Gee, I never thought I'd see the day that Jim Hill would admit he was wrong about anything negative he said about Pixar. Thanks, Jim. I now have to revise my opinion of you.

Don't worry, Mr. Hill.  There's still plenty of time for Pixar to start their inevetable downward spiral.  Just not this time.  

I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving!

Jim...talk about trying to have it both ways, you spend 85% of the article talking about how you really aren't that wrong, that Disney is getting tricky with their numbers. But oh, by the way, the movie is doing good. At least you tried Jim, we have to give you that. I just don't think you have eaten enough crow in your life to know how this is supposed to work.

CGI or CGI-heavy films racing to meet a release date are trouble. I think these films shouldn't have locked release dates too early in the process. It's just asking for budget inflation during the last months of production... and few films can recoup it during their original release.

You have to be enjoying the eggnog to believe Pirates and Rat are not profitable. That's why Disney Co greenlit Enchanted - big budget and ad campaign - no chance of making any money off that either. There's a reason the term "Hollywood Accounting" was coined. If Rat got $180 mill in marketing, and I couldn't find any evidence of it even after looking for it, then Enchanted is easily over $800 million in marketing by now, cause it's everywhere as Disney Co buys some opening weekend grosses.

Gather round the fire boys and girls, and I'll tell another holiday story. It's one about profit participation. You see some times those pesky creative people that actually make the movies want to participate in the riches that the studio executives and beancounters get when one of the movies is successful. The studio head kindly tells them they will receive net profit points - they'll get some bonus $$$ once the movie shows a "net profit." Then the fun begins. Just like crazy elves working overtime, the studio accountants throw every conceivable expense into the production and/or marketing budget. Did Iger think about Enchanted today? Better tack a fraction of his salary onto the budget. The movie can be a phenomenal success, yet fortunately for the miserly beancounters, conveniently never show a profit. That's why your great uncle Eddie Murphy coined the term "monkey points" to refer to net profit points.

Now your parents might tell you that this is just a crazy holiday story. Some nutty codger doesn't believe that Rat cost anywhere close to $150 mill to make, nor did they spend $180 mill to market it. That's fine. You just have to ask yourself, if you take those numbers as truth, all the movie studios would be bankrupt many times over. Then tell your parents to Google(TM) "Buchwald v Paramount" sometime. Seems the courts determined that the studio accounting formulas practically ensure never showing a profit on any movie. Yet oddly, the studios continue to make movies.....  

It's funny how Jim Hill's Disney insiders always write just like Jim Hill.

Happy post-turkey day.

So wait....

150 million in production costs.... 180 million in promotional costs.... that sounds like 330 million in expenses.... and they made 600 million dollars revenue....

So..... how are they not in the black?

cookedart - I read on one of the box office tracking sites that a studio gets approximately 55% of the ticket sales revenue. If that is true, then Ratatouille could still be in the red.

Jim, any word on how Ratatouille's DVD sales have been going? Such a gourmet-focused feast of a movie MUST be a popular draw around the holidays. Mmm.... Turkey and Rat, the perfect Thanksgiving evening!

"Which is why the studio is already hard at work developing "Wild Hogs 2.""

Good God ... when will studios learn that not EVERY movie needs a freakin' sequel???? Sometimes movies just hit at the right time and find an audience, but really ... is there anyone out there thinking, "DAMN! I can't wait to see Wild Hogs 2 and find out what those crazy guys are up this time!"???

I think not ...

Wow, what does a film have to earn these days to be considered a success?  

la resistance28 - Ratatouille was #1 on the DVD sales chart last week, but dropped to #2 this week with the release of Shrek the Third. It has been #1 on the Blu-Ray sales chart for two weeks in a row. On the DVD rental charts, it was #3 last week, and dropped to #5 this week.

It's not just a matter of earning but of cost... The lower the production cost, the quicker it'll get in the black. I doubt any Wild Hogs movie would outgross a POTC one. But since it was notably cheaper, it's easier to pull together a sequel. High School Musical works the same way. As does Power Rangers. PR is not the big hit it once was but it's bound to go on for years as long as there's Japanese stock footage to buy and cheap places to shoot English-language scenes.

I think it's likely Rat cost a bit more than originally intended, as a reworked project that made its release date. But I doubt it would get a sequel anyway.

Thanks, Jack4Me. I know Jim had a lot of material on "Enchanted" a while back, but I'm surprised he hasn't given it much mention at all leading up to this weekend's debut. Any idea what Disney's expectations are for this one? They've sure marketed the heck out of it, and looking at a ~$50 million 5-day weekend.

Speaking of Jim being wrong and following up on la_resistance28's comment about Enchanted... where was the Goofy short "How to Install your Home Theatre" you said would be attatched to Enchanted?!  I just got home from Enchanted and it wasn't there.

To Original 19:

It was decided at the last minute to put the Goofy cartoon in front of National Treasure II.

And yeah, Enchanted is doing pretty well as i would seem. But if it took 10 YEARS to finish, I imagine the production budget is astronomical.

Of course, in Hollywoodland, no picture ever seems to make a profit. Yet somehow, they keep making them.

Glad to hear some good news about Pixar from Jim, though.

$ 180 million for promotion?  Where does that figure come from?  Seems rather high for me.

Ooooooooh, that's the problem. Jim actually believes studio accounting. The kind that the mafia looks at and goes, "Damn, we could learn a thing or two from these guys."

