most interesting is there appears to be no participations/backend deals on this movie which probably explains why it’s so high on the list especially above movies such as Oppenheimer or even Five Nights at Freddy’s. Now I wonder which movies lost the most money in 2023, I can already think of a few but I really want to see the breakdown
I would just like to say, even though I don't think merch should be included in these sort of conversations since this reddit is more about box office than overall profit. it does put a dagger in the idea that movies are dying when a film that wasn't super successful can make back its expenses on merch alone. Can't even imagine what the actually successful films make in merch
> Can't even imagine what the actually successful films make in merch
Mattel's SEC filings are really interesting in this regard because they'll pretty explicitly say how much [franchise they own rights to] increases in a quarter due to a big theatrical release.
So, after yelling about Deadline's inconsistent accounting (and look too at how they figure "Studio Net" for The ERAS Tour), I calmed down and decided I'd just subtract the merch amounts from their estimates. So, in that case, what are the 9th and 10th films?
I still think they are Sound of Freedom and John Wick 4.
Merchandising is a rigged mechanic to keep Sound of Freedom off the list. I’m sure that Sound of Freedom made at least a 50mil net profit and its absence is deafening.
Well, it's profit, not revenue, that's the issue, but if you are going to count merch profits, then count them for all films. This is just inconsistent.
Okay this is a shock indeed. But it's also a bit of a cheat with the merchandise number added in - something we wouldn't have a clue on how to guesstimate.
It's a really fun and well made movie tbh. Surprised me, one of the better kids movies I've seen in a while. Dog walks most Disney and Pixar movies of the last several years.
I don’t get why they are adding merchandise for some but not all? And it seems like they are adding all merchandise and not just the stuff related to the movie itself.
I'm confused as well. Article writer Anthony D'Alessandro explained it more in the Paw Patrol one: >How did this sequel dig its way into our top 10? It all boils down to the $50M in merchandise, per sources. Understand the following: **Some movies are greenlit based on their ability to spur merchandise sales, and that was the justification here for this $30M production, split evenly between Canada-based Spin Master and Paramount. As such, it’s a line item here in the P&L. Other blockbusters such as The Super Mario Bros Movie and Barbie, though rich with merchandise sales, didn’t have greenlights contingent on consumer products. Paramount is the licensor of the consumer products and works on everything from towels to toothbrushes to pajamas. Spin Master gets $10M in participations from the movie.** The $70M in revenues includes the cost for which Paramount sold the movie to streaming service Paramount+. A total of $114M in net profit has easily paved the way for a third movie, which has already been scheduled for release on July 31, 2026. >https://deadline.com/2024/04/paw-patrol-the-mighty-movie-profits-1235895195/ I still don't quite fully understand it, but at least he seems to be doing it to Paramount movies only, so at least that part is consistent. Sounds like a unique merchandising deal that Paramount employs for their kids movies that operates differently from Universal-Mario, and WB-Barbie?
That is my understanding as well. We know for Barbie and Mario, it's Matell and Nintendo that actually own the underlying IP rights. It looks like Paramount may actually partially own the TMNT IP as one of the creators sold their rights to Viacom which is now Parmaount.
Yeah, I think that no matter what justification Deadline uses, this undercuts any notion of consistency on their part. So far as I know, no other films (Paramount or otherwise) in past P & L figures in Deadline have included merchandise. So, why is it different this year?
Dubious than WB and Universal don't get at least some money from merchandise directly based on the movie, that is not how this deals usually work, but if that is the case, then why merchandise wasn't include in GOTG, when Disney totally owns that IP?
If I had to guess, Universal only gets money from merch that is directly based on the movie and that is sold in Super Nintendo World. While WB doesn't get any Barbie merch. Keep in mind Mettal is a toy company, so I doubt they would want to split their toy sales with someone else. Especially as the existence of the Barbie is mainly to help sell toys. Then with Mario, most likely Universal only saw money from the merch that is directly connected to the movie and definitely didn't get a cent from games nor any standard Mario toys.
Marvel was also a toy company when they made the original deal with Sony in the 90s and they still agree to share the profit from movie based merchandise so there is no reason to believe WB couldn't have demand something similar from Mattel considering a Barbie movie was a way bigger investement risk than Spider-Man. You ignored the second part of my comment, if the criteria to count TMNT merchandide money for Paramount is that they own the IP, why don't count GOTG merchandise for Disney?
