1997 hit 'Men In Black' is still yet to make a profit says screenwriter - An inside look at creative accounting and thievery in tinsel town

[LordofCringe7206]

1997 hit 'Men In Black' is still yet to make a profit says screenwriter

Creative accounting strikes again as Ed Solomon shares his 'Men In Black' profit statement.

www.yahoo.com

Men In Black, the 1997 sci-fi comedy starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, remains in the red despite making $589 million (£448 million) at the global box office over 20 years ago. Adjusted for inflation, that translates to $944 million (£718 million) in 2019 money, not taking into account extra ticket prices for 3D or IMAX.

This is according to the film’s screenwriter Ed Solomon, who adapted Lowell Cunningham’s comic book seriews for Sony Pictures, who then turned it into a mega-blockbuster with a $90 million (£68 million) budget that spawned three sequels and an animated series, not to mention shifting piles of merchandise.

Solomon, who also wrote all three Bill & Ted films, Now You See Me, and Charlie’s Angels(2000), shared on Twitter that he had received his “Men In Black profit statement” from the studio over the festive period which said that the film had lost “6x what it lost last period”, linking back to a previous tweet from June this year that said the film was “STILL in the red”.

Other filmmakers responded to Solomon’s post to complain about similar cases of creative accounting.

Jonathan Goldstein, one of the screenwriters of Spider-Man: Homecoming, said the $880 million-grossing Marvel movie was also “losing money” according to statements.

Source Code director Duncan Jones replied to the writer saying he was still owed “$50k of deferred payment” for his film that was produced by Summit Entertainment, a Lionsgate subsidiary.

Katherine Fugate, the creator of Army Wives, says the problem isn’t just isolated to movies either, saying her ABC series never made any money despite running for seven seasons on a commercial television network.

Film studios like Sony often negotiate “back end” deals with creatives that offer a cut of a film’s gross profits: ie when they get into the black. However, due to the complicated way films are financed, distributed, and advertised, some huge films technically never make a penny. Negotiating a deal for net profits is a safer bet for creatives.

In 2010 it was revealed that 2007’s Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, which grossed $938.2 million worldwide, was still over $167 million in the red. David Prowse, the actor who played Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, similarly never received residuals from Return of the Jedi, as Lucasfilm claimed the film never made a profit despite earning $572 million worldwide.

Profit disputes between New Line Cinema and Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, delayed the production of The Hobbit trilogy, and led to actors from the film suing the studio over unpaid profits.

Despite Men In Black’s apparent losses, Sony still released a fourth film earlier, but Men In Black: International was a flop with audiences, earning $254 million against a $110 million budget.

 

[Justtocheck]

Man, I don't know numbers real good. I'm confused

 

[Ars Goetia]

No "Men in Black" actually being in the red joke? What a missed opportunity of an article. Seriously though, rampant financial fuckery like this is why I believe that Hollywood almost never actually loses money except on the biggest of bombs.

 

[The Fool]

These massive numbers depress and scare me. "Oh, we only made back double the budget", "oh, we only got a billion dollars"

What a hungry, ravenous beast Hollywood is. It's like the closest you can get to a cosmic horror that feasts on entire worlds and is so indifferent to your individual life that for it to call you an ant would be a complement.

 

[Marco Fucko]

That's why you always look at net over gross, I guess. Well, at least this gives me the excuse to post this:

 

[The Last Stand]

No "Men in Black" actually being in the red joke?

The Men in Black: In the Red.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

Just pirate everything, it doesn't matter

 

[Kari Kamiya]

So wait, you mean to tell me that the Hollywood Jew executives have been pocketing every little revenue made and not giving one single shekel to the filmmakers and production studios themselves? How the fuck does a 20-year-old movie just stay in the red the whole time?

 

[XYZpdq]

How the fuck does a 20-year-old movie just stay in the red the whole time?

costs for "advertising campaigns" for subsequent video releases, "press junkets" related to them are a couple of the bullshits I think I've heard cited by Star Wars actors

 

[Christ Cried]

Jonathan Goldstein, one of the screenwriters of Spider-Man: Homecoming

Come on, this is just too easy

 

[Otis Boi]

So wait, you mean to tell me that the Hollywood Jew executives have been pocketing every little revenue made and not giving one single shekel to the filmmakers and production studios themselves? How the fuck does a 20-year-old movie just stay in the red the whole time?