"According to the studios, no movie in the history of motion pictures has ever made a dime." --David Letterman

This reminds me of an apology I gave to my sister once, "I'm sorry I hit you... but if you hadn't of called me a name I wouldn't have done it. So really it's your fault... but I am sorry I hit you." A classic example of my famous 'Almost-apologies' as a kid.

That being said... Jim's apology and request for some crow to eat is good enough for me. I hope it's the same feeling from everyone else out there who has been put off by some of the articles related to Pixar and the Rat specifically.

Can we all just shake hands, sing some Kumbaya, and be friends now?

I hope so. Let's give the man a break and move on.

Thanks Jim!!!  :o)

Well, that was almost sincere.  Points for trying, anyway, Jim.

Boy Toon Wonder>  From what I understand,  the 10 years on Enchanted refers to when the project was first originated and most of those years were spent on script drafts and development, not actual production.

I'd say Disney isn't terribly efficient in producing films inexpensively  but we are talking about an extremely mature business in film which provides many spinoff products, home viewing copies, park attractions and live shows for the Disney Company. It does come down to an investment, not a slot machine. HSM, Wild Hogs... those operate on the slot machine principle. You put less money in, assume less risk and sometimes you get a windfall. But when you don't, the money put in is small enough not to matter and you've got a library title out of it.

Was that actually crow you were eating?  Sounds more like blackened chicken!

:)

>>That's being old fashioned and short sighted. When it comes to the projects that Disney produces nowadays, you always have to consider what this picture's long term profit potential might be. How many tickets will this film sell overseas? How many units will Disney Home Entertainment ultimately be able to ship? Where does the sale of character-based merch for this movie factor into this equation?

Some of this sounds oddly familar.  Oh wait now I remember...I said these same things over and over in the comments to other Pixar related articles ;)

Enjoy the crow Jim..but for god sake take the feathers off first...that's just disgusting...AND feathers are high in sodium...

http://www.raymation.net

If there's such a thing as a back-handed apology, this would be it.  

Movies never make a profit in Hollywood (that's why the studios proposal to replace writers residuals with profit-sharing led to the writers strike).  So to attempt to couch your apology behind the fact that the movie is "in the red" just shows an amazing lack of knowledge about 21st century Hollywood.

And as long as studios make the release date more important then getting the picture right, the streets of Hollywood will run red with deficits.

Part of the release date issue has to do with the turnaround time for merchandise. A company like Mattel can take up to 18 months from start to shelves. But it's not as though they're selling perishables... And what is the real advance notice deadline for marketing?

Honestly, I'd wait for a release date after getting one of the following set: a final script and shooting dates for a non-CGI film, locked storyboards for 2D animation, and a large percentage of fully rendered footage for a CGI or special effects-heavy film. Otherwise you're looking at lots of overtime pay, buying more computers, etc. And less than three months before your release date means it's too late to push the movie back.

hey pickstar,

I saw Wild Hogs and loved it, cant wait for the sequel, soo you stand corrected.

As for other film sequels for films like Pirates....well....the 1st 2 were good, the jokes got a little stail in the 2nd but still held up good, I will reserve judgment on the 3rd till I see it, but Disney can only shuve so much Pirates down our throat until we barf! I did see Ratatouie and my opinion only, I thought it was the worst Pixar film ever, I would not see a sequel to that. What I would want to see sequels 4 would be monsters, nemo, bugs life, toy story and incredibles. in my opinion all films that are good and successful need sequels.

Rat was actually a better film that Cars.  I'm not surprised it is doing well.

But eventually, Pixar is going to have to make a stinker.  It'll happen.

But Rat has to be the most blatant parable about Pixar and Disney you can imagine.  That's what this film actually is all about.  Gusteau is the dead Walt who speaks to a creative type (the rat) through his works and the rat's imagination, and Eisner is the short chef who took over the restaurant and is prostituting the place.

I don't know if someone has brought this up at all yet, but I thought it was pretty striking.

The Parable analogy has been examined, and yes, you're right on the money.  It's front and center the thematic heart of the film.  Brad tells people the film is really about being "in love with doing stuff" (his words) but the STORY definitely has its sly antecedent, and there's no mistake in those archetypes.  Some of it was by accident, and story development (as it was being revamped) took advantage of those happy accidents and built on them.

The budget did climb on RATATOUILLE, because they had to meet their release date, and cranked a lot of heavy time/labor on this thing.  BUT, the marketing budget for RATATOUILLE was not even HALF of $180 million, and of what BV SPENT, a good chunk was covered in cross-promotional deals.  

The film has been well into the black for some time.  If anyone fed Jim that line of info, then they have no clue what they're talking about.

The film has moved into the new age of film revenues, where the foreign market is now (as a rule of thumb) amounting to about 60% of overall expected revenue.  So it's performing beyond expected profitability margins.  

And that's BEFORE you bring in the lovely buffet of revenues from Dowloads and DVDs.

This is actually going to prove one of Disney's most profitable films in several years.

$180 million that Disney supposedly spent on stateside & international promotion of this picture

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So where is all this promotion? I saw a couple of books and a Remy doll, as opposed to 'Cars', which, had I bought everything, had enough merchandise to fill my bedroom to the ceiling. Looking online, I'm seeing more but where was all this stuff when the film was in theaters? I hope they do better on Wall-E.