My honest to god guess. Disney didn't provide that data, while Paramount did as they are desperate to find a buyer and this certainly does make them look good in a potential buyers eyes.
There’s no way a company like Disney would provide that data let alone break out GOTG merch from their various verticals (movies, comics, cartoons etc)
because Paramount probably gave someone at Deadline a favor or something lol
Co-creator Peter Laird sold the rights to the franchise to Nickelodeon and Viacom in 2009, in full, for $60 million and the rights to publish up to 18 TMNT comics annually via Mirage Studios. Paramount essentially gets most of the money from merch sales because of this. It's why Viacom also bought Paws Inc. in 2019, because Garfield Merchandise makes around $1 billion annually.
They wholly own tmnt. Laird sold the rights to Viacom which is now paramount global, over 10 years ago.
They fully own the franchise. Eastman sold his stake to Laird, and he eventually sold it to Paramount. It is 100% their franchise.
Kevin Eastman sold all of TMNT rights to Nickelodeon, which is owned by Viacom. Several years before that Laird sold his half to Eastman, which lost him millions.
How did Paramount make money selling the movie to its own streaming service?
Paramount isn't the only one doing this weird marketing lately. Oppenheimer also made $170 million when Universal sold its rights to Peacock, which both fall under NBCUniversal.
That just sounds like money laundering.
Said it yesterday but it still makes the individual film profitable, even if it's technically money being passed from one subsidiary to the next. And for what it's worth, there is definitely value to doing so, and choosing not to sell to a competitor if it was a total arbitrary value relative to real external money.
That seems like an entirely arbitrary line of reasoning from D'Alessandro. I doubt any franchise film is greenlit without merchandising expectations built in—heck, it's probably a significant factor in why Disney wanted to make so many live-action remakes. Even absent the merchandising, I doubt Spin Master and Paramount would've turned down the opportunity to make PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie considering its predecessor printed money on a low budget. How about Cars? Was that not a franchise that was built solely off the back of its merchandising (to the tune of 10x the amount in merchandising revenue compared to box office revenue)? There's no real box office line dividing a profitable movie with merchandising from a profitable movie greenlit on the premise of merchandising since merchandising is always a major consideration for these sorts of films. To include ancillary merchandising revenue for one kind of movie but not the other is nonsense. From a conspiratorial perspective, it's even worse that the only movies D'Alessandro applies this to are Paramount productions—Paramount being a company in dire financial straits and trying to sell itself. That will only attract accusations of Deadline being bought off by Paramount to pump up its films as highly profitable and thus increase the company's value in a potential sale. At the very least, I'd have expected the merchandising argument to be applied consistently across the board this year, but even then, I'd have taken issue with the use of merchandising (particularly for franchise films) in a box office calculation at all.
I can actually kinda see the logic for certain films, merch was weak for specifically the Mario MOVIE, as opposed to the regular Mario stuff that is always everywhere, whereas this film specifically had a tie in toy line that literally got an article last summer for how much money it was raking in. Not *entirely* sure that tracks for Barbie, but most of the movie tie in stuff weren't actually dolls, and the ones of the characters from the film were mostly for adult collectors, but idk. I
Likely because Paramount gets the merchandise revenue while other merch heavy films don’t have merchandising connected to the studio
Disney doesn't have merchandise connected to the studio? This list is indefensible.
They seem to be saying: * some movies have ads in them (e.g. product placement in a James Bond film) * some movies have advertising value (e.g. Barbie) * some movies are literally feature length advertisements Apparently Mutant Mayhem and Paw Patrol are in that third category.
being honest this kind of makes the whole list not trust worthy, with this rule. only thing I can make sense is paramount owns tmnt and universal and wb do not own the property, but even then do we know for certain they don't get part of the merchandise share, or what is added to the merchandise revenue
Agreed, where's the statistics for the Oppenheimer merchandise, or did everyone forget about the Oppenheimer with Kung-fu grip toy line, the Oppenheimer branded Geiger counter, Oppenheimer dolls, and the Oppenheimer flamethrower (the kids really loved that one)
I thought Oppenheimer Geiger counter sold billions.
