Towards the start of the year, the film industry seemed to be calling for the heads of Warner Bros. Pictures chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy.
The pair were appointed by WBD’s David Zaslav a few years back, but the films greenlit under their tenure didn’t really start hitting screens until late last Fall and was driven by taking big gambles on auteur-driven features with overly generous budgets.
The initial wave was a disaster with “Joker: Folie a Deux,” “Mickey 17” and “Alto Knights” leading to huge losses. Then, quite abruptly come April came one of the biggest reversal of fortunes the industry has seen in a long time and those gambles started paying off big time.
“A Minecraft Movie,” “Sinners,” “Final Destination Bloodlines,” “F1,” “Superman,” “Weapons” and now “The Conjuring: Last Rites” all hit and hit huge – catapulting Warners to the top studio on the domestic and global box-office charts this year as of this weekend. The studio has only one more release this year, “One Battle After Another,” which has screened for some select press who’ve already teased a major ‘best of the year’ contender.
Now, a new feature in Variety has gone into the box-office success of the studio and revealed the theatrical profit margins of several of the films released.
“Superman” appears to come in first with the studio reportedly set to pull in around $125 million in theatrical profits from the title, “Final Destination: Bloodlines” is next with $75 million, then “Weapons” which is at $65 million (and still counting) and “Sinners” with $60 million. “F1” is an Apple film so Warners gets a flat distribution fee and a small percentage of revenues for hitting certain benchmarks – so it comes in at around $34 million.
“A Minecraft Movie” profit margin wasn’t revealed but is likely to be the biggest of all. A studio insider reportedly disputed these figures, but the source adds that Warner Bros. has made roughly $600 million in combined year-to-date theatrical profits – and that’s before counting the new “The Conjuring” film.
One thing seems likely – that David Zaslav must be happy with the company’s fortunes at this time.
