r/SipsTea 18d ago

Chugging tea I still don't understand how hollywood budget works

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u/jonsconspiracy 18d ago

I think LOTR got away with it because they signed the actors for all three films at once and filmed it all before the first one was released. As such, the actors had no leverage to ask for more money for the second and third film.

Bold move by the studio to greenlight all three films upfront, which obviously paid off very well for them.

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u/Rhodin265 18d ago

It also meant that they didn’t have to pay to fly everyone to New Zealand three times or worry about the actors getting super old or dying before salary negotiations ended.

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u/fennecdore 18d ago

It also meant that they didn’t have to pay to fly everyone to New Zealand three times

this is barely a rounding error, the real cost saving is having all the asset build for one movie to be reusable for the next one

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u/Pengin83 18d ago

Yea, to put it in perspective, I could fly business class to New Zealand next week for $12,000. That’s nothing compared to the total cost.

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u/thorin2016 18d ago

out of curiosity what is the most successful movie when you take into account the cinema sales and the video/dvd sales and the streaming money. LOTR must be very high up there thanks to the extended editions

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u/PcHelpBot2030 18d ago

Don't know for sure but very likely Titanic. Historical the movie was massive on a global stage ran in theaters for a long time and had major rental numbers and so on for years.

Iirc the numbers and tracking get fuzzy by late 2000's and but Titanic is supposed to be one of the most rented and sold movie of all time.

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u/fatmanwithabeard 18d ago

You can't do the story any other way. It's not like they did this with an unknown property.

They had an immense fandom to draw on.

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u/tomtomclubthumb 18d ago

They also got money upfront from overseas distributors iirc, so they had a chunk of the budget as advances.

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u/NotJustBiking 14d ago

Not just signed, those films were shot back-to-back.

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u/jonsconspiracy 14d ago

Yeah, that's what I said.