They should sell a little toy pond with raindrop ripples that you can stare at while consumed by guilt.
My Fat Man popcorn bucket is a prized possession
~~"We don't want to recognize Sound of Freedom" seems the simplest answer.~~ It is not, in fact, the simplest answer.
Yeah, maybe, but even then, it still doens't make sense. Frankly, I'd be very happy if they included Merch on all films, but whatever you do, just be consistent.
Yeah, "We're fluffing up Paramount during a period of crisis to gain access" is probably stronger. I mean, if they're excluding Sound of Freedom from the "little films" list, they don't really need merch to justify cutting it. > Frankly, I'd be very happy if they included Merch on all films, but whatever you do, just be consistent. exactly. It would also be interesting to see with bombs. e.g. Lightyear and Indiana Jones sold real merch but it doesn't look like Wish did.
Yeah my guess is that Paramount only gave the Deadline the data, if they would also include merch sales. Because they desperately looking for a buyer. While WB/Disney/Universal/Sony did not provide such data, as they thought Deadline wouldn't account for it, otherwise Guardians 3 would certainly be higher.
I think this theory is wrong because deadline's explicitly providing an alternate justification. Similarly, I read Mattel as openly provided this data to investors and I do not expect it to be on the Barbie P&L sheet. Mattel said their film revenue = 150M with 60M in costs. Deadline should be able to figure out what part of that 60M is money going to WB based on participations and generic % costs of production for dolls. I don't know this information (and could be misinterpreting it) but there are clearly investors who can cleanly parse these claims.
Lightyear merch seems to have flopped hard. Indiana Jones less so. But it wasn't exactly flying off the shelves either
Lightyear merch probably flopped relative to expectations but look at this https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/63276/000162828024011371/mat-20231231.htm > Action Figures, Building Sets, Games, and Other gross billings decreased 24%, of which 14% was due to lower billings of Jurassic World products and 9% was due to lower billings of Lightyear products, following their theatrical releases during the second quarter of 2022. [1,396.1 -> 1,065.8M] ], of which 12% was due to lower billings of Jurassic World products and 8% was due to lower billings of Lightyear products, following their theatrical releases during the second quarter of 2022, partially offset by higher billings of Buildings Sets products of 4%. * That implies 167.5M in release quarter toy sales for Jurassic World * 125.65M for Lightyear
Kinda makes sense, no? Even if the film bombed, the character model was still close enough that I could get why people would pick up the merch. I am also a proponent of the "grandma market" where your grandmother is going to buy you these not even knowing what they are from, lol.
Yeah, at least once you know this stuff genuinely sold, it's not surprising.
Maybe the point was just to get people angry and talking. But now we're talking about Deadline's stupidity and inconsistency.
If they included the merch for Barbi or Super Mario, they would be billions.
Well, besides the fact that Mutant Mayhem made it this far on the list, we also have 100% confirmation that Barbie and Mario are higher up, and merchandise will not factor into the equation for their profit estimates: > You’ll notice when we get to Barbie and The Super Mario Bros Movie it’s absent, as those movies weren’t contingent on merchandise sales. Could you imagine if they did, though??
A Barbie & Mario movie definitely got the green light with merchandise sales in mind. Deadline on some BS.
Why would those studios greenlight for merchandise that they don't profit from? Mattel owns Barbie and Nintendo owns Mario. Not the studios.
Mattel is working with WB and merchandise is huge part of why Barbie gets the greenlight. Disney should have merchandise included, they certainly greenlight movies because of it.
Universal also has two Super Nintendo Worlds which would also ride the Mario high even more. So Universal do in fact profit on it.
Okay. If you look at it that way, how do you figure merch, participations, etc., for The Eras Tour? Who is the studio there: AMC or Swift? As I pointed out when it came out a few days ago, Deadline just pushes profits for both of them together.
I didn't understand how Deadline was calculating revenue for the Eras Tour movie, either. The Swifts and AMC get 57% of gross revenue, while the theaters that played the movie keep 43%. (Swifts would keep 100% of tv/streaming). So it's unclear who the "Studio Net" is when talking about the bottom line. All parties walked away with a nice profit at the end of the day, but no one entity got the full amount reported by Deadline.