Actually it a lot more interesting then that. Hollywood accounting basically how a movie studio shores up its loses.So imagine Kiwi Farms opened up a movie studio and the first movie we produced was Christ Chan:In SPACE and the budget for that movie was $350 million but it only made back $150 million but during the same time an action movie called the TROONACAUST was being produced for a modest budget of $25 million so what the genius accounts would do is move $75 million of the loss over too the Troonacaust bringing its "budget" up too $100 million. So now opening day hits and the Troonacaust makes $400 million and is a smash hit across the globe. So now you might be thinking hey great it made back enough money to pay for both movies well that's where you are wrong. As soon as the greedy jew Null saw the Troonacaust was a run away success he allocated $250 million for a sequel now investors are stupid so they ask for a collateral on tickets sales on the Troonacaust while it in theaters so the remaining $100 million is given to them to help pay for a sequel. Then that one bombs while only making half it budget back so you have to move that loss onto the next move to hope like hell it is a massive hit. This is a trick to fuck with investors so they don't know what the loss actually is and you can just say "well actually you heard wrong the budget was allocated towards a few reshoots in movie "xyz" which happen in the same location.

Now imagine if a large studio who produces 15 flops and 5 hits in one years uses this accounting method. It is basically a bizarro ponzi scheme you are constantly shifting a defect forward on to the next movie while also paying it off with the last. This shouldn't surprise who look at how many hollywood movies flop in a year and how much they actually lose compared to how much revenue they bring in. Also a lot of it has to do with Marketing budget that is a Studio cost and factored into a movies budget.

edit: I forgot to add this is why you should always take money upfront when acting and never get a % of revenue also forgot a few words

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Oh, so then MIB was just shouldering a previous movie's budget and became the fall guy for it?

So with Amblin Entrtainment pictures.... was it possible MIB was carrying losses from, say, Casper?

 

[Eigengrau]

I always chuckle when the MAFIAA complains about piracy hurting the artists, even though we all know who keeps screwing them over.

 

[Otis Boi]

Oh, so then MIB was just shouldering a previous movie's budget and became the fall guy for it?
View attachment 1084948
So with Amblin Entrtainment pictures.... was it possible MIB was carrying losses from, say, Casper?

Yes pretty much I cant go through the budget of all these movies and see what their income was like. Also don't forget a lot of this revenue was already "spent" on movie in pre-production as well or ones need reshoots.As well as splitting it between co production companies.

The movie industry is like that friend you know who work 80 hours a week and pull in $2000 a week and still cant pay any of his bill on time because he cant help but gamble it all every Saturday night,

 

[AnitaSarsleezian]

It's been well known for a long time - it surprises me people still fall for this in hollywood. Eddie Murphy used to say ages ago that only monkeys ask for a piece of the gross. Net is what you want.

I read an interview with the creator of Babylon 5 who said he's never made a penny off the show and it ran in the red it's entire run. Apparently he missed a clause in the contract they hid well where they can use the profits of Babylon 5 to fund other projects and that's how they get around showing any income. For example, if the studio is trying to make some shit movie or TV show in the Philippines and the whole mess crashes and burns and the studio loses $25m, they can write off that $25m loss against Babylon 5 therefore keeping Babylon 5 eternally in the red because it's funding everything else. And the show never ends up in the black so all the people who contributed and are waiting to get paid, never get paid.

While a lot of hollywood fuckery has gone on for decades and cheating people is nothing new, the fuckery got pushed to a new level when the two Israelis, Golan and Globus came to Hollywood to release movies as Cannon films in '79/'80.

It used to be that you had to get funding from the studio and investors for a long time, but when Cannon started making films they couldn't get funding so they came up with the idea of creating movie posters for a film that didn't exist but they wanted to make. Then they'd show the posters to various film distributors in other countries and sell the foreign rights. And THAT'S the money they'd use to make the film. Then they'd deliver the film the following season. Basically selling films they hadn't made yet.

After that turned out to be really successful for them, Hollywood took huge notice and adopted the practice. It's pretty much how things are done now in Hollywood - pre selling everything you can to raise money. So you have studios that turn out garbage but get a lot of money to make it, so when the garbage crashes and burns, they have to take up the slack by moving money away from their more successful stuff.

Of course you can bet your ass the executives all get paid. It's just everyone else involved that gets fucked. And the studio loves it - the films run in the red and they can write everything off as a loss.

 

[Ted_Breakfast]

I've always hated the Men In Black movie. When I was a kid I had a conpiracy book describing the Men in Black as creepy, androgynous alien infiltrators, and here comes jive-talking Will Smith taking that away. I liked them better when they made me afraid to see too much, and less so when they're dancing and making light of casual racism.

 

[UnKillShredDur]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... Will Smith is a fuckup, especially lately. At least he isn't trying to get his (completely untalented) kids movie roles any more.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Here comes the Men in Black, the galaxy’s defenders!

 

[Stab You in the Back]

It's been well known for a long time - it surprises me people still fall for this in hollywood. Eddie Murphy used to say ages ago that only monkeys ask for a piece of the gross. Net is what you want.

I noticed that the article made this same mistake. You want a piece of the gross. The gross is the revenue made by the film, while the net is its revenue minus expenses. The trap seems to be accepting gross profits--key word being profits--as opposed to gross revenue. In no instance do you want the net.

 

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