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Post #562622

Author
zombie84
Parent topic
3D STAR WARS for the masses...has ARRIVED!
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/562622/action/topic#562622
Date created
5-Feb-2012, 5:20 PM

The Clone War film didn't bomb in the financial sense, because it's obvious if you've seen the movie that it's budget was incredibly low. But it bombed in the sense that it was not only critically reviled, it was incredibly unpopular. It did virtually no business, despite a pretty heavy marketing campaign and the most popular, lucrative brand name backing it up. When a Star Wars film only does $35 million at the box-office and gets D- reviews, that's about as successful as the Holiday Special. Luckily, contrary to the initial intentions of the release, it turned out to not be very representative of the actual show, which is lightyears better. It's almost like they were trying to sully the shows rep by putting the worst episode ideas upfront, but of course the reality is that Lucas thought these episodes were a quality introduction to the series. Blarg.

As for 3D finances, I sort of broke this down on a page earlier, but it actually seems to me to be a bit of a challenge for Lucasfilm to make any large amount of profit. The cost of a film is usually it's production budget times two, and the 3D conversion costs at least $15 million, with a high-ball of about $30 million. That means it needs to make between $30 and $60 million just to break even, and between $50 and $90 million to be considered successful. Not necessarily impossible, but pretty hard--February openers rarely break the $30 million opening weekend, and most do about $15-20 million, settling on around $30-40 million by the time they go away. They also have the luxury of a home video release, which makes up about half the profit these days, a safety net that Lucasfilm doesn't have.