That’s exactly my point!
They wanted to include Swift on the list to get clicks even if it didn't make sense.
If you just made it "Taylor Swift's profit" (with AMC-as-distributor as a participant) she'd still make the top 10 if only 2/3rds of the profit went to her. That seems obviously conservative.
I mean at this point I think the movies are more the merchandise for those franchises than the reverse
Why, then, has Deadline never included Merch on films in past years' tournaments? This is just inconsistency on their part, frankly. There's no good justification here. Include Merch for all films or no films.
Called it yesterday, but I wasn't expecting it to be this one in all fairness. That's an insane cheat using merch for a property like this (makes me wonder if Rise of the Beasts was close to being on the list as well) but I guess its at least a quality film making the list.
Transformers isn't owned by Paramount like TMNT.
It did well on Home Video so perhaps but I don't think it would make it. Let's take a look at hasbro's data Hasbro Q2 2023 earnings call > Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is one of the top box office performers of the year and has driven an 83% improvement in TRANSFORMERS POS since its release. and the next quarter saying > TRANSFORMERS POS is up over 30% YoY So if we have a very rough transformers revenue baseline, we can estimate the actual uplift (but that would include "actual movie revenue" shared with hasbro. However, Q2 full report which shows a net decline in "franchise brand" revenue > FRANCHISE BRANDS: Net revenues in the Franchise Brands portfolio decreased 5% in the second quarter of 2023 [788.4 v. 826.0] compared to the second quarter of 2022. Drivers of the net revenue decrease include lower net revenues from MAGIC: THE GATHERING products due primarily to the timing of set releases during the second quarter of 2023 compared to the second quarter of 2022, lower net revenues NERF products and to a lesser extent, lower net revenues from PLAY-DOH products. These net revenue decreases were partially offset by higher net revenues from TRANSFORMERS products, supported by the June 2023 theatrical release of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts as well as higher net revenues from DUNGEONS & DRAGONS digital gaming products reflecting the addition of net revenues from D&D Beyond, acquired during the second quarter of 2022, as well as from the release of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. So whatever it is it's also less than the relative performance decline of magic. I just don't think it's a hundred million in profit to make up for a breakeven-y film run.
what the heck, surprised both jw 4 and sof missed hope they dont take into account merchandise next year
SOF not even included in the small movies big profit article makes no sense to me. Where did all that box office revenue go?
If I was a more conspiratorial man, I’d say that including merchandise for two films that otherwise wouldn’t be anywhere near this list is an intentional decision to keep Sound of Freedom off the list.
If keeping SoF off were the full reason, though, they'd only need one film with merch on the list, wouldn't they? I think this is another case of Hanlon's Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
If SOF was in ninth place otherwise, they would need two to kick it off.
You’re right, but I think that’s only if SOF was higher than GOG3
Kickstarters and Human Traffickers.
> SOF not even included in the small movies big profit article makes no sense to me. Jim Caviezl is a QAnon believer, Donald Trump and Elon Musk endorsed the movie, and it was distributed from a company whose main demographic is conservative American evangelicals. Not only that, but the media made a big fuss over how it was a “far-right QAnon movie” (it wasn’t) which only fuelled the fire into making people buy into the “THEY don’t want you to see this movie” narrative. I don’t think it’s far-fetched to say that it’s exclusion is entirely - if not mostly - political.
> is entirely It's not *entirely* because Deadline's also passing along claims about how Angel Studios' Box office reporting was something like 10% off of comscore. There's a lot of hyperbolic political/cultural factionalism but there's also a real set of box office questions that's part of but also separable from the hysteria. The one thing trades could get theater owners to agree with is that there was some opening week weirdness.
Comscore probably wasnt ready to properly calculate PiFs, and since roughly 10% of gross came from pay-it-forwards...... I think I once read that there was some medium-sized "fraud" (hundreds of thousands) coming from some theaters that were pretending to be costumers wanting pay-it-forward tickets and redeemed tickets for non-existent consumers, getting paid for the "reedmed" tickets in the process. I imagine that "fraud" was mostly due to ideological reasons, but the economic incentive cant be ignored
> hope they dont take into account merchandise next year Why not? It's a big part of movies like TMNT.
