Return on Investment - Interesting List, NOT a Ranking!

M 'n' M

Reading "Some Kind of Hero" made me wonder about the actual return on investment for each film (ie how much it made against what it cost) and it makes for interesting reading. Here's the list - so for Dr No it cost $1m and made $59.6. It backs up the view that - at the time - OHMSS wasn't seen as a commercial failure.

ROI
Dr. No 59.6
Goldfinger 41.6
From Russia With Love 39.5
Live and Let Die 23.1
Diamonds Are Forever 16.1
Thunderball 15.7
The Man with the Golden Gun 13.9
The Spy Who Loved Me 13.2
You Only Live Twice 11.7
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 10.3
For Your Eyes Only 7.0
Moonraker 6.8
Octopussy 6.6
Goldeneye 5.9
Casino Royale 5.8
Skyfall 5.6
A View to a Kill 5.1
The Living Daylights 4.8
Never Say Never Again 4.4
Licence to Kill 3.7
Tomorrow Never Dies 3.1
Die Another Day 3.0
Spectre 2.9
The World is Not Enough 2.7
Quantum of Solace 2.6

Sir Miles

Somebody posted that a few weeks ago...interesting stuff...does it take into consideration DVD/bluray/Vhs sales...?...television money...?...what about promotional costs...?

M 'n' M

Sir Miles wrote:

Somebody posted that a few weeks ago...interesting stuff...does it take into consideration DVD/bluray/Vhs sales...?...television money...?...what about promotional costs...?

Just box office and not sure about promotional costs - though these should be covered in the total if the production company is using proper accounting. I'll hunt for DVD / video sales - which will be interesting. Newer films may seem more likely to have bigger sales but the old ones will have been bought in more formats (eg VHS / beta and multiple editions all before DVD and then blu ray)

chrisisall

Higgins will not like that LTK is that high up... 8-)

Higgins

Oh, I know the figures and they are pretty irrelevent.

Measure for the success of an international franchise like 007 is the total profit - as mentioned earlier. That you ignore that, I know 8-)

It's like Coca Cola halfs their revenue and the CEO praises himself for having cut the cost

Best example is Spectre being very low on that list but made a shitload of profit. I am sure that Eon likes SPs results much more than what LTK did

M 'n' M

Higgins wrote:

Oh, I know the figures and they are pretty irrelevent.

Measure for the success of an international franchise like 007 is the total profit - as mentioned earlier. That you ignore that, I know 8-)

It's like Coca Cola halfs their revenue and the CEO praises himself for having cut the cost

Best example is Spectre being very low on that list but made a shitload of profit. I am sure that Eon likes SPs results much more than what LTK did

I understand your point but I don't think its technically true. Roi calculates the investment needed to realise a certain profit. So the 1m dollar cost for Dr no was a fantastic investment and a low risk. The later films are hugely bigger risks

Higgins

If that was true, EON/Sony would try to minimize risk/production cost.

But with the new markets in Asia and the additional money from Downloads/Discs/TV rights and the brand awareness, it's the question how to best milk the cow and not to minimize risk/maximize roi.

Roi is relevent for smaller companies and/ or with falling revenue and that's not the case with the 007 franchise.

Higgins

M n M wrote:

So the 1m dollar cost for Dr no was a fantastic investment and a low risk. The later films are hugely bigger risks

Dr. No's budget was pretty high back then - if Cubby/Harry would have wanted to play it safe, they could have done the movie with 50% of that I am sure.

But I doubt that it would have been such a success like it became with the bigger budget.

Cubby always wanted people to see the spent money in his movie, optimizing the roi was clealy not his goal. That changed after AVTAK.

M 'n' M

Higgins wrote:

M n M wrote:

So the 1m dollar cost for Dr no was a fantastic investment and a low risk. The later films are hugely bigger risks

Dr. No's budget was pretty high back then - if Cubby/Harry would have wanted to play it safe, they could have done the movie with 50% of that I am sure.

But I doubt that it would have been such a success like it became with the bigger budget.

Cubby always wanted people to see the spent money in his movie, optimizing the roi was clealy not his goal. That changed after AVTAK.

I think it started "with" avtak not after - the budget was tightly restricted for this one according to john glen

Higgins

Following Bruce Lee's logic, AVTAK was almost as successfully as SF

M 'n' M

Higgins wrote:

Following Bruce Lee's logic, AVTAK was almost as successfully as SF

We'll - yes, that IS the logic . It's not the whole picture but I don't think you can dismiss it. The more that is poured into the film the bigger the risk, not just of the film but of sinking the studio. I know you've said that the 007 franchise is above that but it'll be interesting to see how high the budget is with a new actor.

But just to freshen the topic does anyone know why films are so hugely expensive now? Obviously inflation plays a part but cubbys mantra was to put every dollar on the screen . In Tswlm you could see that. But where did the money go in quantum ( obviously no writers)