@parkerkent: Not sure if you will bother to read this - but I made a post a while ago explaining how box office works:

Disclaimer: Although I do work in finance, I am by no means an expert in the field of movie finances specifically, so you are welcome to challenge me if you notice anything wrong in my assessment. I do however believe I've conducted enough research in knowing the process and hurdles involved in attaining with movies.

Introduction:

As many of you know, in addition to being a comic book nerd and a major Disney hater - I'm also a bit of a finance nerd who's very obsessed with the financial success or failures of major film (and video game) releases, how commercially successful a character or a brand is, what all that could mean for a studio's future etc. like it or not, money is the most important element of all businesses and would determine what your favorite franchises will look like in the next couple of years. Alright! Lets get started.

A box office gross of $400M for a $200M blockbuster movie would only appear to be a major success if you merely compare the gross and the budget on basic mathematical terms... you can't do that here though, in order to understand just how much a box office gross is worth against a production budget of half its amount, you need to apply some basic accounting.

First, you must understand the meaning of the term 'gross'. It is, according to Google - (of income, profit, or interest) without deduction of tax or other contributions

A gross is far from the final value of a studio's earnings, it is what they get before they have to pay all the fees that come with earning so much money. Even a $100M production budget would be quite massive for a major studio within the context of all the promotions and post-release finances involved.

1. Distribution expenses - Cinemas would on average keep anywhere around 30-50% of the earnings - this however goes by a case-by-case basis, terms negotiated between the distributor and the theatre chain can vary from movie to movie. Usually if a movie is projected to gross very high, obviously a theatre chain would want to negotiate a bigger cut of the gross - these can even determine how many sessions a theatre chain is willing to give your movie in a day, if the theatre chain is happy with how much of the movie's gross they will be taking then obviously they would be more willing to have their cinemas play your movie up to 10 times in a day, this is why you'll probably see 10 sessions available in your local cinema on a Saturday for an Avengers film compared to a film from a smaller studio - like some romantic drama - they'll set more sessions for the movie that will earn them more money. From the studio or the distributor's perspective, this is a balancing act - it's how much they earn for giving theatre chains a lesser cut but having their movies shown less vs. giving theatre chains a bigger cut but also having their movies shown more.

30-50% of the gross is just the average in the western sphere though, countries like China could take an even bigger cut of the film. This again varies on a case by case basis, but in general cinemas take an awful lot of the gross amount you earn with your movie. In my opinion, distribution expenses are the highest.

2. Marketing expenses - I know less about marketing expenses but you can expect them to be pretty hefty too, especially if you want to advertise your film during big events like the Superbowl, set up movie premieres, getting the actors and the director to promote the film or place ads on thousands of billboards that charge you anywhere between $10,000 and $50,000 a month. Again, this is also a balancing act for the studio - spend less on marketing and have less people interested or spend more on marketing and have more people interested?

3. Actor's (usually the lead actor's) cut of the movie's gross - this also goes by a case-by-case basis (gee I'm like a broken record track at this point). In addition to the fixed pay actors get from working on the movie, some actors can be contracted to receive a significant portion of a movie's total gross - Robert Downey Jr. is a prime example of an expensive actor who got like 5% of the gross of the MCU projects he starred in.

4. The final boss of all who wish to save money - TAXES..... Nuff said.

So anyway, that's your basic overview of how expensive and risky it is to release a big-budget blockbuster movie. Hope that offers some context behind why Captain America: Brave New World isn't doing exactly well financially or just how much of a gargantuan flop Snow White is turning out to be.

Bonus: Do we know a movie's net earnings at the end of its theatrical run? This is really up to the studio. While legally, the gross amount made by a movie by major studios like Disney has to be made public because Disney is a publicly traded company and investors NEED to know how much the movie grosses, the net earnings are really up to the studio's discretion. How much you earn after you've paid all your expenses is really your business, though sometimes you can catch a major studio releasing the numbers to boast success.

To reiterate, yes I mostly speculate BUT I genuinely would not bet my money that a $200M production budget movie makes enough money unless it makes $500M at the bare minimum.