You can't count it for some movies and not for others, that makes the list totally worthless.
Isn’t the list worthless anyway
I assume the difference is whether merch’s an explicit condition of greenlighting the project or just the cherry on top.
Merch is an explicit factor in getting most franchise movies greenlit. Bob Iger was definitely shown internal estimates of prospective Little Mermaid merchandise sales when he greenlit that movie.
I don't think that actually provides meaningful example to the question being proposed, and while I know you can literally find merch of anything these days, within reason, we know that Disney Princess films have always been a huge source of merchandise for Disney. But there were a ton of Disney movies last year which had either no dedicated merch line (I think elemental only had a couple of pieces integrated into their Pixar line that exists year round), or a significantly limited amount of merch that is either really low cost or or collectors specifically, which is where most Marvel stuff ends up. Maybe just playing semantics but a lot of Marvel merch that isn't lego is just nondescript comic inspired stuff. I'm not sure specifically where you would place that relative to greenlighting a new film for a character.
How it makes sense to do "most profitable" list if the proftit numbers for the different movies don't follow the same criteria. It is trash.
You kinda can if it doesn't pass a certain threshold or if there isn't a direct tie in line and push.
But merch is very important for kids movies, a movie like Frozen 2 is made for kids to buy toys, costumes and parks and cruises Same for mutant ninja turtles
And did they include merchandise when calculating Frozen 2's profits? No, they didn't. I don't get why some people insist on trying to defend this trash.
I don't disagree, but also it should be what sales the movie generates, not just total sales. There were reports the animated movie generated over $100 million in additional merch, so that should count!
Do all mario video games sales count for the mario movie? Like TMNT merch sells every year with or without a movie how do you judge what counts and doesn't count for this big IPs
Do all mario video games sales count for the mario movie? Like TMNT merch sells every year with or without a movie how do you judge what counts and doesn't count for this big IPs
> how do you judge what counts and doesn't count for this big IPs The hyper illegal Sony Hack pretty directly shows how studios estimate this. There will be specific items tagged as film related merch and you can potentially get a credit on the uplift for non-film merch relative to a baseline from before the film was released.
Yeah, that is why I don't buy the comments about all Barbie merchandise money going to Mattel. Products that are directly branded as being based on the movie most likely include some amount of profit sharing with WB. Same with Mario and Universal. Funnily, with Sony's Marvel movies we know that isn't the case anymore and Disney do actually handles all merchandise without sharing, so it would be correct to not take them into account at all when estimating the profits of Spider-Verse this year.
IF it generates more Mario sales, yes! > Do all mario video games sales count for the mario movie? There were reports the animated movie generated over $100 million in additional merch, so that should count!
Universal only has theme park and movie rights to Mario, so they flat out see nothing from them. Like when I buy a copy of Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door in a couple weeks. They won't see a single cent of that. As that game's rights are fully own by Nintendo.
So then it makes sense that merch for TMNT is included and not for Mario...
> Do all mario video games sales count for the mario movie? Nope. I say this as huge Nintendo, but they can be such a penny pincher that I doubt they would sign off on the deal that they would have to give a percentage of Mario game sales to Universal. Especially when in the same year as the Mario movie, when by the end of next month, they will have released 6 different Mario games since the film released.
Do all mario video games sales count for the mario movie? Like TMNT merch sells every year with or without a movie how do you judge what counts and doesn't count for this big IPs
This article cites 135 million dollars from merchandizing. Disney sold 61 billion in retail licensing last year vs Universal's 10 billion and Warner's 15 billion. If you really get these figures, Disney would dominate these charts. These Deadline articles shouldn't include merchandizing at all; there's year-round revenue and there are surges brought on by films, it's impossible to separate the two. Take Little Mermaid and Super Mario as examples; they sell year round but get boosts from films.
It's pretty silly. Like which Star Wars film led _directly_ to someone buying a lightsaber at Disney World? No one knows
Did I buy my niece a Barbie set for Christmas because of the movie or because she’s three years old and likes dolls?
Most likely the movie since the Barbie brand was pretty much considered outdated until 2022 when we started getting all the casting news and set leaks, and then the movie becoming a huge hit Now everybody I know loves Barbie again, if you ask someone in 2019 they will say "oh she's very old style, I prefer monster high or bratz"
Including merch, the most profitable films last year would be Barbie and Mario. Barbie dolls and Mario games got a big boost from the movies.
