Quote:
Originally Posted by
Andrew Merriweather 
This is possibly the worst semantics argument I've come across on the boards. We've gone from "the term production budget is vague" to "saying it made its budget back is confusing".
Jesus, who said "the term production budget is vague?" It's always been about the "making it back" part... because that is not what you actually mean.
What you mean is that the gross box office receipts are greater than the production expenses. I know that's what you actually mean now. I get it. No one is accusing you of otherwise.
And we all acknowledge that it is a meaningless metric that ignores tremendous expenses in marketing and distribution and the potentially greatest expense (depending on the success of the film)* in the percentage that goes to the theaters screening the films. No one is arguing that either. It seems to be the centerpiece of your point.
We can also, probably, agree that studios want to do more than recuperate all of those expenses. That they want to demonstrate enough profit to send their stock prices up so that they can swim in the money earned from their stock options.
I agreed with your first post. I just didn't think it went far enough. It seemed to be giving those two bombs credit for something they had not done: making their production budgets back. I knew you meant they hadn't recuperated all of their expenses (and certainly that they weren't profitable). But because of the vagaries of English and the inherent muddiness of big budget accounting, I pointed out that no, the studios probably had not seen enough revenue from the box office stream to cover their production expenses (this of course precludes their other revenue streams like licensing and product placement).
For that, you've insulted my intelligence and reading comprehension a few times. It's the internet. I bear you no ill will.
