Comments on: Box Office: Fangirls Fuel A Record Breaking Weekend For ‘New Moon’

By: Shannon Hood

Shannon Hood — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:57:33 +0000

@Caley. Understood

By: Caley

Caley — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:29:23 +0000

Still not really, though. New Line hadn’t been its own company since 1996, it was just being operated separately from Warner Brothers Pictures even though both were under the same Time Warner banner. Indeed, they sold the rights to fund the movie, and because of that New Line lost out on a sizeable chunk of money (even though most of the production costs had been covered by selling the rights), and as such was folded into Warner Brothers. There was no threat of bankruptcy, as that would involve Time Warner going bankrupt. This was not Robocop 3 killing Orion Pictures.

Ultimately the point I’m making is that Golden Compass was a huge success. It may not have made New Line (or Time Warner) a ton of money, but that wasn’t the point I was making. It just wasn’t a disastrous box office performance, by any means.

By: Shannon Hood

Shannon Hood — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:02:45 +0000

Caley, your point is duly (and respectfully) noted.
The reason this movie is still called a disaster, is that New Line Cinema took an almost $100M loss on the film, and had to actually restructure and eventually merge with Warner Brothers because of its domestic performance.

New Line received very little of the foreign profits, because they had sold them to fund the $180M budget. That money went to the folks who owned the foreign rights. So to New Line, the box office was indeed a disaster, they essentially went bankrupt because of it.

By: Caley

Caley — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:58:23 +0000

Really? Disastrous? Golden Compass had a budget of $180 million, and did $372 million worldwide. Yeah, it tanked in america because of bad press from the Christian right, but it still did very, very well.