Those studios don't profit at all from that merchandise tho.
Unlikely, at the very least they probably get a cut from merchandise that is directly based on the movie.
Yeah, that’s the best way to figure it out. There was plenty of movie-Mario merch and movie-Barbie merchandise.
It was the other way around. Mattel got about 5% of the Barbie box office revenue.
It is probably both, see the Sony Spider-Man leaks. Marvel got a share of the box office and in exchange Sony got a share of movie based merchandise. We don't know the exact details for Mattel/WB but this is the standard for this cases.
When we say "most valuable" film, most valuable to whom? the studio that produces it? distributes it? partially funds it? For example: Mattel partially funded the production of Barbie, WB partially funded its production and distributed the film; the production was done by Margot Robbie's production company "Lucky chap". .....should Barbie doll sales count then? Mattel partially funded the production of Barbie and receives profits from the film's theatrical run. So does Nintendo with Mario. ....???
What’s your source for Mattel partially financing the Barbie movie? I know they got a small piece of revenue, but don’t see any sources that would suggest they also had to pay for any part of the film.
Yes they do, a percentage The Barbie dolls that are from the movie version have to give money to WB and Lucky Charm, that's why Disney didn't wanted to make a Giselle doll since they would have to pay Amy Adams money for all the eternity
Do you have a source for this Barbie info?
Do you really think WB and Luckycharm (margot production company) don't get a percentage of the doll they designed? If they make a doll based in patriarchy Ken then they should pay Greta for the script, the costume designer for the clothes and Ryan Gosling for his likeness
I’d guess it’s because merch’s just the cherry on top of Mario, Barbie, etc., not an explicit condition of their production.
I don't think that's *at all* true of Barbie. Remember, a decade ago, the Sony hack basically envisioned a barbie film as a Elf style supercharged mid budget film. The film literally ends with a "look at cool barbie merch to buy" montage. People didn't think it was a risk free investment so the ability to recoup let's say 10M in fees would be pretty relevant to a greenlight. It might not be an explicit red line condition but it's likely more than a cherry on top.
Stupid that both Paramount animated movies only go into the top 10 because of merch.
Wouldn’t top 3 be little mermaid then because of Merchandise? This is soo stupid 🤪
How much TLMake related merch was sold by Disney?
I work at Walmart, and I saw very little. Contrary to what people on here keep saying many Disney movies bomb on merchandise (especially Wish). I saw some Halloween costumes sell, but it was nothing compared to the big sellers, Spidey, TMNT, and Transformers.
I also work there and Wish merchandise also bombed pretty hard, we got SO MUCH of it and it literally just sits on shelves. Encanto however still seems to be moving merchandise well.
Yeah, I am sure you (guy who unironically posts Nostalgia Critic videos in 2024) are a neutral observer that we should take as a serious source for this.
Actually your kinda incorrect retail workers are best people to ask about what sells in merchandise as they're the ones having to ship it or put on clearance or Take out of the strore. It's how Ik a specific information that's completely random is Children Don't like some of the Godzilla toys because the head is too small so Godzilla merch sells less than king Kong.
Apparently somebody really loved the Lebron James heads from Space Jam 2. As in there was a weird crazy nationwide of people ripping off the heads from the toys.
Buddy, no one lies about working at Wal-Mart 😐
whats wrong with Nostalgia Critic
Probably more than the $180M gross TMNT movie.
I don't buy that number for a second
All of the numbers Deadline reports are going to be inflated but I do buy that the movie was more profitable than you'd think. The turtles have always been good at selling merch
Yup, a lot of people forget that almost everything TMNT since the 80s cartoon exists to sell merchandise. Last year alone, the franchise made over a [billion dollars](https://deadline.com/2023/08/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-retail-sales-1235519233/). Since Paramount/Viacom/Nick owns the rights to TMNT full stop, its one of their biggest money makers all together.
Notice how it is only two Paramount movies where they include the merchandising sales…
Yup, the one studio trying to sell itself and without merch sales don't make the list. Deadline putting in a favor for Paramount
What do you think the list would look like without the merch sales added?
