>>81471958Distribution is based on the number of tickets sold; it can usually be assumed to be 50% of the total gross. The remainder is what is received by the studio and what, if anything, they would pay taxes on.
Big names often have percentages of this gross as part of their contracts - Zack Snyder for example made 10% of the gross of Man of Steel and will likely receive 10% of Batman v Superman - though these are rarely public; we only know about Snyder because he was paid 68 million in 2013 for his directing work, and it was the only work he did that year.
Again, percentages come out of the total gross, not what's left over at the end. Escalators - deals where the more a movie makes the higher the percentage key personnel receive - are also a thing.
>>81472007Movies with bad reputations tend to sell less merchandise even if they make big grosses; people feel they have to see it, but then don't feel inclined to buy the merch.
Licensing deals like Arby's meals or Happy Meal toys or whatever actually cost money to set up (which comes from the marketing budget) and pay a percentage per-sale over a certain number of sales (otherwise franchisees would risk bankrupting themselves and hurting the wider business every time they were told to sign up for the Green Lantern promo meals or Fantfourstick or whatever).
>>81472032The difficulty is that the franchise only exists because of Zack and Deborah Snyder. Their investment was key to getting the entire slate ready and moving, they're heavily into SS and WW, and will be as heavily into the following films unless they're bought out. Remember that 68 million? Welcome to Hollywood, this is how it works.
