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Warner Bros shelves finished ‘Coyote vs. Acme’, takes $30M tax write-off

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Re: Warner Bros shelves finished ‘Coyote vs. Acme’, takes $30M tax write-off

#51

Post by unsupp0rted »

clouddrover wrote: post #13
upon_drumhead wrote: post #2

Can someone explain how this makes any sense at all? They burned 70 million on making the movie and they'll recoup 30 million in tax write-offs, but if they released it, it's pretty certain to make way more than 30 million. And the claim that they're cash strapped after making 1.4 billion on barbie? I just don't understand this at all. Does anyone?

They'd probably need to spend another $70-$100 million promoting it. So they need to get let's say $170 million returned to the studio to break even. The judgement must be that they won't achieve that. For example, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny failed commercially at the box office: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Indiana-Jones-and-the-Dial... Disney spent $300 million making it and will have spent at least…

It wasn’t budget discipline that was the main problem.

Indiana Jones 4 didn’t need budget discipline.

The main problem was that Indiana Jones 5 was following 4, and both were laughably bad at being quality Indiana Jones-level movies.

The general audience knew in advance what they were getting wasn’t going to be exciting and they didn’t want it.

The hardcore fan audience also knew what they were getting: old-man Indie needs to be replaced by a strong brave female without character flaws, who points out how problematic and useless the old man is, and saves him from himself.

A big chunk of the budget overruns were when the pendulum slightly swung back and the studios did significant rewrites and reshoots (and re-CGI) to tone this type of writing down to something less overt.

Re: Warner Bros shelves finished ‘Coyote vs. Acme’, takes $30M tax write-off

#52

Post by lotsofpulp »

svantana wrote: post #4
upon_drumhead wrote: post #2

Can someone explain how this makes any sense at all? They burned 70 million on making the movie and they'll recoup 30 million in tax write-offs, but if they released it, it's pretty certain to make way more than 30 million. And the claim that they're cash strapped after making 1.4 billion on barbie? I just don't understand this at all. Does anyone?

The only logic I can see is pretending to cancel the release, but then suddenly having a change of heart in the next fiscal year, when they are projecting to make a loss anyway. Alternatively, the cynic in me also has a theory - that this is all a marketing ploy to drum up support for this underdog of a movie. But that seems fairly unlikely given that it depends on the CEO voluntarily acting the cartoon villain...

> But that seems fairly unlikely given that it depends on the CEO voluntarily acting the cartoon villain...

Zaslav has long had the reputation of a cartoon villain, it would cost him nothing.

Re: Warner Bros shelves finished ‘Coyote vs. Acme’, takes $30M tax write-off

#53

Post by pwdisswordfishc »

rbanffy wrote: post #40

Wouldn’t the best solution to this to trigger the release into public domain, or a CC-NA licence, within a short “cooling off” period so they could try to release it the following year?

Cisco Certified Network Associate?

Re: Warner Bros shelves finished ‘Coyote vs. Acme’, takes $30M tax write-off

#55

Post by djaro »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #22
fzeroracer wrote: post #19

Frankly I'm of the increasing opinion that if you do a tax write off on a creative work that you should be required to put it into the public domain. You've already made it clear that you believe that the value you would gain from it is $0, ergo it doesn't make sense to let companies vault content forever once written off. For example, a bunch of TV series were written off last year, which means that content has been…

Yes. And remember, while this may sound unfair ("why should I be forced to give away X by the gubbermint?!"), the company is also free to not take the tax write-off at all and just shove the whole thing into a wood chipper. If they want society to subsidise their successes, they shouldn't get to hoard the rest. And that's before we get into all the tax breaks, copyright shenanigans and chicanery that also subsidises…

You clearly don't understand tax write offs. How would they "not take the tax write off"?? The tax write off is the expenses they made while creating the film. There is no way for them not to write it off, after the expenses have been made.

If they earn $100 and then spend $100, they have to write it off, because they no longer have the money, so they can't pay taxes on it.