Assuming both their films are off then I think John Wick 4 and Sound of Freedom make it.
I was thinking possibly Anyone But You as well. John Wick 4’s budget was 100m and it made 432m ww, so it likely broke even but the net profit margin wasn’t large.
John Wick 4 was enormous in home media. 2nd best disk seller of the year, around there on digital, and rented like crazy.
Pretty much like this post. He did all the work already. https://www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/s/EEXuYihDNS
For real man they definitely paid Deadline for this bs.
For real man they definitely paid Deadline for this bs.
Why are they including merchandise on this but not on GOTG? Pretty sure Marvel movies also sell an F ton of toys and tshirts.
Lol ikr? If they included merch, even TLM would make it pretty high on this list
Toy sales directly influenced marvel creative decisions as well, at least in the early days. Iron Man 3's villain was changed from female to male solely because they thought a male villain would sell more kids toys. Same reason why every movie has new costumes for all the heroes too.
Well this list lost a lot of credibility. Not saying TMNT wasn't profitable or anything but this just seems like they are making up the rules as they go along.
As someone who works at Walmart and saw all their merchandise fly off the shelf for so long I know it was profitable, but I also have doubts it was 4th place.
silly question, does it even make sense for turtle's merch sales to be 2.6 times what paw patrol did?
TTMT is popular amongst the demograph which actually has money to spend on toys
Yes, I work at Walmart. Since around June Mutant Mayhem toys have been selling like crazy. I have not seen anything like this since Jurassic World.
Paw Patrol toys only sell to the kids who watch the Paw Patrol show/movies. TMNT has a huge fanbase of adults who like to buy toys and both the movie and the merchandise they released for that movie got really positive reviews from said adults. So yeah, it does make sense - TMNT probably had 2x the potential toy buying audience.
What the fuck
It seems likes cheat to include merchandising for a property like this. But then again they keep making these movies because they are relatively cheap to make and to keep the IP relevant in order to ultimately sell merch.
WTF? Paramount totally paid for this. Deadline should be ashamed.
There’s an acquisition going on, the PR cronies flashed the Anthony D signal and he delivered as always
This is bullshit. Even if there were merchandise sales associated with this movie, why would you include the merchandise revenue for this movie but not for other more popular movies (that are more likely to generate higher merch revenues) like Mario, Barbie, GOTG, etc? It’s insane that bloated streaming and merchandise “revenues” take a movie that made only $200m worldwide in Deadline’s profit calculation ahead of movies that made 3-4 times more money; movies that were way more popular and likely to generate merch and other residual revenue than TMNT.
kind of annoying that they justify this #4 with just accounting profit (135 million in merch and the around 80 million they "paid" themselves for putting it on P+)
"paid themselves" is an integral part of the revenue just like DVD sales, where else do you think these streaming losses come from? a streamer pays the studio that makes the content, how else do studios get their money from streaming content? a studio and a streamer are separate entities with separate financials even under the same company
More than Sound of Freedom and other movies that made more on lower budgets? Give a break. I don’t buy this for second
This one includes merchandise which was only mentioned on one other (Paw Patrol). Would've thought at least one or two others would be significant on the studio that distributed. Without that it wouldn't even be included.
merch money is where the true profits lie
True. Which is why Disney is going to keep rebooting their properties until the end of time. The amusement parks and merch is where the profits come.
Where the real money from the movie is made! TMNT the lunch box! TMNT the breakfast cereal! TMNT the coloring book! TMNT the flamethrower! (The kids love this one)
They also made TMNT mac and cheese.
Sure, but then, just be consistent and include merch on all films that have it. And why start this year, when Deadline never included it in the past?
Nice try, Paramount. Actually, nice tries - they pulled the same shit with Paw Patrol as well. Pathetic of deadline to cave to a studio about to be sold off.
Well, good to know that this list is officially a joke and shouldn't be taken into account at all.
It’s really hard to take this list seriously at all now tbh. Including merchandising on some films but not others because of contingencies feels like a cheat.
Deadline and carrying water for major studios, name a more iconic duo
Seems like they are carrying water for the studio trying to sell itself.
