"What percentage of box office revenues goes to the makers of the movie? When a movie is said to have made $10M in the box office, how much of that goes to the movie makers?
The formula is not always given out. And this is a HUGE mystery and it differs depending on the production and the studio and whether the studio that produced it is also a distributor, or whether it was co-produced and distributed. It gets complicated.
Typically in the USA a percentage of box office receipts are sent back to the distribution company who then divides the dividends between itself and the production compan(y/ies) if any. Some movies are -- for example -- produced in house by Disney or Warners. Others are produced by specific production companies and then distributed by the large companies (like Lucasfilm producing the horrible prequels, but Fox securing global distribution rights).
The precise division of profits between production company and distributor are decided on the back end, by contract, well before the movie is produced. We rarely get all the details as they aren't always made public.
In the USA . . . The interesting thing is that the amount of money kept by the distribution company (again, which is then divided between itself and the production company if it's different) shifts the longer the movie is on the market. Typically, slightly more than half of all dollars sold in tickets goes to the studio/distributor for the first few weeks of its release. This percentage does lower over time. This is why production companies, studios and distributors obsessively "front load" a big budget movie to have massive openings. YES, they do want a movie to make money for as long as possible ("Avatar" made its bazillions over months of time). But the movies that cost tons of money ("Blockbusters") need a massive amount of ticket sales to justify their production.
One of the big lies is that Theaters don't get to keep profits. That's silly, of course they do. But the thing is, most of them have to buy their posters and massively expensive cardboard adverts. This puts them on the hook for the advertisement of the movie as well.
This movie made $420 million domestically. We know that it cost $130 million to produce. But what we DO NOT know is what it cost to advertise and distribute. It's generally accepted that blockbusters get about as much (sometimes more) in advertising and distribution investment from the distributor/studio. This means that "Catching Fire" got $130 in advertising FROM THEIR END, and then local theater operators ponied up money on their end for whatever they did locally.
Of that $420 million made domestically, slightly more than half the first few weeks went to the studio. It decreased thereafter. In the end, it works out to about half (we're estimating here). This means that Lionsgate (who produced and distributed it, so they keep their share whole), got about $210 million domestically. They invested somewhere around a quarter billion US dollars ($250-260) to produce, advertise and distribute it. So on the US box office receipts alone, they didn't break even. If it were dependent on the USA, the movie would have been a failure.
But that's where foreign sales come in. It differs by country. Some countries attempt huge taxes that gobble up profits (China tried this past summer with that stupid giant robot movie . . . whatever it was called, but finally allowed the release of the profits), others are quite lax (Australia, the UK). Since it differs by country, all we know is that the average is somewhere around 1/3. This means that the foreign box office receipts (in this case, $436 million dollars to date) are 100% essential for the success of huge blockbusters (which gave "Catching Fire" the additional additional $145 million it needed to be financially successful -- bringing the total up to $355 million, or a nice profit of about $100 million -- that's not bad: 28% GPM).
This is why studios bank EVERYTHING on global blockbusters. The USA/Canada can no longer support the massive budgets. To that end, key sales markets like China and the EU are targeted for successful movie making. China is catching up to the USA and it is why movie makers now aim to produce in and feature stars from China.
The next "X-Men" movie will have Chinese star, Fan Bingbing in it.
The next "Transformers" movie is partially produced (and taking place in) China. It ran a contest in China for walk-on roles.
"Pacific Rim", which failed in the USA, was made financially viable by capturing the Chinese market.
If Hollywood can capture North America AND China, box office success has a greater chance of being secured."