When it comes to evaluating the financial performance of top movies, it isn’t about what a film grosses at the box office. The true tale is told when production budgets, P&A, talent participations and other costs collide with box office grosses and ancillary revenues from VOD to DVD and TV. To get close to that mysterious end of the equation, Deadline is repeating our Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament for 2019, using data culled by seasoned and trusted sources.
THE FILM
This movie essentially sold itself as a bridge between the cliffhanger of 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War and the highly anticipated April 26 Marvel Cinematic Universe finale last year, Avengers: Endgame. The biggest selling tool here with Captain Marvel, which was arguably more powerful than any element of Disney’s massive marketing machine was Infinity War‘s coda which indicated that Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel was a potential savior to those Avengers snapped away into thin air by Thanos. Disney opened Captain Marvel on International Women’s Day, March 8, yet men repped most of the audience for her at 61% to women at 39% on Screen Engine/Comscore’s PostTrak versus the majority of women who showed up to see Warner Bros. Wonder Woman (55%), which arrived in cinemas as the first female superhero blockbuster before Captain Marvel in June 2017. Still, the world responded as a whole to Captain Marvel shelling out $456.7M in her first weekend, then the second-best global opening (now third due to Avengers: Endgame) for an MCU movie after Infinity War‘s $640.5M WW start. At the domestic B.O., Captain Marvel notched the third best March start at the box office with $153.4M after 2017’s Beauty and the Beast ($174.7M) and 2016’s Batman v. Superman ($166M). Captain Marvel shot so high in the air, film finance sources told us that the film reached breakeven in its first week.
THE BOX SCORE
Here are the costs and revenues as our experts see them:
THE BOTTOM LINE
China led Captain Marvel‘s offshore ticket sales with $154M, but only 25% of that comes back to Disney’s bank account. UK and South Korea were the second and third best overseas territories respectively at $51.8M and $43M culminating in a global B.O. of $1.128 billion. This translated into global revenues including theatrical rentals (45% of the worldwide box office) of $505M, home entertainment monies of $156M and TV revenues of $204M due to Disney’s great output deals for a total of $865M. Disney gives out box office bonuses instead of a percent of profits after cash breakeven and star Brie Larson, and directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck shared in $25M worth of participations. Against $451M global costs, Captain Marvel flew away with a net profit of $414M, under Infinity War‘s half billion in Deadline’s 2018 tournament, but defeating Wonder Woman’s blank ink of $252.9M by 64%.