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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

#71

Post by washadjeffmad »

Almondsetat wrote: post #50
lupire wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They got paid.

Is that enough to not feel like you’ve wasted your valuable time?

As a matter of business, yes. Few can rely on celebrity for income, and self-important people aren't generally popular to work with.

Not every product ships or is a commercial success, and not every effort makes the final cut. While it's nice when we have external validation for our contributions, that doesn't diminish the quality, aplomb, or professionalism of the work that went into it. Plus, it still goes on your CV, and you get a story to tell.

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

#72

Post by galleywest200 »

rtpg wrote: post #42
marak830 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to see how their costs for releasing with 0 marketing are that much higher than scrapping.

Movie theaters aren’t going to put a movie into circulation with 0 marketing. Those are slots that are available for other things.

Then put it on a streaming service?

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

#73

Post by jzb »

lupire wrote: post #35
Almondsetat wrote: post #25

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

They got paid.

I’ve been paid to work on things that succeed and a few things that didn’t pan out/weren’t released. It’s demoralizing when you spend months on something that gets shitcanned - even when it’s the right call.

Note that all the crew and actors involved not only lose the joy of seeing their work on the screen: it’s a gap in their portfolio, too. The FX folks, animators, lower tier actors, all miss out on having a credit and work to show in order to build their careers.

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

#74

Post by progne »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #65
geraldwhen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Name recognition counts for a lot. This movie would have been a no-brainer home run if it were simply an adventure film starring a crusty Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, set in more or less the “real world”. Once you get Indie into space aliens or Representation social politics things dilute until the audience shrugs and stays home to stream The Office for the sixth run-through. Sad, alienated, lonely, somewhat suici…

Tom Cruise had a great success with Top Gun: Maverick by just pressing the Fan Service Button very hard, over and over and over. If instead he made a movie about the tough young woman fighter jock who rescues sad old Maverick from his complacency, the movie may have done better as a tax write off.

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

#76

Post by rewgs »

galleywest200 wrote: post #72
rtpg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Movie theaters aren’t going to put a movie into circulation with 0 marketing. Those are slots that are available for other things.

Then put it on a streaming service?

This just seems to obvious to me, even when doing the math:

Max costs an average of $12.99/month. $30 million / $12.99 = 2.3 million. Max has over 95 million monthly subscribers, and one has to imagine that ~2% of the subscribers would pay for a single month of Max in order to see this movie. After that one month, the movie's made its budget back without having to market it at all. Like, come on, it's the age of the internet -- if you really don't want to market the film at all, just Tweet out "Hey this movie is out now on Max, go watch it" and you're sure to reach a decent amount of people.

I'm sure there's an argument against what I just said that it creates the perception of their original content made for Max being low quality or something, but that can't be worse than the now extremely accurate perception that creatives can't trust that their work will be released by WD, and thus would prefer to work for other studios. I myself work in Hollywood and have absolutely zero desire to work on a WB project after Batgirl and now this.

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

#77

Post by amanaplanacanal »

troupe wrote: post #47
objclxt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty unlikely this film will make $30 million It would easily have made $30 million worldwide. Almost certainly domestic. You could question whether it would have made its budget back (70 million) on domestic, but for a family film with existing IP there aren’t really any blockers to clearing 30 million. > The effects work is nowhere near done etc. The film is finished, some critics had already seen it.

Are you saying that it would have sold $30 million in tickets, or that WB would have gotten $30 million from the theaters after the theaters get their cut?

Theaters mostly don’t get a cut on these films. WB gets all the box office and the theater makes money on concessions.

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

#78

Post by rahimnathwani »

afn wrote: post #61

I feel like I’m missing something, so perhaps there’s an aspect of corporate taxes here that I don’t understand. I would expect a write-off like this to reduce the assets of the firm on paper, perhaps having an impact on the market valuation, but don’t see how it would impact taxes. Wouldn’t the actual expenses of production reduce tax liability immediately when they are incurred, regardless of whether or not the cor…

In the US, movie production costs aren't expensed in the period when incurred. They're capitalized, and then amortized over time.

So the last sentence of your comment is spot on.

Writing off an asset causes a reduction in net assets, which translates into a loss on the income statement.

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

#79

Post by rahimnathwani »

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.

You're wrong. Not all costs incurred in the current year reduce taxes in the current year.

These weren't expenses (which reduce net income in the period when incurred) but investments in a new movie (which create assets which sit on the balance sheet).

The decision to write off the asset in the current year (rather than amortizing it over time) is the result of a business decision.

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

#80

Post by addaon »

rewgs wrote: post #76
galleywest200 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then put it on a streaming service?

This just seems to obvious to me, even when doing the math: Max costs an average of $12.99/month. $30 million / $12.99 = 2.3 million. Max has over 95 million monthly subscribers, and one has to imagine that ~2% of the subscribers would pay for a single month of Max in order to see this movie. After that one month, the movie's made its budget back without having to market it at all. Like, come on, it's the age of the…

> Max has over 95 million monthly subscribers, and one has to imagine that ~2% of the subscribers would pay for a single month of Max in order to see this movie.

But what already-paying subscribers /would/ do buys you no beans. You need to find 2% of the current subscriber base who would cancel except for this movie being released, or 2% new subscribers from this release. Which besides being implausibly large to begin with, isn’t going to happen without massive marketing investment — the non-customers who value this at $13 are already less likely than the average person to know it exists, being non-customers.

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