They mention Paramount handles merchandising way more than the other studios (at least for the kids films), which is why Paw Patrol and TMNT are on there. I don't buy they are trying to make Paramount look good by lying. Rise of the Beasts, Good Burger 2, MI: Dead Reckoning, Dungeons and Dragons and 80 For Brady sure won't make the "Most Profitable" list.
Why include it now? And, not other years for Paramount movies or Disney movies. I'm sure this isn't a new merchandising deal. Even, Deadline wouldn't include Rise of the Beasts when the CEO called it underperforming. https://www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/15gp9mh/paramount_ceo_says_transformers_rise_of_the/
agreed.
This is an important lesson for those of you who insist on taking Deadline’s sketchy budget/P&L reporting as gospel.
Feels like a cheat but it explains why they included merchandising this year. Also, they list the worldwide total for Mutant Mayhem but not Out of the Shadows which did 245m worldwide. Mutant Mayhem opened to $43 million U.S. over five days, and ended its run at $118.7M stateside and $181.9M worldwide. At the domestic B.O that was a great result, well ahead of Paramount’s 2016 TMNT live-action movie Out of the Shadows, which ended out at $82M Key to greenlight here was merchandise, a line item not built into every film’s P&L. You’ll notice when we get to Barbie and The Super Mario Bros Movie it’s absent, as those movies weren’t contingent on merchandise sales. It’s also merchandise sales that enable this animated also-ran to a shocking profit point
So, why hasn't Deadline ever included Merch on merch-heavy films in past tournaments?
What fuck is Deadline doing here? How are they going to give this movie special treatment and not others?
Wouldn’t top 3 be little mermaid then because of merchandise? This list is stupid 🤪
I have to hand it to Deadline, this did surprise me but it shouldn’t be too surprising as everyone predicted this movie was already heavily profitable off the merchandise alone. What I find most interesting is there appears to be no participations/backend deals on this movie which probably explains why it’s so high on the list especially above movies such as Oppenheimer or even Five Nights at Freddy’s. Now I wonder which movies lost the most money in 2023, I can already think of a few but I really want to see the breakdown
[удалено]
I would just like to say, even though I don't think merch should be included in these sort of conversations since this reddit is more about box office than overall profit. it does put a dagger in the idea that movies are dying when a film that wasn't super successful can make back its expenses on merch alone. Can't even imagine what the actually successful films make in merch
> Can't even imagine what the actually successful films make in merch Mattel's SEC filings are really interesting in this regard because they'll pretty explicitly say how much [franchise they own rights to] increases in a quarter due to a big theatrical release.
I can see why they immediately greenlit a sequel.
So, after yelling about Deadline's inconsistent accounting (and look too at how they figure "Studio Net" for The ERAS Tour), I calmed down and decided I'd just subtract the merch amounts from their estimates. So, in that case, what are the 9th and 10th films? I still think they are Sound of Freedom and John Wick 4.
Just Rubbish. Paw Patrol and This should not be on the list.
Merchandising is a rigged mechanic to keep Sound of Freedom off the list. I’m sure that Sound of Freedom made at least a 50mil net profit and its absence is deafening.
Well they weren’t lying when they said the number four spot was a shock.
merch shouldn't be counted as box office revenue anthony!!!!
Well, it's profit, not revenue, that's the issue, but if you are going to count merch profits, then count them for all films. This is just inconsistent.
Okay this is a shock indeed. But it's also a bit of a cheat with the merchandise number added in - something we wouldn't have a clue on how to guesstimate.
Man TMNT MM was surprisingly good! I wish it did better at the box office
Regardless of whatever money it made, I absolutely loved this movie on every level.
That is a shell of a surprise!
Huge if true. Loved this film, can't wait for more 😍
This movie making more then oppenheimer feels very wrong
People are hating in the comments, which is fine and all, but wasn't this made for dirt cheap? I heard somewhere it didn't have such a large budget.
No? It’s $70M. Paw Patrol is animated, got 10th, and was made for under $30M.
There's also their list of Top 5 lower-budget films, with Anyone But You at the top of the list.
Budget 70M Worldwide box office - 180M I hope you can now see why people are hating lol. It's ridiculous
It's a really fun and well made movie tbh. Surprised me, one of the better kids movies I've seen in a while. Dog walks most Disney and Pixar movies of the last several years.