>>77132469At the level of spending they had, very little.
Yes, they would have liked to make it all back in the first week; they only needed to make $10m to make the production budget and distribution costs back. As it is they made 10% of that on the first weekend (but they're unlikely to last the full 90 days most movies get), which is actually around 30% of the production cost. A lot of movies don't make 30% of production on their first weekend, but that's not really the point.
As with movies like Paranormal Activity, the distribution and profit models here differ from the standard models. In this case the low budget-wide release model is fairly unique among movies of this type; even the typical low budget movie (which are more usually art house or more intellectual fare) doesn't get 2000 screens - it tends to be a token showing or a full release because it's a prestige picture for the studio, aimed at award season. This is neither.
What this is doing is 'creating awareness'. The brand is fairly dead; but by creating anticipation and showing in about half the maximum number of screens they could be in, they're forcing an audience for the home video and tv markets, which means higher back-end profits. People will watch it because they remember the ads but they don't remember the movie, and nobody they know saw it. They'll impulse buy it through iTunes or whatever, without looking for a review; they'll sit and watch it over next time they're at home looking for something to do over the holidays, and that makes money because the distributors can charge the networks more for it, since it will get a higher audience share than most reruns. It may only work for one year, but it will almost certainly work. And, of course, even if they only ever showed it in the US (since it hasn't released internationally yet), and eve if they only ever made $10m from tv rights and home video sales, they'd still have made a profit. And of course, 10 years from now, they can reboot it.
