ReelROI(TM)

I'm currently in edit-mode on the below, and I will complete it soon.

Ever wonder how movie people calculate profitability?

There are articles out there but you'll quickly find that it's quite complicated, especially for us outsiders since part of the formula includes expenses for marketing that they do not publish, in amounts that vary and are not consistent.

So, I don't bother speculating on "S&A" ("Sales and Advertising"). Wherever the production budget and box office revenues are published, we can simply find Revenue (R) / Budget (B) = ReelROI, or the number of dollars in revenue generated for each dollar spent on production budget, or "producing the reel".

ReelROI(TM) allows us to compare profitability across release years, eras, genres; profitability by studio, by director, by actors, by film franchise...

I've never quite felt that "box office", which is to say, revenue, told the whole story, even though media tends to talk a lot about revenues. 

ReelROI has practical use - it helps us measure all the aspects of the skills of the producers and directors to manage a project and deliver a story profitably. 

Using ReelROI(TM), I was able to predict that Top Gun: Maverick, would do approximately $1.4Bn in box office revenue, and it did pretty much exactly that. How did I know? Well, having built my movie ROI database up to over 5,000 titles from 1915 to 2024, and using that tool to assess over 200 movie "franchises" (movies with sequels), I was able to recognize that the 1st sequel (or, 2nd installment) of a franchise tends to generate 35% of the ReelROI(TM) of the 1st installment. 

Top Gun (1986) paid over $23 in ReelROI on a budget of