Re: Warner Bros shelves finished ‘Coyote vs. Acme’, takes $30M tax write-off

#56

Post by b112 »

upon_drumhead wrote: post #2

Can someone explain how this makes any sense at all? They burned 70 million on making the movie and they'll recoup 30 million in tax write-offs, but if they released it, it's pretty certain to make way more than 30 million. And the claim that they're cash strapped after making 1.4 billion on barbie? I just don't understand this at all. Does anyone?

It could be, that at pre-screening, someone realised that the animation, or the plot, or the dialog was racist or sexist or some such, in some subtle way.

And the changes are too large to fix easily.

Or the plot is just terrible.

Or hmm. I wonder if the new AI contract or some such, is causing this?

Re: Warner Bros shelves finished ‘Coyote vs. Acme’, takes $30M tax write-off

#57

Post by Ographer »

JCharante wrote: post #36
Almondsetat wrote: post #25

I can only imagine how the people who made it feel knowing they basically worked for absolutely nothing

Lucky. That’s the benefit of being the worker class and not the owners. You get paid whether it releases or not.

Warner Brother executives make $10-40 million per year. Anyone remotely close to the top is doing just fine.

It's strange to frame the situation as if the lower class workers are lucky compared to those in the owner class.

Re: Warner Bros shelves finished ‘Coyote vs. Acme’, takes $30M tax write-off

#58

Post by TeMPOraL »

illwrks wrote: post #28
GordonS wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For an anticipated title like this, I think they could have had the same box office figures if they spent zero on marketing. $100m is ridiculous.

No they wouldn't. Marketing spend it tied to distributor confidence in the film, which is then a lever that the sales department use to book the film on screens. On an average week there are multiple new films jostling for the same fixed amount of cinema screens.

> which is then a lever that the sales department use to book the film on screens. On an average week there are multiple new films jostling for the same fixed amount of cinema screens.

This sounds like a zero-sum game. Someone's raking it in here.

Re: Warner Bros shelves finished ‘Coyote vs. Acme’, takes $30M tax write-off

#59

Post by adhesive_wombat »

djaro wrote: post #55
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And remember, while this may sound unfair ("why should I be forced to give away X by the gubbermint?!"), the company is also free to not take the tax write-off at all and just shove the whole thing into a wood chipper. If they want society to subsidise their successes, they shouldn't get to hoard the rest. And that's before we get into all the tax breaks, copyright shenanigans and chicanery that also subsidises…

You clearly don't understand tax write offs. How would they "not take the tax write off"?? The tax write off is the expenses they made while creating the film. There is no way for them not to write it off, after the expenses have been made. If they earn $100 and then spend $100, they have to write it off, because they no longer have the money, so they can't pay taxes on it.

If they want to use the expense they made on the (apparently) failed film to reduce their tax burden, they can trade that multimillion reduction in their tax for the (according to them) worthless materials they did end up with.

If those materials have worth, then they shouldn't be writing them off in the first place while also sitting on them. If they don't have worth, it shouldn't be a problem. Except in some zero-sum type thing where they'd rather destroy it then let anyone else benefit, and then there's a question of if society at large should be footing the bill for the destruction of value in order to stymie competitors.

Now, clearly, that's not how the rules actually currently work or we wouldn't be in here at all.

Re: Warner Bros shelves finished ‘Coyote vs. Acme’, takes $30M tax write-off

#60

Post by geraldwhen »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #51
clouddrover wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd probably need to spend another $70-$100 million promoting it. So they need to get let's say $170 million returned to the studio to break even. The judgement must be that they won't achieve that. For example, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny failed commercially at the box office: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Indiana-Jones-and-the-Dial... Disney spent $300 million making it and will have spent at least…

It wasn’t budget discipline that was the main problem. Indiana Jones 4 didn’t need budget discipline. The main problem was that Indiana Jones 5 was following 4, and both were laughably bad at being quality Indiana Jones-level movies. The general audience knew in advance what they were getting wasn’t going to be exciting and they didn’t want it. The hardcore fan audience also knew what they were getting: old-man Indie…

Given the plot, I’m surprised it made as much as it did. Who wants that?
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